·:[ Smiling Politely ]:·
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While Braid is a fine puzzle game, I still gotta give the edge to DROD as far as pure puzzle satisfaction goes. Not that it’s really appropriate to compare them.

With Braid, my experience was (for the most part) that of studying the network of platforms leading to some puzzle piece, determining how that world’s special power helps you get there, then executing. Each puzzle is very unique: rarely do you use the same trick twice. This is pretty explicitly by design, by all accounts I’ve read. Most every interesting consequence of each world’s unique “rules” is used, more or less, exactly once in a puzzle.

Solving a DROD room (well, I guess I should say, “solving a DROD”) is a much more iterative, interactive experience. A lot more experimenting is involved, as you dig your way halfway through a room only to discover that you’ve painted yourself into a corner, revert back to a checkpoint, and repeat. It’s remarkably fast paced for something that is “turn-based”, and it feels a lot more like “playing” a game than Braid did, as much of my time in Braid was spent staring and contemplating. If I’m merely staring and contemplating in DROD, it usually means I’m well and truly stumped.

At the same time, I’m glad that Braid is pretty serious about actually providing a challenging puzzle experience. As a kind of faint echo of the critical reaction I had been expecting, a lot of the negative reactions are dwelling on the game basically being too hard. Of course, this complaint mostly danced around so as not to sound too petulant. The puzzles are unfair because I have to read the designer’s mind! The platforming requires pixel perfect timing! It’s enough to make me want to bust out one of those facepalm.gif things that the kids all seem to like these days.

There’s also just a lot more variety to DROD, as well as a lot more quantity. Of course, it’s had years and years to build this up, and it is also much more focused on brain twisters than Braid is for the most part. (Though I will defend DROD’s “story” not only for its humour, but whatever seriousness there is to it as well.) All the same, Braid falls short of the “Best Puzzle Game of all time” award. It’s pretty high up there, though, duking it out with the Lost Vikings and the Incredible Machine. Maybe some others, I can’t recall at the moment.

So my favourite game in quite some time that I never shut up about is, of course, DROD.  The City Beneath is the latest installment, and even though I bought it online when it came out last year, I don’t think it had been “officially” released until recently.  (I’m a bit confused on this matter, I only remember that before I had to hunt around on the forums to find a link to purchase, and as of right now there still isn’t a non-downloadable version available yet.)

In any case, as part of this “official” release, or maybe not, I see now that there is a trailer to watch on YouTube.  It’s kind of, well, it keeps a straight face at most points and so I’m not sure what they are trying to sell the game as, but personally I would have emphasized more of the puzzles and especially more of the quirky humour.  But in any case, you can at least hear the music and get a small glimpse of what the game looks like in motion.

The trailer is available here.