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Braid: Anniversary Edition "sold like dog s***", says creator Jonathan Blow

https://www.eurogamer.net/braid-anniversary-edition-sold-like-dog-s-says-creator-jonathan-blow

Braid: Anniversary Edition has "sold like dog shit", according to its creator Jonathan Blow. Blow regularly streams on …

Finally, on 27th July, Blow noted the "whole industry is having a hard time" and then, when asked how many of his development team are working on the compiler for programming language Jai, Blow replied: "None, because we can't afford to pay anyone because the sales are bad."

Oof. I don't like Jon Blow, but I do like Braid. Sad to see nobody really cares about it anymore.

40 comments

ampersandrew

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Or the people who care about it already have it. It doesn't have archaic controls or graphics or whatnot, so the need to buy a new version is way lower than the likes of a Resident Evil remake.

BombOmOm

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Yep! I would be much more interested in a Braid 2 rather than a remake of a game I already own and enjoy. I actually didn't realize until writing this comment that Braid Anniversary Edition even had more puzzles than the original.

spinguin

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He should have called it "Braid+" or "Braid 1.5" or something. "Anniversary Edition" makes it sound like I'm just going to pay to replay the same puzzles I already figured out a decade ago but with minor cosmetic changes. Forty new levels is fairly substantial.

Edit: Never mind: https://lemmy.sdf.org/comment/13251037

Carighan

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Exactly. I own it four times in fact!

linkinkampf19

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Braid was a solid game all its own, and a remaster certainly wasn't needed (yet or at all). The Witness was freaking phenomenal, and I hope there will be other iterations of games like it to come. Blow can go blow away though. He's an anti-vaxxer and Covid conspiracy theorist, and that is something I can write off as anyone worth acknowledging. Plenty of other amazing games in the sea.

ReallyActuallyFrankenstein

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I appreciate letting me know about the anti-vaxxer conspiracy stuff. Makes me feel better about never finishing The Witness (not because I didn't enjoy it, but because whatever filters were on there, it made me cripplingly motion sick for hours every time I played it).

linkinkampf19

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I never finished The Witness either, but I kinda wished I would have, as the philosophical nature and puzzles were both very engrossing, such a unique take on the "walking simulator" style of game. Granted, it was much more than that, and I'd actually compare it closer to Myst and Obduction than such. The puzzles were repetitive but just incentive enough to be engaging and twisted in just the right way, though they got devilishly difficult later on. Sucks about the motion sickness though. Wonder if there was an .ini swing which could've turned the filter off?

Though, all in all, this was definitely a difficult "separate the art from the artist" scenario.

ReallyActuallyFrankenstein

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Yeah, I had the same reaction - The puzzles were definitely "learn how to think a new way," my favorite kind. I ended my play on one perspective-shifting pattern puzzle that I was so close to beating, so I kept pushing myself through the motion sickness, and just ended up disabled on the bed feeling ill and unable to move for two hours (without completing the puzzle).

I tried a bunch of things - permanent reticle in center of screen, disabling walk shake, etc. I still play high-motion FPS shooters with no issue. It's just some games (The Forest was another). I am guessing it's a middleware-introduced visual filter that adds 15-25ms delay to screen latency, just enough to mess with inner ear visual/motion sync in sensitive people.

I_Clean_Here

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What was the business case for doing a remaster of Braid? Either terrible market research or this was super cheap to make.

magic_lobster_party

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I believe it was a desperate attempt to get a new source of revenue. His upcoming Sokoban game is taking forever to make, so it’s not going to bring them any new revenue anytime soon. In large part because he made the arcane decision to create a new programming language for it (as a replacement for C++), because apparently Sokoban is the type of game where you really need that high performance.

Matty_r

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Sometimes writing the game engine is just more fun than making the game itself, ok...

magic_lobster_party

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Yes that can be true, but fun doesn’t pay the bills.

Nibodhika

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Yes, but read that again, he's making a new language, not a new engine.... To put it in terms of food, using things like Unity is equivalent to eating industrialized food, you have absolutely no control and you get what you get; Using other engines like Unreal or Godot that have open source is like cooking at home, some work but you can get it just the way you like; Building an engine yourself is like having a little farm in your backyard and doing everything from start to finish, it's slow, you'll face problems that have nothing to do with cooking that were handled by the farmers before and at the end you'll get something only slightly better than what you could using store bought products; Building a language from scratch is the personification of the saying "to make an apple pie from scratch first you have to invent the universe".

And you know the worst part? It won't be any faster or better in any mensurable way, large groups of developers spend decades to develop the languages we have today.

ampersandrew

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I think his use case is that the new language allows for more rapid iteration in development. Years ago now, I saw his demo of the language, and it compiled so quickly that it may as well have been done by the time he pressed Enter. For all the gains he got from that, it still hasn't helped him release a game by now, but I do see the problem he's trying to solve, and I do think it's worth solving.

magic_lobster_party

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Faster compilation is probably nice, but making a new language with all its tooling from scratch is a huge endeavor. Props to him for actually doing it.

The problem is that all this work takes away time from the actual game development. I’m not sure about the scope of his next game, but from what I’ve seen I don’t really understand why his Sokoban adventure game can’t be made in Unity. I don’t think he’s pushing any hardware limits with it.

Unity also got hot reloading nowadays, which is about as fast iteration you can get.

I’m just armchair guessing, but I believe he would’ve been done with his game by now if he just used Unity.

ampersandrew

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Hollow Knight: Silksong is a Unity game, last I checked, and it's not getting done any faster. As per The Witness, it's probably far more about how he's retooling puzzles rather than his language, if I had to guess. Plus, it's not just iterating within the editor; this thing exported a build in well under a second. I worked on a Unity game a few years ago, and it definitely took me far longer than that. It even had a bug for a bit there where we couldn't see the game when run via the editor on Linux, so the only way we could test it was by exporting a build until we got an update to Unity.

magic_lobster_party

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Fair point.

Time will tell when Sokoban and Silksong releases. It’s hard to know what’s happening internally at the studios and why it’s taking so long.

Making an entire programming language is a bold move, and I’m skeptical it’s a move that’s going to pay off.

chonglibloodsport

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A pretty terrible one. Remasters are for games that are high on replay value and deeply nostalgic. Braid was cool and innovative and I enjoyed it when I played through it the first (and only) time, but I have no desire to play it again.

theterrasque

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"braid made us money. We like money. Braid stopped giving us money. We want more money"

overload

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I was going to buy braid, but the original was delisted and the anniversary edition is 10x the price on sale. Will have to wait a few years for it to fall into 80% territory again.

Angry_Autist

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Or you can just pirate it and choose not to support an anti-vaxxer

overload

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I didn't know that about the creator. I'm fairly anti piracy when it comes to indie games, even if I don't agree with the devs views. I still hope he gets it and has a bad time with COVID if that is the case though.

wccrawford

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I liked Braid, but I liked his other games since then a lot more. Put out Witness 2 and I'm all over it.

OTOH, put out a graphical upgrade and a couple new puzzles for Witness and try to charge full price again, and I wouldn't bother.

Edit: Wait, Braid Anniversary didn't even include new levels? No wonder it didn't sell! All it has is a documentary track and some visuals.

Aielman15

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Edit: Wait, Braid Anniversary didn't even include new levels? No wonder it didn't sell! All it has is a documentary track and some visuals.

"Braid: Anniversary Edition launched in May and adds 40 new levels, as well as over 15 hours of commentary"

From the article.

bread

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From a Steam review:

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.

wccrawford

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I looked on the Steam page and didn't see that, but I thought I remembered it from launch. Perhaps I was just tired and missed it, but I think they didn't do a good enough job calling it out.

silverchase

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Put out Witness 2 and I'm all over it.

If you liked the puzzle design style of the Witness, check out Taiji. It uses a similar open-ended structure that leaves puzzle rules for you to discover on your own.

wccrawford

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That does look good. Thanks!

MeatStiq

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I already own the OG on steam. If I want to play it, I will. But I don't. Because it's fuckin boring. Always has been.

hal_5700X

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No one wants to buy the same game again. Who saw that one coming?

rozodru

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Permanently Deleted

catalyst

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Yeaaah, kinda seems like people just didn’t want a remastered Braid.

jay

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I have to imagine that his really terrible takes have something to do with that.

Rayspekt

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Do you have some examples?

jay

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Some COVID stuff, some women in programming stuff. Probably more that I'm not even aware of since I stopped paying attention.

KingThrillgore

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First off I didnt know Braid was remastered until now and secondly Jonathan is an anti vaxxer which means I'm not gonna give you any money.

And I thought Braid wasn't very engaging when I first played it ages ago so I'm not really interested now. Apparently Jonathan has been spending his free time working on a programming language that isn't public yet (for a while now) and just talking a lot of shit on X/Twitter.

Katana314

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Unfortunately, I feel like only console developers that long ago released their games for arcane bi-flagonal deprucified CPUs get to put out expensive anniversary editions. Everyone who owns Steam copies can still run it just fine.

(Yes, those words are made up)

HKayn

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I would have bought it if it landed on GOG, like the original did.

ArmokGoB

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Missed his chance to Blow

curiousaur

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What do you want us to do? Buy it again?

ekZepp

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Are you telling me that this late 90's game priced 19,50 won't sell as well as a modern indie game sold for less???...

...shocking