In a sense, Jonathan Blow’s indie gem is storyless, and leaves us to extract whatever story we glean from playing it.

Braid, the first downloadable console game by indie designer Jonathan Blow, has only been available on Xbox Live Arcade for slightly over a week. For a debut release from a relative unknown, it’s sparked a surprising level of discussion in the game world so far. Game critics have unanimously praised Braid, and sales have been strong for a small-budget project, all chronicled by Blow on his game blog. Message board chatterers have done what they do best, complaining either that its $15 price is too high for a short download title, or that the game and its maker are full of themselves. Other notables have come to its defense, calling it a unique addition to the medium. All of this over a seemingly simple 2D platforming game that a good puzzle-solver could finish in a single afternoon.

If Braid’s only aspirations were to be an original twist on the classic running, jumping, and collecting formula, it would still be a solid entry into this summer’s catalog. The mechanics are great fun to play with. Its art style –provided by talented comic artist David Hellman — gives the game a beautiful texture and a wistful, dreamy quality games don’t often have. Even the musical score avoids the usual game clichés in favor of leisurely classical arrangements, which are more Shakespearian drama than Mario jingle. It all adds up to an enjoyable and entertaining, if somewhat brief, little game.

But as Blow has made abundantly clear in lectures, interviews, even a steady online presence through comments on his and other blogs — a habit that’s earned him a mixed bag of respect, raised eyebrows, and accusations of arrogance — he set out to make a game that’s more than just a little piece of amusement.

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According to his idea of good design, a game is more meaningful when all its elements work together to explore the central theme it’s built around. Most games simply use accepted game mechanics — running and jumping, running and fighting, or running and shooting; take your pick — and try to impose meaning on the experience with a story that happens between the player interactions. It may be cathartic to bash your way through God of War, for example, but remove the cinematic scenes and the game loses any sense of the tragic side of its anti-hero, Kratos. In this case, though the game is loved and widely accepted as great, the theme of revenge is served up to you through the story, not the game structure itself.

What Blow says he wanted to accomplish with Braid was a game in which the structure, aesthetic, and story elements combine to be greater than the sum of the parts, instead of arbitrarily combined or even set in opposition. In his game the visuals and sounds are nostalgic. The game challenges involve going backward and forward through time to solve problems or erase mistakes. The story segments that are provided, in the form of readable books and pieced-together paintings, deal with fond memories or bad decisions and the joys or regrets that result. Each element weaves together with obvious intent, and all support the game’s central themes of the passage of time and our inability to change the past.

Or at least that’s one way to look at it. The real accomplishment of Braid is that the whole story isn’t spelled out in heavy-handed, literal ways through dialogue or cinematics. Story isn’t even the right word, because you aren’t constructing a solid narrative from fragments you uncover. Instead of ideas served up to the player between levels, Braid allows the player to explore those ideas throughout. By constructing a game in which all elements contribute meaning, each element remains open to interpretation, or not, as the player sees fit. In a sense, the game itself is storyless, and leaves us to extract whatever story we glean from playing it.

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One could enjoy the game strictly for its puzzle challenges, which are smart. Or read the books, examine the paintings, and consider the ending, then reflect on the failed romance of the main character Tim — whose name can’t be coincidentally close to time. These written sections are the closest the game has to story, but are more like ruminations than narration. This is where detractors have pointed for evidence of pretentiousness, as if simply acknowledging the existence of emotions or speaking honestly of sadness in a game is too much for a cynical gamer to be forced to bear. Granted, the prose isn’t Hemingway, but if we can love the cheesiness of Resident Evil, Final Fantasy, or Soul Calibur voice overs, can’t we also love the sentimentality of Braid?

For those who want to analyze every bit, there’s plenty more to ponder as well. In some stages, there are things which can’t be stopped once they start in motion, despite your rewinding abilities; some things in life are inevitable. Later in the game, there are platforms that once you cross, you can’t go back to where you were before; some of our actions can’t be taken back. There are dozens more touches like this that all point back to the idea of time and can be taken how you like. There are even players who have read much, much further into some of the game’s ending passages, and interpreted the entire game as an allegory about the development of atomic energy and weaponry.

Here, in a rare bout of shyness from Blow, he responds to questions about the ‘right’ interpretation with:

I’m glad you like the game!

I have been reading through the various threads people have going; but I want to stay out of commenting on what the game is “about”. That’s not my role!

-J.

All over, people are finding different ways to grasp the game’s meaning, and finding new little details that support their theories. Compare this to most games, where the hidden secrets are collectible statues or extra-powerful weapons which only add to the method of your play, not the effect it has on you afterward.

Add to this the fact that as a short, simple game, it benefits from the fact that all its excited fans were able to download and play through it in a reasonable amount of time, and in the same window of others who would want to have these kind of discussions afterward about their experience. It’s an argument that length does not equal value when talking about quality expressions of ideas, and addresses the falsity that some sort of dollar per minute ratio must be maintained to be worth including in your gaming budget. The game was as long as it needed to be to accomplish what it wanted, and did it admirably.

Which is the main reason a simple game like Braid can end up, if not one of the best, most exciting games of the year, then at least one of the most important. Too few games offer what great films, paintings, novels, or poems do, in rewarding a closer reading of the text — the various interpretations giving a work life beyond the time it takes to read, watch, or play it. It’s a fantastic demonstration that fun does not have to come at the expense of meaning, and that good art, including games, doesn’t necessarily answer questions, but raises them.

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Further notes:

For some serious inside-gaming talk on ‘avoiding conflicted game design’ (some of which I referenced above), check out an enlightening lecture Jonathan Blow gave as a keynote at a recent conference, posted to his Braid blog.

Or if you want the reader’s digest version, Game Set Watch has an excellent overview of the speech, including the examples he used to make his point.

Giant Bomb’s video review gives a nice, fair, less uppity take on the game if after reading this it sounds a little too artsy for you (they assure you it’s not).

Shawn Elliott at 1up also wrote a realistic, less glowing, but ultimately admiring review as well that points out some valid faults as well as victories in the game.