"The meaning of life in [World of Warcraft] is you’re some schmo that doesn’t have anything better to do than sit around pressing a button and killing imaginary monsters," he explained. "It doesn’t matter if you’re smart or how adept you are, it’s just how much time you sink in. You don’t need to do anything exceptional, you just need to run the treadmill like everyone else." - Jonathan Blow.
Jonathan Blow is the creator the game Braid. As a reaction to the games like the one he described above, he created a game like Braid. I'll admit I've never played World of Warcraft, the game itself seems like the polar opposite of WoW.
It's a basic, one player 2-D platform game about time, relationships, lying to ourselves, and the atom bomb's creation (I think) that takes a couple hours to finish (I haven't yet). But it is probably the most aesthetically pleasing, most cerebral game I've ever played.
Some of the prettiest, most mournful music you'll ever hear in a video game, too.
Just check out the video below, if you ever had a desire to play the game on PC or XBox Live, just watch trailer for the game below. Don't watch too many videos on youtube because you'll spoil a lot of puzzles:
Braid trailer from David Hellman on Vimeo.
The art design is based on the work of David Hellman. He is also the artist behind A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage is Irreversible (written by Dale Beran). And like Braid it's pretty surreal. Also funny and poignant, too. Like the strip below:
It's all kinds of awesome. Sometimes it lapses into cheeky irony land. Most of the time, it's beautiful and trippy. Shame its been on hiatus since 2006. Check it out.
