RIP the devs working with his unmarketable programming language on his unmarketable games. Steam is packed to the brim with gems of genuine creative brilliance; a remake of a sixteen year old 2d...
RIP the devs working with his unmarketable programming language on his unmarketable games. Steam is packed to the brim with gems of genuine creative brilliance; a remake of a sixteen year old 2d platformer being passed over feels extremely predictable.
I remember when Braid came out, it felt like a revelation in that this single player 2D platformer managed to make waves in an era where the focus was on high quality 3D graphics and multiplayer...
I remember when Braid came out, it felt like a revelation in that this single player 2D platformer managed to make waves in an era where the focus was on high quality 3D graphics and multiplayer (this is just my recollection of the era). It had novel game mechanics and a touching story. Steam was nothing like what it is today.
Now there is an abundance of highly creative and polished platformers from indie developers on Steam, as you point out. Why should players be expected to flock to a remaster of a 15 y/o game that, in retrospect, was not a ‘classic’, but just a good game? I’m with ya.
For me, Braid is absolutely a classic; one of the most classic, visually and audially beautiful games ever. It's just that, for me, it isn't all that replayable. An anniversary edition isn't worth...
For me, Braid is absolutely a classic; one of the most classic, visually and audially beautiful games ever. It's just that, for me, it isn't all that replayable. An anniversary edition isn't worth $20 to me because I would probably not turn it on. Also, like, $20 is real money; I think I paid less than that for the original dang game.
It apparently had a huge sale in July for $5. Maybe in reaction to Blow's quote above. Also, as some food for thought; keep in mind that the original's $10 in 2008 would be $14.50 today. Things...
$20 is real money; I think I paid less than that for the original dang game.
It apparently had a huge sale in July for $5. Maybe in reaction to Blow's quote above.
Also, as some food for thought; keep in mind that the original's $10 in 2008 would be $31 $14.50 today. Things got so expensive so quickly in general. I never played Braid but I have paid $20-30 for various anniversery remasters.
Where did you get $31 today from $10 in 2008? I did a quick search for an inflation calculator, which indicated it's closer to $15. I can't speak for the accuracy of the calc but it certainly...
Where did you get $31 today from $10 in 2008? I did a quick search for an inflation calculator, which indicated it's closer to $15. I can't speak for the accuracy of the calc but it certainly seems to be in the right ballpark.
Fair enough, different perspectives I guess. For me, it was a fun game but not one I have thought about too much in the past decade, but I'm not denying it was good!
Fair enough, different perspectives I guess. For me, it was a fun game but not one I have thought about too much in the past decade, but I'm not denying it was good!
I actually partly disagree here, I think that Steam is mostly filled to the brim with shit and while the number of brilliant games is also pretty high, Braid is still objectively up there (in the...
Steam is packed to the brim with gems of genuine creative brilliance; a remake of a sixteen year old 2d platformer being passed over feels extremely predictable.
I actually partly disagree here, I think that Steam is mostly filled to the brim with shit and while the number of brilliant games is also pretty high, Braid is still objectively up there (in the indie context) when looking at originality and polish. It's a really good game. But it's subtle in its presentation, turns pretty difficult relatively early on and isn't a "systems puzzle game" like something from Zachtronics, which tend to have a consistent audience. I'd say it's more about being really difficult to market than about not being good enough.
Steam is full of garbage, but it's also just got a lot more indie games than it did when Braid came out. Even if only a small proportion of those aren't garbage, the result is still a lot more...
Steam is full of garbage, but it's also just got a lot more indie games than it did when Braid came out. Even if only a small proportion of those aren't garbage, the result is still a lot more good indie puzzle games in absolute numbers than there were when Braid came out. Braid is very good but other games in the genre have taken inspiration from its lessons, so it stands out a lot less than it did in the market when it came out too. I think these things all factor into the remaster's failure to succeed in this market (in addition to the marketing just not being very good imo).
I would also suppose that while Steam is pretty full of garbage, it is unplayed garbage and unplayed good games. The allure of the novelty of a new game, even if maybe not as good as Braid, is...
I would also suppose that while Steam is pretty full of garbage, it is unplayed garbage and unplayed good games. The allure of the novelty of a new game, even if maybe not as good as Braid, is pretty hard to overcome, especially if you have to purchase the game again.
Witness did well enough, and I'm sure the kinds of people working on a new programming language aren't necessarily the same ones who want to work in gameplay. They would have much more in common...
Witness did well enough, and I'm sure the kinds of people working on a new programming language aren't necessarily the same ones who want to work in gameplay. They would have much more in common with engine programmers at that point.
Also, as a understated secret for studios like this: the best money is in providing services to other studios. Perhaps under the radar or completely uncredited. I'm sure they aren't walking on cloud 9, but I'd be surprised if the studio was hanging on a thread to survive. They did get Netflix to port their game to their platform, and I know those kinds of companies pay big for such titles.
I came into this article ready for Fish levels of entitlement and, while I still think he's more than a bit pompous throughout, I think the full quote is a bit better He's being realistic about...
I came into this article ready for Fish levels of entitlement and, while I still think he's more than a bit pompous throughout, I think the full quote is a bit better
"It depends on what your standards are," he said. "It's sold well if you compare it to nostalgic things like the Jeff Minter game that's on Steam or Atari 50. It's sold much better than all of those but it still has sold like dog shit compared to what we need to make for the company to survive.
He's being realistic about his company but you shouldn't stake your company future on a XBLA game rerelease.
He can come off as an absolute asshole but I still haven’t quite abandoned him since when you break his statements down in context he always has a point and seems to genuinely be on the side of...
He can come off as an absolute asshole but I still haven’t quite abandoned him since when you break his statements down in context he always has a point and seems to genuinely be on the side of working to make things better. If you watch that clip, at one point he basically says “sometimes you just have to work on something because you believe in it, even if it doesn’t sell. We apparently find ourselves in that situation right now“. Like, nothing but respect for that attitude, this is exactly what we ask for when complaining about game production being controlled by corporate greed.
I just want them to survive long enough to make his next games happen. This is what worries me. That a kind of niche project was planned as a major money maker and now they spent a ton of resources on this and can’t finish their new games.
I think he got the rough end of the stick but he never rubbed me the right way from Indie Game: The Movie but most everything involving criticism of him has... Another stink on it. It's hard to...
I think he got the rough end of the stick but he never rubbed me the right way from Indie Game: The Movie but most everything involving criticism of him has... Another stink on it.
It's hard to say that I wouldn't let sudden fame go to my head as well but I've seen panels with him and I'd hardly call it "taken out of context."
Side note, these are personal opinions. Please don't let them hold any weight for you if you like the guy. Fez is a good game. His criticisms of Microsoft were valid.
Phil Fish was someone who couldn't handle public life and that's perfectly fine. The mythos around him is indeed full of whole lies and half-truths. And it's a damn shame he effectively flamed out...
Phil Fish was someone who couldn't handle public life and that's perfectly fine. The mythos around him is indeed full of whole lies and half-truths. And it's a damn shame he effectively flamed out instead of stepping out of the limelight because FEZ is one of the finest puzzle games ever made with perhaps the smoothest and most ingenious difficulty ramp I've ever seen.
I do wish that the ARG in Fez was a little more separate from the game. I was really irritated when I ran into the QR code; the out of context challenge really took me out of the moment.
I do wish that the ARG in Fez was a little more separate from the game. I was really irritated when I ran into the QR code; the out of context challenge really took me out of the moment.
what he did was tame compared to the complete circus of controversy chains that would come 12 years afterwards, but his mannerisms didn't help him much to prevent such a backlash. He had zero...
what he did was tame compared to the complete circus of controversy chains that would come 12 years afterwards, but his mannerisms didn't help him much to prevent such a backlash. He had zero filter nor zero check for his lack of filter. The harder you push, the harder the internet pushes back.
I hope he's happier now with his non-game work, but I still don't particular miss him nor pity him.
Blow has always been kind of snobbish, but it seemed to come from having deep interest into what he's doing and a clear vision of what he does and doesn't want to make, not from just being a...
I came into this article ready for Fish levels of entitlement
Blow has always been kind of snobbish, but it seemed to come from having deep interest into what he's doing and a clear vision of what he does and doesn't want to make, not from just being a socially inept asshole. I honestly wish there were more people like him in the indie scene, I can accept people being not being super likeable if they actually put the work in and try to create something out of the ordinary.
I think he's a great game designer for sure but I'm not sure I want more people in the indie scene who react to criticism the way Blow does. The fact that he acts like a dickhead because he sees...
I think he's a great game designer for sure but I'm not sure I want more people in the indie scene who react to criticism the way Blow does. The fact that he acts like a dickhead because he sees himself as an auteur doesn't make him feel like less of an asshole to me.
Well, there's the problem then, in the last 16 years he's got three games to his name and two of those are 'Braid'. Look at his output compared to someone like Edmund McMillen, who for all the...
I can accept people being not being super likeable if they actually put the work in and try to create something out of the ordinary.
Well, there's the problem then, in the last 16 years he's got three games to his name and two of those are 'Braid'. Look at his output compared to someone like Edmund McMillen, who for all the edginess, as far as I know isn't an asshole.
Well, I can't argue with that point. I still think that even Blow's output is way above indie average in quality, but he is also far from the best for sure.
Well, I can't argue with that point. I still think that even Blow's output is way above indie average in quality, but he is also far from the best for sure.
I can't imagine that attitude is lacking much in the indie scene. It almost seems required to make and put out a quality indie game. If this was an uncommon attitude among indie devs, I can't...
I can't imagine that attitude is lacking much in the indie scene. It almost seems required to make and put out a quality indie game. If this was an uncommon attitude among indie devs, I can't imagine the indie scene would be what it is. It would feel a lot more soulless and cynical, missing games like Undertale, Celeste, Spiritfarer, Guacamelee, Hollow Knight, Stardew Valley, Papers Please, FTL, and more.
Depending on what specifically indie means for you, I think that most of the scene is pretty soulless, even if it is not cynical as often as the rest of the scene. The games you mention are a...
Depending on what specifically indie means for you, I think that most of the scene is pretty soulless, even if it is not cynical as often as the rest of the scene. The games you mention are a minority in the huge number of not entirely competent games that come out every week.
I don't see how this remaster could've succeeded with how saturated the indie market is now. Braid is a good game, but it's from another time when the indie games were just getting onto their feet...
I don't see how this remaster could've succeeded with how saturated the indie market is now. Braid is a good game, but it's from another time when the indie games were just getting onto their feet and competition just wasn't there yet. Now there are thousands of indie puzzle platformers that compete with it. On top of that, Braid has been sold to next to nothing over the past decade? It's been apart of so many sales and included in more than one Humble Bundle over the past fifteen years that there's a good chance a ton of people own the game without even realizing it.
That is to say, you have a remaster for a very devalued game being sold at a relatively high price point. That just wasn't going to work.
Jonathan Blow spent eight years working on his last game, The Witness. It's now been eight years since that was released. As far as I can tell from his streams, his prototype game isn't anywhere...
Jonathan Blow spent eight years working on his last game, The Witness. It's now been eight years since that was released. As far as I can tell from his streams, his prototype game isn't anywhere near release, and he spent the majority of the past eight years reinventing game dev tools and programming and only a little bit actually working on a commercial product.
I just don't know what he was expecting. You can't expect to fund an indie studio by releasing a game once per decade. You can't just expect a hail mary remaster of a 16-year-old indie game to save your budget in today's oversaturated indie market. They announced the remaster years ago, it would have been enough time to develop an actually new game to sell. It seems like Blow's complete inability to compromise on anything and obsessive need to reinvent the wheel to his liking might spell the end of his company.
I'm definitely disappointed to find out, from this article, that a Braid remaster was important for their survival going forward. If they couldn't afford for a Braid remaster to fail they...
I'm definitely disappointed to find out, from this article, that a Braid remaster was important for their survival going forward. If they couldn't afford for a Braid remaster to fail they shouldn't have made a Braid remaster at all, what a stupid decision.
If you can't afford anything to fail, you go with the safest bet. Going back to your safest and most acclaimed title makes sense in that regard. It's a shame, but I have a low key hope this shows...
If they couldn't afford for a Braid remaster to fail they shouldn't have made a Braid remaster at all,
If you can't afford anything to fail, you go with the safest bet. Going back to your safest and most acclaimed title makes sense in that regard.
It's a shame, but I have a low key hope this shows a few gamers the lesson that no, "just make a good game" doesn't always sell enough to survive. Probably not, but I continue to be optimistic of gamers aging and realizing the realities of game dev as a business.
There are definitely a great many games that "fail" despite being good games. I don't think this remake is a safe bet and I think of Blow as a fairly intelligent person, so he should have known...
There are definitely a great many games that "fail" despite being good games. I don't think this remake is a safe bet and I think of Blow as a fairly intelligent person, so he should have known this. (Clearly not though?)
I don't know. It defintiely depends on the analyst. I can see good arguments for and against a remaster. I think financially, this remaster being announced in 2020 and released in 2024 may clue in...
I don't know. It defintiely depends on the analyst. I can see good arguments for and against a remaster.
I think financially, this remaster being announced in 2020 and released in 2024 may clue in on some issues that may have turned this from "safe bet" to "sold like dog shit", though. Maybe the development time doubled in the turmoil of development. Be it due to bad adjustments to COVID, Blow's own statements costing him employees, or various publishers/3rd parties pulling out. If nothing else, Blow is absolutely a perfectionist, so it's very in character for him to delay until it's ready (something you can interpret as him hinting on even in this interview, "you just have to know that what you did was a good thing even if the world doesn't really acknowledge it and this is one of those cases ")
I don't like relying on timing for blaming success/failure, but having this release in 2021 instead of 2024 could have made a huge difference in sales.
I have loved all of Blow's games, but I didn't really see an anniversary edition of Braid to be something to inspire me to buy, or even really go back and play more of it. When it came out, the...
I have loved all of Blow's games, but I didn't really see an anniversary edition of Braid to be something to inspire me to buy, or even really go back and play more of it. When it came out, the core concept was truly transformative, but a new edition with however many new levels doesn't move me. The story is told; the princess unsaved, the conceit revealed.
That said, I'm sorry that he was hoping to use it as a funding source for his further endeavors. I know he's been working on a new puzzle game for a while; perhaps he'll focus on releasing that rather than trying to develop a new programming language and game simultaneously?
Is it bad that I find this type of attitude to be a turn-off of sorts for buying his games? I know the video referenced in the article is cherry-picked to give that message, but I'd be interested...
Is it bad that I find this type of attitude to be a turn-off of sorts for buying his games? I know the video referenced in the article is cherry-picked to give that message, but I'd be interested to see what else he's said.
Promoting products is hard. Sales can be a nightmare. Unless you "go viral" or find a niche community that likes what you sell, it's hard to break through, especially in crowded marketplaces like Steam.
He already certainly has followers who would buy this remaster. But maybe this led him to overestimate sales and underestimate advertising effort required.
it varies. He's being brutally honest, and in this market full of gaslighting and outright lies I find it a breath of fresh air to lay it all out. The fuller quote does also recognize the fact...
Is it bad that I find this type of attitude to be a turn-off of sorts for buying his games?
it varies. He's being brutally honest, and in this market full of gaslighting and outright lies I find it a breath of fresh air to lay it all out. The fuller quote does also recognize the fact that no casual gamer will look at the actual sales number and say "that's way better than most indies!". But his cost of living and expenses for his team will very much affect what is needed to survive. I just posted an article about that very conundrum, so it was funny seeing this soon afterwards as another example (even among an indie team).
Sounds like a marketing problem. I loved the original and was excited to see the initial announcement in 2020 --pretty sure I even signed up to the mailing list -- but last thing I heard about it...
Sounds like a marketing problem. I loved the original and was excited to see the initial announcement in 2020 --pretty sure I even signed up to the mailing list -- but last thing I heard about it was that it had been significantly delayed. It took seeing this article to learn that it actually released over a month ago.
Likewise. I had no idea they'd re-released this game, which I already thoroughly played back in the day, but even if I did the name alone doesn't convey that it contains 40 new levels. This...
Likewise. I had no idea they'd re-released this game, which I already thoroughly played back in the day, but even if I did the name alone doesn't convey that it contains 40 new levels. This article is the first time I learn of this fact. I may be interested in playing it at some point but I'm being caught by surprise and it's not in my schedule right now.
The game was advertised as having 40 new levels, which at first glance is sounds engaging and interesting, until you find out most of those levels are programmer/beta/alpha stages. It's not entirely new content, but rather going through iterations until you arrive at the level as it is today. While interesting, it does feel disingenuous to advertise this as a new level. When I hear braid has a new level, I think "There's one more puzzle piece", but that's not the case. You are not rewarded with anything in game, but instead receive some occasionally insightful commentary. In total, there are around 14 actual, new puzzles.
[...]
Overall, if you have already played the original Braid, I'm not sure you'll get much more out of it. The new puzzles are not Jonathan Blow's best, and can be completed relatively easily. They are much more reliant on timing than puzzling this time, and are not my cup of tea.
it's tough, because marketing means more budget which may or may not be there. This also just isn't a good year to release games; there's a lot of unrest compared to 2020 but still enough big...
it's tough, because marketing means more budget which may or may not be there. This also just isn't a good year to release games; there's a lot of unrest compared to 2020 but still enough big releases to wash out even a classic indie release.
2007-2008 was a lot of peoples introduction to the indie scene and they really stood out next to the see of brown saturated FPS. At the time, the stand out's to me were Braid, Shadow Complex,...
2007-2008 was a lot of peoples introduction to the indie scene and they really stood out next to the see of brown saturated FPS. At the time, the stand out's to me were Braid, Shadow Complex, World of Good, Aquaira and Castle Crashers. Of all of then, Braid was likely the only one that had run its course. I'm sure a good designer could whip up some interesting new puzzles or levels but good luck with XNA. But reviewing it now, I'm spoiled for choice in just the time manipulation puzzle space. Timelie and Guidebook of Babel are incredible an deserve some love. Also Superhot, 5D Chess, Entropy Center and Outer Wilds. There was just an entire Time Manipulation Games showcase on steam.
Braid isn't the only fish in the pond anymore and Blow has not exactly been community building or keeping the game alive. He actually has an amazing talent to make everyone angry.
And the Witness went to the max in the other direction where he attempted every possible interpretation of a single concept. I just dropped it after a few areas and those awful audio... things. It feels like the free parody game The Looker was more enjoyable in a fraction of the time.
The Witness is an incredible game that was played and enjoyed by a lot of people. It's OK if it wasn't for you, but it feels from your comment like you haven't really "found" the game before you...
The Witness is an incredible game that was played and enjoyed by a lot of people. It's OK if it wasn't for you, but it feels from your comment like you haven't really "found" the game before you stopped playing. I'm not even sure about the "audio things" you're talking about. Do you mean the completely optional, unrelated to the gameplay, you don't need to engage with them at all audio logs? Or the small number of fairly simple audio-based puzzles?
The Witness is one of the only games where even the mildest criticism is so consistently met by people insisting that anyone who doesn't think the game was phenomenal just doesn't get it. As a...
The Witness is one of the only games where even the mildest criticism is so consistently met by people insisting that anyone who doesn't think the game was phenomenal just doesn't get it. As a puzzle gamer who hasn't played it, those kinds of responses to anyone saying the game was anything less than perfect were honestly the main thing that put me off playing The Witness.
It's a tough line to walk because the moments of recontextualization in The Witness are so transcendent. If you haven't had them, the game seems pretty, but pedestrian. If you have had them then...
It's a tough line to walk because the moments of recontextualization in The Witness are so transcendent. If you haven't had them, the game seems pretty, but pedestrian. If you have had them then the game is a brilliant jewel worthy of proselytization, but you also don't want to spoil the very thing that made it so special in order for others to have that same experience. So you get defenses of the game that seem weirdly aggressive and unfounded because people simultaneously care a lot about the game and care a lot about preserving your experience if you do play it.
idk though, there are other games I have played with similar moments of recontextualization in them which don't seem to inspire the same defensiveness against even small criticisms. I finally beat...
idk though, there are other games I have played with similar moments of recontextualization in them which don't seem to inspire the same defensiveness against even small criticisms. I finally beat Outer Wilds (base game only so far bc the DLC is hard) and it's one of my favorite games now, but I still have lots of criticisms of certain parts of the game that I think weren't perfect, and I've not seen remotely the same amount of defensiveness in that community when people make those criticisms. Whereas with The Witness I've absolutely seen people get super defensive against criticisms from people who clearly have had those moments of recontextualization but are criticizing the design of specific puzzles and the like.
I'm not being defensive so much as trying to understand the argument being made. Do you understand it? SloMoMonday themselves conveyed in their comment that they didn't get far into The Witness....
I'm not being defensive so much as trying to understand the argument being made. Do you understand it? SloMoMonday themselves conveyed in their comment that they didn't get far into The Witness. I've seen The Looker, and while it's a fun enough experience that's obviously a style parody of The Witness, I'd be hard pressed to compare them in terms of gameplay.
In SloMoMonday's comment, The Witness is mentioned immediately after the argument about Blow's lack of community building and talent for making people angry. Mine follows directly from that--I'm arguing that The Witness has a fairly strong fanbase, which you yourself understand from your own comment. It was played by a lot of people and critically successful. It's not a good example of Blow's failure in this regard, although yes, I absolutely agree that Braid doesn't have the same kind of endurance.
My interpretation of "the argument being made" was that they just didn't enjoy the game. The actual reasons they gave were vague and hard to parse as someone who has themselves not played it, but...
My interpretation of "the argument being made" was that they just didn't enjoy the game. The actual reasons they gave were vague and hard to parse as someone who has themselves not played it, but I've seen much longer and more nuanced criticisms responded to in the same dismissive "you just don't get it way" -- including by Blow himself iirc, which I think plays into his talent for making people angry.
I know a lot of people talk about that moment of realisation but I personally did not find it. I know some games take a long time to get going but like I said in the review I posted, it should be...
I know a lot of people talk about that moment of realisation but I personally did not find it.
I know some games take a long time to get going but like I said in the review I posted, it should be built up over time because I loss interest after several hours.
Theres also a real possibility that I missed it all together. Maybe playing it during Lockdown had me in the wrong head space. Maybe I had exceptionally high expectations from a puzzle/gameplay design. Maybe the frustrations and bugs I had just blinded me to them.
Oh, yeah. I can see how playing during lockdown would disrupt the headspace of calm exploration that would make it easy to discover. I'm sorry it didn't do it for you.
Oh, yeah. I can see how playing during lockdown would disrupt the headspace of calm exploration that would make it easy to discover. I'm sorry it didn't do it for you.
I personally love The Witness, but yeah, that's maybe not the best way to respond to criticism of it. I don't think it needs to be talked about like a "masterpiece that people don't understand" or...
I personally love The Witness, but yeah, that's maybe not the best way to respond to criticism of it. I don't think it needs to be talked about like a "masterpiece that people don't understand" or whatever. For me, I just really enjoyed the atmosphere and visuals of the island, and thought the puzzles were well-designed. Nothing more, nothing less. It's not a transcendent or incredibly innovative game necessarily. There were some parts I wasn't as much of a fan of, like the audio logs and a few annoying puzzles, but the nice part about the game's design was I could just skip those parts without issue.
ehh, I play RPGs and that's just a Tuesday for us. But it's a hard argument to have, because it's conflating quality with sales. An oddity here because no one here seems to be saying Braid wasn't...
one of the only games where even the mildest criticism is so consistently met by people insisting that anyone who doesn't think the game was phenomenal just doesn't get it.
ehh, I play RPGs and that's just a Tuesday for us.
But it's a hard argument to have, because it's conflating quality with sales. An oddity here because no one here seems to be saying Braid wasn't a good title at its time and meanwhile Blow says the sales weren't satisfactory.
An appeal to popularity makes perfect sense if you're saying the game didn't sell well, because clearly a lot of people disagreed with their wallets. I don't like Fortnite but it'd be foolish for me to say "Fornite feels like a free parody game" (despite literally starting out as a pivot to a f2p riff on PUBG, but I digress.)
But that popularity appeal doesn't mean the game is quality, which is subjective to begin with. So there should be some criticism come up and taken into account. It feels more like 2 topics talking past each other whenever that conversation comes up.
okay yeah to be fair maybe the defensiveness of The Witness fans is only abnormal within the indie puzzle game space, lol, I wasn't really thinking of genres with more heated fandom wars lmao
okay yeah to be fair maybe the defensiveness of The Witness fans is only abnormal within the indie puzzle game space, lol, I wasn't really thinking of genres with more heated fandom wars lmao
Note: Started replying, got swamped and missed the bigger discussion. Will just post my original t Reply before reading ahead and editing/replying. Sorry if I made my opinion come across as a...
Note: Started replying, got swamped and missed the bigger discussion. Will just post my original t
Reply before reading ahead and editing/replying.
Sorry if I made my opinion come across as a sweeping statement. The thing is, The Witness is a game that really didn't gel with me as much as I wanted it to. And I usually love puzzle games. Even tedious ones like Void Stranger and Bunburrows. So seeing how well reviewed and celebrated the game was, I went in expecting an innovative experience.
In my time with the Witness, I remember stopping at the swamp area after the castle and did quite a lot of puzzles to get there. The shack island, desert, quarry, woods, bridges and a few other areas. Appreciate the many iterations on maze puzzles and the mix of using the environment to conceptualize the canvas.
My big issue is outside of the main puzzles and more at the "meta" elements. These systems are usually discribed as finding deeper layers in a game that recontextualizes the entire experience.
[Note: in this case, recontextualize specifically means: changes the way you interact with the puzzels and opens up new solutions to previous problems. Not in how you interpret the narrative/fiction]
The meta systems i most enjoy is with continuous discovery of these elements hidden in plain sight. It's a way if rewarding intuition with deeper and more gameplay. The best examples I've seen is Baba is You where everything is a puzzle and Can of Wormholes has escalating meta puzzles that keeps you thinking bigger and bigger.
With the Witness, gameplay depth was implied but I never found it. Because you keep changing the maze rules in such a riged map, there's not much more that can be discovered beyond intended solutions. And the meta/environmental puzzles were simply manipulating the world and drawing a symbol from the pillars.
For all the cool little devices and areas, there's a few that lead nowhere and left me confused. Like its cleary communicated that a puzzle track leads to a laser but some just don't. So I'm mucking around trying to find something not there.
Eventually, i got frustrated whe I went looking for the deeper systems that I felt I'd missed. Because when theres a meta puzzle, its safe to assume everything is part of it. I listened to every audio track assuming that there is some hidden puzzle within. The texts and readings sounded lovely but not understanding the purpose and context made them frustrating to listen and re-listen to. Went down the rabbit hole of listing all of the logs in an area and finding connections. Just knowing the game needed to be made in a new engine had me thinking there was something really special to look out for.
Even watching a playthrough of the two endings doesn't exactly improve my opinion. Because that just confirms that the two under layers of gameplay are wafer thin.
I understand that many people have an appreciation for this game. I've had plenty of debates about it with friends. There's philosophical observations and the world is full of metaphors and layered meanings. But all I see is two very different experiences stitched together.
But the most agregious problem is that it just wasn't very enjoyable. It's satisfying to figure things out and progress. But there's no real moments if levity or fun for me. Real characters or even a motivation to push forward. Even just simple little jokes like in Monsters Expedition or the odd insane solutions/situations like the old point-click adventures would have been welcome..
I was always saddened that I physically cannot play Witness or Looker. Tried taking anti nausea medication then playing in max 5-10 min increments barely helped, and obviously some puzzles need...
I was always saddened that I physically cannot play Witness or Looker. Tried taking anti nausea medication then playing in max 5-10 min increments barely helped, and obviously some puzzles need more than 5-10 min to even find, and overall the immersion is impossible to achieve with these limitations.
So not all games can be everything to everyone.
Fans need to understand that for every 9 people who love the audio logs, there's of course going to be one who doesn't, and that that's okay. The Witness is an incredible game that not everyone loves.n
Do those games have FOV settings? My nausea when playing some first-person games is very affected by having a narrow FOV so I've found increasing it can eliminate the problem in some games. But I...
Do those games have FOV settings? My nausea when playing some first-person games is very affected by having a narrow FOV so I've found increasing it can eliminate the problem in some games. But I suppose, given the type of puzzles in those games, changing the FOV could potentially interfere with them.
I'm not sure I looked too carefully :( sadly, first person anything's have all been out of reach since I developed mad motion sickness a dozen years ago. Kind of categorically gave up on fine...
I'm not sure I looked too carefully :( sadly, first person anything's have all been out of reach since I developed mad motion sickness a dozen years ago. Kind of categorically gave up on fine tuning and adjustments after a few years
Yeah, it's tough. It's like trying to force myself to finish a really nice meal, to enjoy its arrangement and layers and delicacy, to experience something nice in a limited capacity, but only...
Yeah, it's tough. It's like trying to force myself to finish a really nice meal, to enjoy its arrangement and layers and delicacy, to experience something nice in a limited capacity, but only intellectually because meanwhile my body is having a mild allergic reaction and I can't actually smell or taste the food beyond occasional moments. It's still worth it sometimes, I played through half of Portal this way and listened to my spouse play the rest and it was a wonderful experience. But it's not really the same :);
That's too bad. I didn't buy it, because I was never the biggest Braid superfan, but I do recognize its place in the annals of gaming history. Braid helped define what an indie game was, and...
That's too bad. I didn't buy it, because I was never the biggest Braid superfan, but I do recognize its place in the annals of gaming history. Braid helped define what an indie game was, and proved it was possible to be an indie dev as a career. I suppose its commercial failing today shows how much that market has evolved in the last fifteen years or so.
Despite being brusque at times, I respect Blow a lot as a games designer. I think he has a lot of great ideas and I'd like for him to continue being able to explore them. I hope he finds a way to raise some capital that allows him and his team to continue working on their current projects.
Remasters are often touted as "easy money", but I notice they don't seem to do very well for indie games. Teslagrad Remastered released last year and only has 83 reviews on Steam. Treasure Adventure World, a ground-up remake of the freeware title Treasure Adventure Game, spent seven years in development and yet nobody has heard of it today. The dev ended up needing to get a real job, and their social media presence has essentially disappeared.
It's a tough situation. The bar on game quality is constantly being raised, and development becomes more costly every single year. More than that, you're no longer just competing for money but for gamers' attention. Why would someone check out your interesting new indie game when five of the hottest live services games are all releasing new "seasons" this week? It feels like there's not enough room for everyone, and a lot of talented indies are simply being squeezed out. It's a little sad to think about how much creative output we are losing out on from those who couldn't keep up.
I'll wager that remakes/masters work for two reasons and two reasons alone: Nostalgia and scope. You want to see that game from your childhood as graphically complete as you pictured it and it...
I'll wager that remakes/masters work for two reasons and two reasons alone: Nostalgia and scope.
You want to see that game from your childhood as graphically complete as you pictured it and it only works when the game is large enough for it to warrant an update. Indie games fit neither. The former with time, the latter perhaps never.
And Braid is so pretty too! I'm not so sure about the 2010 threshold, actually. Depending on how they're textured and shaded, I find "old" 3D to be a bit of a turn off, even if it's "not that...
And Braid is so pretty too!
I'm not so sure about the 2010 threshold, actually. Depending on how they're textured and shaded, I find "old" 3D to be a bit of a turn off, even if it's "not that old". The best way to make 3D age well is to give it a clearly stylized design, such as "cel shading".
Oh I agree, having a unique style will do far more than shooting for realism. But before 2000 especially, adjustable resolutions with both widescreen and fullscreen support were a rarity, at least...
Oh I agree, having a unique style will do far more than shooting for realism.
But before 2000 especially, adjustable resolutions with both widescreen and fullscreen support were a rarity, at least by 2010ish that particular nastiness aged out which makes games as a whole age better.
This remaster came with 40 new puzzles though, no? I feel I'd want to rebuy a game that is basically an expansion if I liked it at base. I suppose it depends on if your favorite thing about Braid...
This remaster came with 40 new puzzles though, no? I feel I'd want to rebuy a game that is basically an expansion if I liked it at base.
I suppose it depends on if your favorite thing about Braid was the story (which didn't change) or the puzzles.
that's part of the downside of PC vs consoles (or upside for consumers). Tech advances in consoles and you make a new generation. You get to remaster your game and sell it again to audiences who...
Remasters are often touted as "easy money", but I notice they don't seem to do very well for indie games.
that's part of the downside of PC vs consoles (or upside for consumers). Tech advances in consoles and you make a new generation. You get to remaster your game and sell it again to audiences who want it on new hardware. Sometimes it's backwards compatible, and you justify that with extra content or a bigger graphical touch-up (e.g. Insomniac's Spider Man).
PC's, they are still running Windows today, just like in 2010 and 2000's. There's some 30 years of backwards compatibility so you can't really resell that same experience as easily.
This was also something Sonic seemed to have stumbled on, as another example: I think Sonic Origins was a bit overhated, but passionate sonic fans have broken down the classic games to its atoms and made a version you can mod with nearly any feature you wish. This isn't something a company even has the jurisdiction to do compared to some scrappy modders (e.g. the licensing on Sonic 3's music).
It feels like there's not enough room for everyone, and a lot of talented indies are simply being squeezed out. It's a little sad to think about how much creative output we are losing out on from those who couldn't keep up.
the 10 most played games in 2024 come from 2016 or earlier. It's not even new subscriptions, a lot of gamers just settled on what they have and keep that running for years. new PC/console games in a way have less an audience despite more gamers than ever.
Trying to resell a game that anyone interested in playing already has seems like a bad idea to me. I'm not sure how they thought it would be a huge success. Just make a new game or if you want to...
Trying to resell a game that anyone interested in playing already has seems like a bad idea to me. I'm not sure how they thought it would be a huge success. Just make a new game or if you want to be lazy a sequel, folks would probably go nuts for a sequel to braid.
I don't think the Braid remake is a particularly lazy one. It is completely repainted, has new puzzles, a new jigsaw, etc. The real downside I see is that it honestly doesn't really look better...
I don't think the Braid remake is a particularly lazy one. It is completely repainted, has new puzzles, a new jigsaw, etc. The real downside I see is that it honestly doesn't really look better than the original at 4K. I'm honestly surprised about it, because it must have taken a lot of time and effort to repaint everything. While there are new details in the images, it mostly just looks slightly sharper, and I'm not even sure that fits the aesthetic of the game better. But it sort of feels like if someone repainted a Monet on their iPad.
This isn't like playing Banjo-Kazooie on the N64 vs the Xbox One X where you go from 320x240 under 30fps to potentially 4k at 30fps with modern texture filtering and anti-aliasing. Or better yet like the Zelda Ocarina of Time PC port Ship of Harkinian.
Maybe he shouldn't have spent the past 4 years being completely insufferable about every hot-button topic out there (instead of before, when he was only insufferable about programming)
Maybe he shouldn't have spent the past 4 years being completely insufferable about every hot-button topic out there (instead of before, when he was only insufferable about programming)
That probably ate some of the good will release like this would have benefited from. I stopped following him because I just couldn't take it. While I was somewhat interested in this rerelease, I...
That probably ate some of the good will release like this would have benefited from. I stopped following him because I just couldn't take it.
While I was somewhat interested in this rerelease, I didn't really feel the need to replay this game again or own it again. And if I did, I still own the original.
RIP the devs working with his unmarketable programming language on his unmarketable games. Steam is packed to the brim with gems of genuine creative brilliance; a remake of a sixteen year old 2d platformer being passed over feels extremely predictable.
I remember when Braid came out, it felt like a revelation in that this single player 2D platformer managed to make waves in an era where the focus was on high quality 3D graphics and multiplayer (this is just my recollection of the era). It had novel game mechanics and a touching story. Steam was nothing like what it is today.
Now there is an abundance of highly creative and polished platformers from indie developers on Steam, as you point out. Why should players be expected to flock to a remaster of a 15 y/o game that, in retrospect, was not a ‘classic’, but just a good game? I’m with ya.
For me, Braid is absolutely a classic; one of the most classic, visually and audially beautiful games ever. It's just that, for me, it isn't all that replayable. An anniversary edition isn't worth $20 to me because I would probably not turn it on. Also, like, $20 is real money; I think I paid less than that for the original dang game.
It apparently had a huge sale in July for $5. Maybe in reaction to Blow's quote above.
Also, as some food for thought; keep in mind that the original's $10 in 2008 would be
$31$14.50 today. Things got so expensive so quickly in general. I never played Braid but I have paid $20-30 for various anniversery remasters.Where did you get $31 today from $10 in 2008? I did a quick search for an inflation calculator, which indicated it's closer to $15. I can't speak for the accuracy of the calc but it certainly seems to be in the right ballpark.
I'm stupid, that's how. I just googled the US inflation calculator but didn't actually press the "calcuate" button. Spoiled by modern autocomplete.
Fair enough, different perspectives I guess. For me, it was a fun game but not one I have thought about too much in the past decade, but I'm not denying it was good!
I actually partly disagree here, I think that Steam is mostly filled to the brim with shit and while the number of brilliant games is also pretty high, Braid is still objectively up there (in the indie context) when looking at originality and polish. It's a really good game. But it's subtle in its presentation, turns pretty difficult relatively early on and isn't a "systems puzzle game" like something from Zachtronics, which tend to have a consistent audience. I'd say it's more about being really difficult to market than about not being good enough.
Steam is full of garbage, but it's also just got a lot more indie games than it did when Braid came out. Even if only a small proportion of those aren't garbage, the result is still a lot more good indie puzzle games in absolute numbers than there were when Braid came out. Braid is very good but other games in the genre have taken inspiration from its lessons, so it stands out a lot less than it did in the market when it came out too. I think these things all factor into the remaster's failure to succeed in this market (in addition to the marketing just not being very good imo).
I would also suppose that while Steam is pretty full of garbage, it is unplayed garbage and unplayed good games. The allure of the novelty of a new game, even if maybe not as good as Braid, is pretty hard to overcome, especially if you have to purchase the game again.
Witness did well enough, and I'm sure the kinds of people working on a new programming language aren't necessarily the same ones who want to work in gameplay. They would have much more in common with engine programmers at that point.
Also, as a understated secret for studios like this: the best money is in providing services to other studios. Perhaps under the radar or completely uncredited. I'm sure they aren't walking on cloud 9, but I'd be surprised if the studio was hanging on a thread to survive. They did get Netflix to port their game to their platform, and I know those kinds of companies pay big for such titles.
Considering it's for his game dev, you could argue it's really low level game engine programming
I came into this article ready for Fish levels of entitlement and, while I still think he's more than a bit pompous throughout, I think the full quote is a bit better
He's being realistic about his company but you shouldn't stake your company future on a XBLA game rerelease.
He can come off as an absolute asshole but I still haven’t quite abandoned him since when you break his statements down in context he always has a point and seems to genuinely be on the side of working to make things better. If you watch that clip, at one point he basically says “sometimes you just have to work on something because you believe in it, even if it doesn’t sell. We apparently find ourselves in that situation right now“. Like, nothing but respect for that attitude, this is exactly what we ask for when complaining about game production being controlled by corporate greed.
I just want them to survive long enough to make his next games happen. This is what worries me. That a kind of niche project was planned as a major money maker and now they spent a ton of resources on this and can’t finish their new games.
Phil Fish did nothing wrong. The common criticisms of him are things he did but taken out of context.
I think he got the rough end of the stick but he never rubbed me the right way from Indie Game: The Movie but most everything involving criticism of him has... Another stink on it.
It's hard to say that I wouldn't let sudden fame go to my head as well but I've seen panels with him and I'd hardly call it "taken out of context."
Side note, these are personal opinions. Please don't let them hold any weight for you if you like the guy. Fez is a good game. His criticisms of Microsoft were valid.
Phil Fish was someone who couldn't handle public life and that's perfectly fine. The mythos around him is indeed full of whole lies and half-truths. And it's a damn shame he effectively flamed out instead of stepping out of the limelight because FEZ is one of the finest puzzle games ever made with perhaps the smoothest and most ingenious difficulty ramp I've ever seen.
I do wish that the ARG in Fez was a little more separate from the game. I was really irritated when I ran into the QR code; the out of context challenge really took me out of the moment.
what he did was tame compared to the complete circus of controversy chains that would come 12 years afterwards, but his mannerisms didn't help him much to prevent such a backlash. He had zero filter nor zero check for his lack of filter. The harder you push, the harder the internet pushes back.
I hope he's happier now with his non-game work, but I still don't particular miss him nor pity him.
Blow has always been kind of snobbish, but it seemed to come from having deep interest into what he's doing and a clear vision of what he does and doesn't want to make, not from just being a socially inept asshole. I honestly wish there were more people like him in the indie scene, I can accept people being not being super likeable if they actually put the work in and try to create something out of the ordinary.
I think he's a great game designer for sure but I'm not sure I want more people in the indie scene who react to criticism the way Blow does. The fact that he acts like a dickhead because he sees himself as an auteur doesn't make him feel like less of an asshole to me.
Well, there's the problem then, in the last 16 years he's got three games to his name and two of those are 'Braid'. Look at his output compared to someone like Edmund McMillen, who for all the edginess, as far as I know isn't an asshole.
Well, I can't argue with that point. I still think that even Blow's output is way above indie average in quality, but he is also far from the best for sure.
I can't imagine that attitude is lacking much in the indie scene. It almost seems required to make and put out a quality indie game. If this was an uncommon attitude among indie devs, I can't imagine the indie scene would be what it is. It would feel a lot more soulless and cynical, missing games like Undertale, Celeste, Spiritfarer, Guacamelee, Hollow Knight, Stardew Valley, Papers Please, FTL, and more.
Depending on what specifically indie means for you, I think that most of the scene is pretty soulless, even if it is not cynical as often as the rest of the scene. The games you mention are a minority in the huge number of not entirely competent games that come out every week.
I don't see how this remaster could've succeeded with how saturated the indie market is now. Braid is a good game, but it's from another time when the indie games were just getting onto their feet and competition just wasn't there yet. Now there are thousands of indie puzzle platformers that compete with it. On top of that, Braid has been sold to next to nothing over the past decade? It's been apart of so many sales and included in more than one Humble Bundle over the past fifteen years that there's a good chance a ton of people own the game without even realizing it.
That is to say, you have a remaster for a very devalued game being sold at a relatively high price point. That just wasn't going to work.
Jonathan Blow spent eight years working on his last game, The Witness. It's now been eight years since that was released. As far as I can tell from his streams, his prototype game isn't anywhere near release, and he spent the majority of the past eight years reinventing game dev tools and programming and only a little bit actually working on a commercial product.
I just don't know what he was expecting. You can't expect to fund an indie studio by releasing a game once per decade. You can't just expect a hail mary remaster of a 16-year-old indie game to save your budget in today's oversaturated indie market. They announced the remaster years ago, it would have been enough time to develop an actually new game to sell. It seems like Blow's complete inability to compromise on anything and obsessive need to reinvent the wheel to his liking might spell the end of his company.
I'm definitely disappointed to find out, from this article, that a Braid remaster was important for their survival going forward. If they couldn't afford for a Braid remaster to fail they shouldn't have made a Braid remaster at all, what a stupid decision.
If you can't afford anything to fail, you go with the safest bet. Going back to your safest and most acclaimed title makes sense in that regard.
It's a shame, but I have a low key hope this shows a few gamers the lesson that no, "just make a good game" doesn't always sell enough to survive. Probably not, but I continue to be optimistic of gamers aging and realizing the realities of game dev as a business.
There are definitely a great many games that "fail" despite being good games. I don't think this remake is a safe bet and I think of Blow as a fairly intelligent person, so he should have known this. (Clearly not though?)
I don't know. It defintiely depends on the analyst. I can see good arguments for and against a remaster.
I think financially, this remaster being announced in 2020 and released in 2024 may clue in on some issues that may have turned this from "safe bet" to "sold like dog shit", though. Maybe the development time doubled in the turmoil of development. Be it due to bad adjustments to COVID, Blow's own statements costing him employees, or various publishers/3rd parties pulling out. If nothing else, Blow is absolutely a perfectionist, so it's very in character for him to delay until it's ready (something you can interpret as him hinting on even in this interview, "you just have to know that what you did was a good thing even if the world doesn't really acknowledge it and this is one of those cases ")
I don't like relying on timing for blaming success/failure, but having this release in 2021 instead of 2024 could have made a huge difference in sales.
I have loved all of Blow's games, but I didn't really see an anniversary edition of Braid to be something to inspire me to buy, or even really go back and play more of it. When it came out, the core concept was truly transformative, but a new edition with however many new levels doesn't move me. The story is told; the princess unsaved, the conceit revealed.
That said, I'm sorry that he was hoping to use it as a funding source for his further endeavors. I know he's been working on a new puzzle game for a while; perhaps he'll focus on releasing that rather than trying to develop a new programming language and game simultaneously?
Is it bad that I find this type of attitude to be a turn-off of sorts for buying his games? I know the video referenced in the article is cherry-picked to give that message, but I'd be interested to see what else he's said.
Promoting products is hard. Sales can be a nightmare. Unless you "go viral" or find a niche community that likes what you sell, it's hard to break through, especially in crowded marketplaces like Steam.
He already certainly has followers who would buy this remaster. But maybe this led him to overestimate sales and underestimate advertising effort required.
it varies. He's being brutally honest, and in this market full of gaslighting and outright lies I find it a breath of fresh air to lay it all out. The fuller quote does also recognize the fact that no casual gamer will look at the actual sales number and say "that's way better than most indies!". But his cost of living and expenses for his team will very much affect what is needed to survive. I just posted an article about that very conundrum, so it was funny seeing this soon afterwards as another example (even among an indie team).
Sounds like a marketing problem. I loved the original and was excited to see the initial announcement in 2020 --pretty sure I even signed up to the mailing list -- but last thing I heard about it was that it had been significantly delayed. It took seeing this article to learn that it actually released over a month ago.
Likewise. I had no idea they'd re-released this game, which I already thoroughly played back in the day, but even if I did the name alone doesn't convey that it contains 40 new levels. This article is the first time I learn of this fact. I may be interested in playing it at some point but I'm being caught by surprise and it's not in my schedule right now.
From the current top review on the game's Steam page:
Yep, I had literally no idea it had any new content like that.
it's tough, because marketing means more budget which may or may not be there. This also just isn't a good year to release games; there's a lot of unrest compared to 2020 but still enough big releases to wash out even a classic indie release.
2007-2008 was a lot of peoples introduction to the indie scene and they really stood out next to the see of brown saturated FPS. At the time, the stand out's to me were Braid, Shadow Complex, World of Good, Aquaira and Castle Crashers. Of all of then, Braid was likely the only one that had run its course. I'm sure a good designer could whip up some interesting new puzzles or levels but good luck with XNA. But reviewing it now, I'm spoiled for choice in just the time manipulation puzzle space. Timelie and Guidebook of Babel are incredible an deserve some love. Also Superhot, 5D Chess, Entropy Center and Outer Wilds. There was just an entire Time Manipulation Games showcase on steam.
Braid isn't the only fish in the pond anymore and Blow has not exactly been community building or keeping the game alive. He actually has an amazing talent to make everyone angry.
And the Witness went to the max in the other direction where he attempted every possible interpretation of a single concept. I just dropped it after a few areas and those awful audio... things. It feels like the free parody game The Looker was more enjoyable in a fraction of the time.
The Witness is an incredible game that was played and enjoyed by a lot of people. It's OK if it wasn't for you, but it feels from your comment like you haven't really "found" the game before you stopped playing. I'm not even sure about the "audio things" you're talking about. Do you mean the completely optional, unrelated to the gameplay, you don't need to engage with them at all audio logs? Or the small number of fairly simple audio-based puzzles?
The Witness is one of the only games where even the mildest criticism is so consistently met by people insisting that anyone who doesn't think the game was phenomenal just doesn't get it. As a puzzle gamer who hasn't played it, those kinds of responses to anyone saying the game was anything less than perfect were honestly the main thing that put me off playing The Witness.
It's a tough line to walk because the moments of recontextualization in The Witness are so transcendent. If you haven't had them, the game seems pretty, but pedestrian. If you have had them then the game is a brilliant jewel worthy of proselytization, but you also don't want to spoil the very thing that made it so special in order for others to have that same experience. So you get defenses of the game that seem weirdly aggressive and unfounded because people simultaneously care a lot about the game and care a lot about preserving your experience if you do play it.
idk though, there are other games I have played with similar moments of recontextualization in them which don't seem to inspire the same defensiveness against even small criticisms. I finally beat Outer Wilds (base game only so far bc the DLC is hard) and it's one of my favorite games now, but I still have lots of criticisms of certain parts of the game that I think weren't perfect, and I've not seen remotely the same amount of defensiveness in that community when people make those criticisms. Whereas with The Witness I've absolutely seen people get super defensive against criticisms from people who clearly have had those moments of recontextualization but are criticizing the design of specific puzzles and the like.
I'm not being defensive so much as trying to understand the argument being made. Do you understand it? SloMoMonday themselves conveyed in their comment that they didn't get far into The Witness. I've seen The Looker, and while it's a fun enough experience that's obviously a style parody of The Witness, I'd be hard pressed to compare them in terms of gameplay.
In SloMoMonday's comment, The Witness is mentioned immediately after the argument about Blow's lack of community building and talent for making people angry. Mine follows directly from that--I'm arguing that The Witness has a fairly strong fanbase, which you yourself understand from your own comment. It was played by a lot of people and critically successful. It's not a good example of Blow's failure in this regard, although yes, I absolutely agree that Braid doesn't have the same kind of endurance.
My interpretation of "the argument being made" was that they just didn't enjoy the game. The actual reasons they gave were vague and hard to parse as someone who has themselves not played it, but I've seen much longer and more nuanced criticisms responded to in the same dismissive "you just don't get it way" -- including by Blow himself iirc, which I think plays into his talent for making people angry.
I know a lot of people talk about that moment of realisation but I personally did not find it.
I know some games take a long time to get going but like I said in the review I posted, it should be built up over time because I loss interest after several hours.
Theres also a real possibility that I missed it all together. Maybe playing it during Lockdown had me in the wrong head space. Maybe I had exceptionally high expectations from a puzzle/gameplay design. Maybe the frustrations and bugs I had just blinded me to them.
Oh, yeah. I can see how playing during lockdown would disrupt the headspace of calm exploration that would make it easy to discover. I'm sorry it didn't do it for you.
I personally love The Witness, but yeah, that's maybe not the best way to respond to criticism of it. I don't think it needs to be talked about like a "masterpiece that people don't understand" or whatever. For me, I just really enjoyed the atmosphere and visuals of the island, and thought the puzzles were well-designed. Nothing more, nothing less. It's not a transcendent or incredibly innovative game necessarily. There were some parts I wasn't as much of a fan of, like the audio logs and a few annoying puzzles, but the nice part about the game's design was I could just skip those parts without issue.
ehh, I play RPGs and that's just a Tuesday for us.
But it's a hard argument to have, because it's conflating quality with sales. An oddity here because no one here seems to be saying Braid wasn't a good title at its time and meanwhile Blow says the sales weren't satisfactory.
An appeal to popularity makes perfect sense if you're saying the game didn't sell well, because clearly a lot of people disagreed with their wallets. I don't like Fortnite but it'd be foolish for me to say "Fornite feels like a free parody game" (despite literally starting out as a pivot to a f2p riff on PUBG, but I digress.)
But that popularity appeal doesn't mean the game is quality, which is subjective to begin with. So there should be some criticism come up and taken into account. It feels more like 2 topics talking past each other whenever that conversation comes up.
okay yeah to be fair maybe the defensiveness of The Witness fans is only abnormal within the indie puzzle game space, lol, I wasn't really thinking of genres with more heated fandom wars lmao
Note: Started replying, got swamped and missed the bigger discussion. Will just post my original t
Reply before reading ahead and editing/replying.
Sorry if I made my opinion come across as a sweeping statement. The thing is, The Witness is a game that really didn't gel with me as much as I wanted it to. And I usually love puzzle games. Even tedious ones like Void Stranger and Bunburrows. So seeing how well reviewed and celebrated the game was, I went in expecting an innovative experience.
In my time with the Witness, I remember stopping at the swamp area after the castle and did quite a lot of puzzles to get there. The shack island, desert, quarry, woods, bridges and a few other areas. Appreciate the many iterations on maze puzzles and the mix of using the environment to conceptualize the canvas.
My big issue is outside of the main puzzles and more at the "meta" elements. These systems are usually discribed as finding deeper layers in a game that recontextualizes the entire experience.
[Note: in this case, recontextualize specifically means: changes the way you interact with the puzzels and opens up new solutions to previous problems. Not in how you interpret the narrative/fiction]
The meta systems i most enjoy is with continuous discovery of these elements hidden in plain sight. It's a way if rewarding intuition with deeper and more gameplay. The best examples I've seen is Baba is You where everything is a puzzle and Can of Wormholes has escalating meta puzzles that keeps you thinking bigger and bigger.
With the Witness, gameplay depth was implied but I never found it. Because you keep changing the maze rules in such a riged map, there's not much more that can be discovered beyond intended solutions. And the meta/environmental puzzles were simply manipulating the world and drawing a symbol from the pillars.
For all the cool little devices and areas, there's a few that lead nowhere and left me confused. Like its cleary communicated that a puzzle track leads to a laser but some just don't. So I'm mucking around trying to find something not there.
Eventually, i got frustrated whe I went looking for the deeper systems that I felt I'd missed. Because when theres a meta puzzle, its safe to assume everything is part of it. I listened to every audio track assuming that there is some hidden puzzle within. The texts and readings sounded lovely but not understanding the purpose and context made them frustrating to listen and re-listen to. Went down the rabbit hole of listing all of the logs in an area and finding connections. Just knowing the game needed to be made in a new engine had me thinking there was something really special to look out for.
Even watching a playthrough of the two endings doesn't exactly improve my opinion. Because that just confirms that the two under layers of gameplay are wafer thin.
I understand that many people have an appreciation for this game. I've had plenty of debates about it with friends. There's philosophical observations and the world is full of metaphors and layered meanings. But all I see is two very different experiences stitched together.
But the most agregious problem is that it just wasn't very enjoyable. It's satisfying to figure things out and progress. But there's no real moments if levity or fun for me. Real characters or even a motivation to push forward. Even just simple little jokes like in Monsters Expedition or the odd insane solutions/situations like the old point-click adventures would have been welcome..
I was always saddened that I physically cannot play Witness or Looker. Tried taking anti nausea medication then playing in max 5-10 min increments barely helped, and obviously some puzzles need more than 5-10 min to even find, and overall the immersion is impossible to achieve with these limitations.
So not all games can be everything to everyone.
Fans need to understand that for every 9 people who love the audio logs, there's of course going to be one who doesn't, and that that's okay. The Witness is an incredible game that not everyone loves.n
Do those games have FOV settings? My nausea when playing some first-person games is very affected by having a narrow FOV so I've found increasing it can eliminate the problem in some games. But I suppose, given the type of puzzles in those games, changing the FOV could potentially interfere with them.
I'm not sure I looked too carefully :( sadly, first person anything's have all been out of reach since I developed mad motion sickness a dozen years ago. Kind of categorically gave up on fine tuning and adjustments after a few years
Oof, that sucks but I can totally understand based on what I've felt -- even my much more limited queasiness makes it hard to play.
Yeah, it's tough. It's like trying to force myself to finish a really nice meal, to enjoy its arrangement and layers and delicacy, to experience something nice in a limited capacity, but only intellectually because meanwhile my body is having a mild allergic reaction and I can't actually smell or taste the food beyond occasional moments. It's still worth it sometimes, I played through half of Portal this way and listened to my spouse play the rest and it was a wonderful experience. But it's not really the same :);
That's too bad. I didn't buy it, because I was never the biggest Braid superfan, but I do recognize its place in the annals of gaming history. Braid helped define what an indie game was, and proved it was possible to be an indie dev as a career. I suppose its commercial failing today shows how much that market has evolved in the last fifteen years or so.
Despite being brusque at times, I respect Blow a lot as a games designer. I think he has a lot of great ideas and I'd like for him to continue being able to explore them. I hope he finds a way to raise some capital that allows him and his team to continue working on their current projects.
Remasters are often touted as "easy money", but I notice they don't seem to do very well for indie games. Teslagrad Remastered released last year and only has 83 reviews on Steam. Treasure Adventure World, a ground-up remake of the freeware title Treasure Adventure Game, spent seven years in development and yet nobody has heard of it today. The dev ended up needing to get a real job, and their social media presence has essentially disappeared.
It's a tough situation. The bar on game quality is constantly being raised, and development becomes more costly every single year. More than that, you're no longer just competing for money but for gamers' attention. Why would someone check out your interesting new indie game when five of the hottest live services games are all releasing new "seasons" this week? It feels like there's not enough room for everyone, and a lot of talented indies are simply being squeezed out. It's a little sad to think about how much creative output we are losing out on from those who couldn't keep up.
I'll wager that remakes/masters work for two reasons and two reasons alone: Nostalgia and scope.
You want to see that game from your childhood as graphically complete as you pictured it and it only works when the game is large enough for it to warrant an update. Indie games fit neither. The former with time, the latter perhaps never.
With indie games, it's simply that I am perfectly satisfied with how the originals looked. I do not need a remaster.
It turns out that 2D games don't age as poorly as 3D ones, and even 3D ones stopped aging nearly as poorly since 2010 or so.
And Braid is so pretty too!
I'm not so sure about the 2010 threshold, actually. Depending on how they're textured and shaded, I find "old" 3D to be a bit of a turn off, even if it's "not that old". The best way to make 3D age well is to give it a clearly stylized design, such as "cel shading".
Oh I agree, having a unique style will do far more than shooting for realism.
But before 2000 especially, adjustable resolutions with both widescreen and fullscreen support were a rarity, at least by 2010ish that particular nastiness aged out which makes games as a whole age better.
This remaster came with 40 new puzzles though, no? I feel I'd want to rebuy a game that is basically an expansion if I liked it at base.
I suppose it depends on if your favorite thing about Braid was the story (which didn't change) or the puzzles.
that's part of the downside of PC vs consoles (or upside for consumers). Tech advances in consoles and you make a new generation. You get to remaster your game and sell it again to audiences who want it on new hardware. Sometimes it's backwards compatible, and you justify that with extra content or a bigger graphical touch-up (e.g. Insomniac's Spider Man).
PC's, they are still running Windows today, just like in 2010 and 2000's. There's some 30 years of backwards compatibility so you can't really resell that same experience as easily.
This was also something Sonic seemed to have stumbled on, as another example: I think Sonic Origins was a bit overhated, but passionate sonic fans have broken down the classic games to its atoms and made a version you can mod with nearly any feature you wish. This isn't something a company even has the jurisdiction to do compared to some scrappy modders (e.g. the licensing on Sonic 3's music).
the 10 most played games in 2024 come from 2016 or earlier. It's not even new subscriptions, a lot of gamers just settled on what they have and keep that running for years. new PC/console games in a way have less an audience despite more gamers than ever.
Trying to resell a game that anyone interested in playing already has seems like a bad idea to me. I'm not sure how they thought it would be a huge success. Just make a new game or if you want to be lazy a sequel, folks would probably go nuts for a sequel to braid.
I don't think the Braid remake is a particularly lazy one. It is completely repainted, has new puzzles, a new jigsaw, etc. The real downside I see is that it honestly doesn't really look better than the original at 4K. I'm honestly surprised about it, because it must have taken a lot of time and effort to repaint everything. While there are new details in the images, it mostly just looks slightly sharper, and I'm not even sure that fits the aesthetic of the game better. But it sort of feels like if someone repainted a Monet on their iPad.
This isn't like playing Banjo-Kazooie on the N64 vs the Xbox One X where you go from 320x240 under 30fps to potentially 4k at 30fps with modern texture filtering and anti-aliasing. Or better yet like the Zelda Ocarina of Time PC port Ship of Harkinian.
Maybe he shouldn't have spent the past 4 years being completely insufferable about every hot-button topic out there (instead of before, when he was only insufferable about programming)
That probably ate some of the good will release like this would have benefited from. I stopped following him because I just couldn't take it.
While I was somewhat interested in this rerelease, I didn't really feel the need to replay this game again or own it again. And if I did, I still own the original.