This was originally posted on a blog a friend and I run called The Kids' Table. Check out more here.
Braid was released for the PC a little while back. I bought it on Steam about a minute after it became available, because I have wanted to own it since I played the demo on my friend's Xbox 360. So far, I have not been disappointed, as it is one of the most brilliant games I have played since Portal. In the same way that Portal made you think about space and momentum differently, Braid makes you think differently about time as it pertains to space.
Braid represents a lot of what I love about indie games quite well, although with its budget of almost $200,000 it's somewhat hard to call it an indie game. It has the feel of a game that came out exactly how its designer intended. It's not afraid of you not being able to do the puzzles in the way that Portal is, and that both works for it and against it. On one hand, it can frustrate people. On the other hand, the puzzles feel much more satisfying when you finally figure them out. I see it as a personal challenge, and so far I've solved everything I've come across without much frustration. When you get frustrated with Braid, it's never because your aren't good enough at platforming. It's because you aren't good enough at thinking. The beautiful watercolor art and classical music add quite a lot to the game, even if they can come across as pretentious. I quite like the music, and the tracks are long enough that you never really notice it loop.
World of Goo is a good contrast to Braid, because it represents everything else that I love about indie games. It has a weird, strangely epic story. It is genuinely funny. It has fun, inventive puzzles. It has fantastic, colorful vector art. It has an immense amount of charm. At its base level, it's just a bridge-building game. But if anyone plays this game for an hour and then tells me that's all there is to it, I will hit that person in the solar plexus.
There are a vast variety of gooballs (the building blocks of your structures), new ideas are introduced almost every level, and almost nothing gets reused. It's absolutely amazing that it was made by two people. It has the same feel of everything fitting together just how it was supposed to that Braid does. And while Braid's classical music and artsy graphics can feel unwelcoming, World of Goo gives off a vibe of warmth and heart that makes the entire game more fun. Even the box makes everything else on the shelf look cold and serious. All of this makes it even sadder that something like 80% of people playing the game online pirated it. What jerks.
Sometimes I wonder why people bother with high polygon counts and high resolution textures. I would rather look at World of Goo than Crysis. Things like World of Goo, or Braid, or Dyson always make me wish more people made 2D games. I think we can safely assume that 2D Boy will be making more, but I want to see one of the big developers release a 2D game that isn't for a handheld platform. It would look incredible. I want to see one of the big developers make something with anything approaching the amount of charm and heart that World of Goo has, or Braid's willingness to make people start over if that's what the designer thinks the level needs.
The problem with this desire to see an indie-spirited game made by a corporate giant like EA is that it wouldn't work. Part of what makes World of Goo so good is that it was made by two dudes for whom going to work meant walking to the local Internet cafe. The larger your team is, the less work per person is going into the project, and that makes it not quite any one person's game. Some games are more distilled visions, such as Bioshock, but these are few and far between.
Another problem is simply money. Not the lack of it, though. Big-budget games like Call of Duty have to be able to make that money back. When you're depending on your game selling at the very least a million copies, you get to the point where marketing people are involved in the design process. And while Valve have shown how much playtesting can help a game, taking some idea that everyone on the team thinks is stupid and using it because some idiot who uses the word "bro" non-ironically thinks it would be a good idea is where it goes bad. Whew. That turned into a bit of a rant. Essentially, I like games that aren't commercially viable.
I'm not sure if that's good or bad.
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