I would play Braid just for the soundtrack, which is perhaps the loveliest thing about the game. I’m not usually all that taken with vieo game soundtracks, and those that I do enjoy tend to be sparse. Braid’s music is lush, full of mournful strings.

I’d also play Braid just to admire its painterly style world. There’s something about glowing forests, orange and rain-spattered, that makes time-manipulation puzzles even more fun. I love the three-dimensional illusion in a side-scrolling two-dimensional world.

I’ll be writing about all the games in the Humble Indie Bundle V and Braid seemed like a natural choice to kick things off with. After just a few hours I’m very impressed.

The time puzzles are fascinating, and so far remain refreshingly unique and challenging. Indeed, take away the lush soundtrack and the gorgeous painterly graphics, and I’d play this game still just for its puzzles.

I’ll post more as I play through the game. I want to see where it goes, both with its text-based story and its puzzles. The first time a dinosaur emerged from a castle to stand under its waving flag and inform me that the princess was in another castle, I laughed outloud.

It’s basically a love letter to Super Mario Bros. Or a not-so-subtle illustration of just how much more can be done with video games now that we understand them so much better than we could back in the day.

The indie title from Number None is available on PC, Mac, and Linux, as well as Xbox Live.

~

I’m also starting up Red Dead Redemption, Fallout: New Vegas, continuing The Witcher 2 (which I set aside for a while when Diablo III and Dragon’s Dogma came out.) I have a Max Payne 3 review in the cooker, and more musings on Dragon’s Dogma (which, by the way, has worn a little thin with time I’m sad to report.)

On top of that, I have a bunch more indie titles from the Humble Bundle, and I need to get further into Mount Blade: Warband (which is a truly great game, by the way) and Crusader Kings II, and a handful of other PC titles that I’ve been itching to get into (including some old Star Wars games.)