In all my life I don't think I've ever seen a post so full of win.

@ everyone complaining it was ripped off of Mario.   When you put in such a deliberate unambiguous reference like "The Princess is in another castle" it's pretty clear he has another objective in mind than using a weak plot device to advance the story.  In my opinion it's all Jonathan Blow's way of acknowledging the beginnings of the genre, while still taking it to the next level with all the time mechanics.

Yes, I'm denying the Mario connection. There is NO connection, that's what "homage" means. Look it up in the dictionary.

Seriously, vgchartz needs a separate "Capable of Abstract Thought Forum" for the few members who are not 14 years old...

 Thirded for complete pwnage. Someone should email this piece of literature to Jonathan Blow himself.

Methinks that the people that accuse it of plagiarizing Mario don't realize a few things:

1) It's OBVIOUS that there are 2 homages to Mario - with the princess/castle thing, and the Donkey Kong level.

2) Being able to jump on enemies' heads to defeat them it totally against why they are there. In Mario, you jump on their heads to score points, and such. In Braid, the enemies are parts of the puzzles themselves: You have to use them many times, to obtain specific puzzle pieces. So the enemies are critical to your success, in Mario, they are there for you to fail.

Thats why Braid is counter-intuitive to what we see in the Platform genre. And why it's a sudden masterpiece. If you didn't know about Braid, and it's "all of a sudden", it's because you haven't bothered looking at the big XBLA games that were coming up. Braid hype has been around for 6+ months now, and many knew it had the chance of getting the scores that it's currently receiving.

 i don't recall ever saying connection, so you can't put in words of my mouth meaning i meant connection instead of homage or any other word i could throw out there.

As I can notice in teh video there is prince of persia reverse time deal, taking keys and bringing them to door, putting puzzle peices together (for who knows what reason)   All things I have done in games before even some simple kids math games like 10 years ago.

I dont' know who came up with the ideas for any of these things, but if you don't see

1. Sidescrolliong platform

2. Jump on enemies head and he dies

3. Flag at end of level and lowers

4. Someone states princess is in another castle

You ask anyone in the real world and they will say that reminds me of Mario.  Not saying every one with number 1 and 2 are at all like mario.  But there is no denying 3 and 4.  Is this game bad because of it no, looks really fun if it is cheap.  But trying to bash down mario like it is shit or nothing at all and this is super unique ect. is just plain ignorant. 

Not one single person in this thread has bashed Mario in any way, you're just grasping at straws.

Also, the time manipulation is so much more involved than PoP it doesn't even merit a comparison. Just go play the game, then come back here and talk about it.

edit: Furthermore, this game still is unique, but that's because of the ridiculously good gameplay.

You should probably play this game before you start making posts like that

QFT!!!

I'm getting it this weekend. The trial was really cool.

There is no point arguing, you can continue to make silly comments without my involvement.  I'll just provide one quote regarding the "Prince of Persia reverse time deal"...

Eurogamer:

You'll see the time manipulation being praised as an act of remarkable design innovation, and you'll scoff at how Blinx, Prince of Persia and TimeShift all did it first. On all fronts, you'll be wrong.

Other games may have offered rewind mechanisms, but always as a peripheral feature firmly within an otherwise rigid gameworld. Like bullet-time in The Matrix, it was a cool visual effect but with limited impact on the core gameplay beyond saving your life. In Braid, being able to rewind your death and try again is entry-level stuff. That's the basics, the launch pad, the minimum that the concept allows you to do. Here it's more than just a limited second-chance mechanism. Not only can you rewind all the way back to the start of the level, undoing everything you did, but doing so is often essential to progress. You must look back to go forwards.