The time-twisting adventures of Tim will be taking the trip to the North American PlayStation Network on November 12th courtesy of Hothead Games, with a European release coming at a later date. Press, players, and rap artists alike have heaped praise on Blow's innovative platformer, both for its unique gameplay and its distinctive hand-painted look. If for some reason you've not heard about Braid until this very moment, welcome to Kotaku, and visit the game's official website to find out more about the title everyone was talking about while you were trapped in that cave.

The developer recently began hiring for The Witness, described in job listings as "philosophical and quiet" and placing "a heavy emphasis on the way things look." That look will take sometime to nail down, apparently, as the game is slated for a release in "late 2011." That's a "hopefully" late 2011, according to the game's official, currently minimal web site.

The only other nugget of information offered to the desperate to pick at is a snippet from the Tao Te Ching, which serves as a poor fact sheet.

Like Braid, The Witness is planned for release on multiple platforms, "whatever makes sense in late 2011," according to the official description.

The Witness [Official Site via the Braid blog]

The confirmation comes courtesy of a representative from publisher Hothead Games, who told IGN that the game is indeed coming to the North American and PAL PlayStation Stores. What they didn't tell IGN, however, was a price point or release date, so for now, just know that Braid is coming to the PSN sometime...in...the future....

Confirmed: Braid Coming To PSN [Update] [IGN]

The unnamed, unannounced title is described as a "puzzle-exploration game that is philosophical, and quiet" in listings for 3D Environment Concept Artist and Lead Artist positions. The game is further described as placing "a heavy emphasis on the way things look" and candidates are further wooed by noting that the job will be "a refreshing project for those who value nuance."

The job listings, posted yesterday, estimate that the project will have a 2-year development cycle.

According to further job details, what the game is unlikely to feature are girls with big tits, barbarians wielding axes, aliens, space shapes, gangsters getting shot in the face, orcs, giant robots and post-apocalyptic wastelands. Huh? How is this even a game anymore?

It makes no sense! Braid was alright though, so maybe we'll find a way to cope without all that other business.

Braid News [Official Site via Endsights]

Calling the zeal for innovation in games an idea he used to promote but now considers "a little bit misdirected," Braid designer Jonathan Blow recently described a possibly superior design goal:

In a recent interview with The Independent Gaming Source, he said:

"I think gameplay innovation can result in things that are interesting, but at the same time it doesn't automatically result in something that is deep-often it's a gimmick. I am interested in deepness and richness of game design. You can get that with deliberate innovation or without; I think the issues are orthogonal. At the same time, I think if a designer is working on something he really cares about, and is really exploring some ideas in his own style, bringing his own particular insight to the table, then he will automatically come up with something different than most other games; furthermore, this will be a deeper, more-compelling kind of innovation.

There's plenty more on that idea — including specifics — from the ever-interesting Blow in the interview. Also in the full piece are details about some scuttled ideas that were once planned for Braid.

TIGInterview: Jonathan Blow

Says Blow, on the official Braid Blog:

The delay is just to fix some problems that came up in testing with various versions of Windows.

Also, we have a special surprise planned concerning the music in Braid.

So, sorry for the delay, I know folks have been waiting a long time for the PC version and it's not so great to have to wait an extra 10 days, but it's only so that I can try to ship you guys a version that works well (which frankly is impossible in Windows, but the best I can do is make it work for most people most of the time).

When it does roll out, you'll get it through Steam and download services Greenhouse, Impulse and GamersGate. And, "If I have some more time to do the appropriate discussions, it may appear in one or two other places," Blow says.

Braid Release Slightly Delayed [Braid-game.com via Joystiq]

Hothead Games, the developers behind the Penny Arcade Adventures series, is teaming up with other indie developers to help bring their games to new platforms so they can focus on development. They'll be helping Jonathan Blow bring Braid to Mac users, while delivering Twisted Pixel's Xbox Live Arcade title The Maw to Windows PCs.

"We focus on finding new distribution opportunities so that they can focus on what they do best: developing their next great game," said Hothead Games COO Joel DeYoung. "These two titles represent only the tip of the iceberg. We're committed to working with indies and helping them be successful, so look for lots more announcements to come."

This is an excellent example of the kind of comraderie you find among independent developers. Let's hear it for the little guys!

Worried that the $19.95 price point for the PC version of the popular and innovative Xbox Live Arcade title Braid would keep PC gamers from purchasing the title upon it's release next month, Blow quickly leapt into action, explaining that attracting new players was more important than money at this point.

I don't care that much about the PC release price. The XBLA version was nicely profitable, and my goal with the PC release is mainly to get the game out to a wider audience. Sure, it would be nice to earn the optimal amount of money from that release - I have interesting ideas for games that I want to make in the future, and making games is very expensive, and I will probably have to hire people to help! But ultimately, I would rather have people talking about the game itself, what they like and dislike about it, than about how many American Fiat Currency Dollars it costs.

While I believe Braid is worth every penny of the original price, I suppose it's nice of Blow to give PC gamers a little break. Perhaps they'll pay him back in kind by buying the game in enormous quantities.

Meanwhile, Stardock has announced that they will be honoring the lowered price point, with anyone who preordered the game at $19.95 only being charged the reduced $14.95 price. Good for them!

Braid for the PC is now $15. [Braid]

The game will be released on Impulse, the digital download shopfront of Stardock, who in turn are the publishers of Sins of a Solar Empire. So your money would be going to all kinds of good causes.

If it helps, we loved it. It'll be out on March 31 (though you can preorder now), and will cost $20.

Braid [Impulse]

"My newest game I started is looking very promising. I'm very excited to do it. But if the patterns of history continue, then I may not be working on it a month from now, so I don't want to start telling people about it," he said. While he said it's a 2D role-playing game, it sounds like his project schedule can get turned on its head at any time, and he'd ending building "a Pac-Man clone or something." Yes, but it would certainly be the most critically acclaimed Pac-Man clone or something, that's for sure.

Jonathan Blow: The Next Phase [Gamasutra via Xbox 360 Fanboy]

Time Out of Mind [WSJ, via GameSetWatch]

Does that mean that the segment of the population who has parked their Learjets long enough to complete the download have made the game a profit? Not quite.

Jonathan Blow, the game's creator, says Braid needs to reach sales of exactly "a lot more than it has gotten so far" to get out of the red. Let's hope the rest of the Xbox Live community, the type who don't sport platinum cards and massive trust funds, will be able to dig deep and snatch up what Blow says is "the highest-rated XBLA game ever." See? He says it right down there.

Braid is the highest-rated XBLA game ever. (Also, sales data). [Braid Blog]

Braid had already appeared at two GDCs before I ever got involved. Jonathan Blow, its creator, showed Braid's time manipulation puzzle-platformer gameplay at a couple Experimental Gameplay Workshops, and an Independent Games Festival, where it won an award for game design. Minus some polish, it was nearly a finished game: playable, coherent and individualistic.

Visually, though, it was primitive. Its blocks, spikes and ladders were utilitarian, communicating merely the elements of platformer-ness. It could have remained a visually simple game, but it already contained hints that it wanted to be more, to express itself across the full multi-media palette available to video games.

... Hired as visual artist in the summer of 2006, my challenge was not only to clearly present Braid's mechanics and behaviors, but to help tell a story that was anything but literal: part anecdote, part artifice, part philosophy.

It's an interesting article even if you're not terribly interested in Braid, as it goes through the art creation step by step with lots of screens. It's an edifying little essay.

The Art Of Braid: Creating A Visual Identity For An Unusual Game [Gamasutra]

Jonathan Blow, creator of Braid, explains why it was priced so, commenting on the official Braid blog he had to "guard against [...] the Space Giraffe problem." He offers up the low priced, low selling (just 19,000 downloads) psychedelic shooter as an example of how pricing came back to bite the developer in the ass (specifically the wallet).

He writes that Space Giraffe for XBLA already had a built-in audience of Jeff Minter followers, something Braid does not.

"There is a significant possibility that Braid would have been the next Psychonauts or Beyond Good and Evil (critically acclaimed but nobody played it)," Blow contends "Even at $10."

He later puts the cost into more tangible terms, commenting that "If it were just a matter of my own money, I wouldn’t care so much, but I ran out of money while developing Braid and had to borrow a lot — so I owe people a lot of money. That makes the nature of the decision a little different."

That decision, it sounds like, may not have been entirely Blow's to make. He theorizes that Microsoft would have priced the title at 1200 MS Points regardless of his wishes to go lower.

I'll be buying the game when it's released on Xbox Live Marketplace early tomorrow morning, despite having free access to it right now. I would recommend you do the same. But only if you like awesome games with a great sense of humor, fantastic gameplay mechanics and stunning artwork.

Recent Braid Review and Preview [Braid Blog - thanks, Mike!]

Now we just have to wait a couple more weeks to see if the Castle Crashers price tag was wrong yet actually right as well.

Summer of Arcade: Braid - XBLA - Wednesday [Gamerscore Blog]

I started fumbling my way through instead of actually understanding the exact solution and executing it flawlessly. I beat the boss at the end of the branching-paths level but I'm still not sure how I did it. This again reminds me of taking a math exam and writing down some random number because I kind of figured that was the answer, but couldn't crisply explain it. There are plenty of games that you can win just by randomly mashing buttons - say, any number of fighting games - and everyone's played an adventure game where you combine the plunger with the rubber ducky and the shoelace and somehow manage to fish the key out of the grate, but the only reason you threw all that crap together is that it was the only stuff left in your inventory.

That said, Braid has little tolerance for half-assedry.

I personally didn't find it maddening, since there's no penalty for screwing up and it's pretty easy to hop back and forth between levels if you find yourself hideously stuck (sometimes it's better to just come back later). The experimentation was what made the game fun for me; if I couldn't 'crisply' explain how I did something, did it really matter? I've come through more than one boss battle or game level on little more than luck and just managing to survive; since Braid doesn't have a death penalty, 'managing to survive' isn't a concern, and that luck can lead to happy accidents that will allow you to understand exactly how to manipulate the controls.

Braid: More Fun Than Calculus! [Save the Robot]

Developer Jonathan Blow may be an annoyingly pretentious loudmouth, but this video for his upcoming Xbox Live Arcade game Braid shows that he at least has some idea about making an intriguing game. The game revolves around manipulating time, with time behaving differently on different levels. It looks like a rather interesting mechanic, and the obvious homage to a certain famous plumber gives it a silly sort of charm. As long as playing the game doesn't involve me having to actually listen to Blow talking I think I might be sold.

The way you've formed the question is the way I think a lot of principled indies approach it — "I want to have integrity, but I also need to get my game out there so people will buy it." This is sort of true, but I think this way of looking at things inherently causes problems. Making money is hard sometimes, and if you convince yourself that you need to make money (in order to eat, or fund the next game, or whatever), then you are automatically on a slippery slope and will start justifying all sorts of things, and eventually you are far from your original ideals but that doesn't seem too bad because you "just had to be realistic".

Do people sometimes go in directions they might not otherwise because they have silly things like food to worry about? Sure. But 'automatically on a slippery slope'? Give me a break. God forbid people should want their job to at least provide basic necessities — how un-indie of them! However, I wasn't really irked until I read his take on Passage, even though he managed to throw the designer a bone after seemingly missing the whole point. It's an interesting interview to read through, even if it did make me hopping mad at points.

Jonathan Blow Says 'Fuck That!' [Gamehelper]

Blow attacks World of Warcraft, describing the grind of leveling and the reward system inherent in that as "lying to the players", and even suggests that designers should be ashamed of exploiting illusory level-based mechanics. He argues that games are, like film and literature, becoming a powerful medium in which creators will be able to make choices they can be ashamed of. He wonders whether games as they are currently executed could lead to a "societal problem". Gasps and nervous laughter rises from the audience as Blow delivers his ideas, an audience which reportedly included uncomfortable-looking reps from Blizzard ....

There's more, of course (including going after the 'moral dilemma' of the Little Sisters in Bioshock that has been much discussed), but if it sounds interesting, you can head over to the Braid blog and snag the files.