Braid's Anniversary Edition squeezes in one more delay, three years after it was first meant to arrive
The Anniversary Edition of Braid was originally announced almost four years ago, and originally meant to be out sometime in 2021. As such, the latest delay to Jonathan Blow’s time-rewinding puzzle-platformer - which sees its date pushed back two weeks into the middle of next month - feels like a relative drop in the hourglass.
Braid, Anniversary Edition - because apparently a standard colon wasn’t quite pretentious enough for the maker of The Witness - was due to be out on April 30th, as announced last year. That date itself came more than three years after the re-release was first revealed, promising an ambitious overhaul with completely repainted backgrounds with additional detail by original illustrator David Hellman.
The redone art to suit the sharper resolutions of modern 4K displays combines with more fluid animation for the player character and the refinement of the original’s stock sound effects with a new soundscape, plus new music - both fresh mixes and variants - from soundtrack composers Martin Stig Andersen and Hans Christian Kock, for a fairly comprehensive remake of the seminal indie.
On top of the general re-zhuzhing for the eyes and ears, there’ll seemingly be a treat for the brain, too, in the form of over 15 hours of commentary about design, programming and art that Blow described in an extremely Jonathan Blow way as “the craziest, most-in-depth commentary ever put in a video game”. The commentary will span into 40 extra levels, a combination of brand new puzzles (with new puzzles pieces to form into a frame), variants on existing levels and index levels used to access the commentary itself.
You’ll be able to hop between the original look/sound/feel and the new edition, for what it’s worth, if you just feel like going back through Braid as it was when it hit PC in April 2009, just over 15 years ago. (It arrived on Xbox 360 first the August before, making its overall 15th anniversary last summer.)
Per Eurogamer, the latest delay to Braid
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