Kept my busy all evening, because it is very fun. So I will have a more involved post in the next couple of days about, you guessed it, Rock Band 2!
But in brief I do want to draw your attention to Braid. The child of Jonathan Blow, this is truly an epic platform game. While Blow had some help from other sources for the art (and I assume sound), the incredibly basic game play mechanic of controlling time has never been so fully realized. Imagine the new Prince of Persia games, except now you really do control all of time. You can rewind back to the very moment that you entered the level, or if you miss a jump, rewind to the to before you feet left the ground. You never die, and you never have to worry about saves.
But the game is still incredibly challenging. Some of the puzzles are complete mind benders, and require a good ten minutes of sitting and mentally running through all your options until you get the proper set of moves to accomplish the goal. One of the neatest things, however, is that there are puzzles within the puzzles. You have the over arching story that allows you to really, truly relate to the characters, but throughout each level you battle puzzles to get...puzzle pieces. These can be put together to form 3x3 and 3x4 puzzle images that help deepen the narrative.
Blow did have to sink approximately 180,000 dollars into this project according to Wikipedia. That is a wee bit more than I am willing to put down right now for any kind of game. However, within the first week, Braid sold approximately 55,000 copies. At 15 dollars per copy we are talking about *busts out the start->run->calc* 850,000 dollars. Now I am not sure how much of that Microsoft gets to keep. Lets be super generous to them and say they get two thirds, so that leaves Mr. Blow with 275,000 dollars. Damn. And that was only the first week of sales. So to say that Braid paid off I think would be a bit of an understatement.
So I did not plan to write this much tonight. Rock Band 2 will come on full force next week!
-Matt
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2 comments:
I have to say, I really like the art style of Braid, it looks really cool. I may have to go make my first purchase on XBoxLive Arcade.
Time control has shown up in a few games, such as the Blinx, Timeshift, and as you mentioned Prince of Persia, but these where by no means pure puzzle games. I'm curious to see how time as a core mechanic has been realized in Braid, instead of just as a gimmick or twist on game play.
And hey, $180,000 is a drop in the bucket for some of the games being produced today.
I just came across a Gamasutra interview with Johnathan Blow that you might be interested in: Gamasutra interview.
It not only covers how Braid came into existence, but Blow also explains his stance on WoW being an "unethical" game and his views on the new XBOX Live Arcade deal for game makers. Long (6 pages), but I found it well worth the read.
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