jonathan-blow posts

Well over a year ago, Braid creator Jonathan Blow revealed the title for his next indie game, The Witness. Last March he posted up some pseudo-screenshots from the indie adventure-puzzle title set on an uninhabited island. As it turns out, the game made its first public appearance at PAX Prime 2010 this past weekend with no advanced warning.

An early build of the game was placed around some other indie titles with no signage or goofy promo hype and open to anyone who wanted to play it. Blow states on his blog site, "I wanted people to be able to play the game for as long as they want, not feeling pressured to stop playing because of a huge line of antsy people waiting behind them." The experiment seems to have worked as Blow states, "People tended to play for a long time, and they liked what they played." Kotaku has posted up some impressions of The Witness which is due for release in late 2011.

The independent game development community has seen some major success stories in the past few years with small and even one-man teams creating PC games that have been both popular and received critical acclaim. Now a number of the more successful indie game developers are teaming up to create a new source of money for their fellow developers.

The venture is called simple Indie Fund and was established to help "indie developers get financially independent and stay financially independent." The seven backers of the fund include the two man team of 2D Boy, makers of World of Goo and Jonathan Blow, the creator of Braid. Gamasutra has some more info about Indie Fund from its spokesperson Ron Carmel of 2D Boy. More info about the venture will be announced next week at the Game Developers Conference. The first game projects to receive funding from Indie Fund will be announced "soon".

Earlier this month Torchlight, the acclaimed downloadable action-RPG from Runic Games, made its retail brick-and-mortar debut in stores. Now another game that was previously available only via download is being made available in stores as well.

This time its the PC version of Braid, the critically acclaimed puzzle-platformer from designer Jonathan Blow. The PC download able version was first made available last April. MumboJumbo, the well known casual game developer/publisher, is handling the retail release of Braid which should happen sometime later this month. So if you can't handle downloading a game and have to buy your titles in a store, you can count on Braid to be made available at Wal Mart and other outlets for $19.99.

See that bit of text above this post? That's Braid developer Jonathan Blow's idea of a teaser for The Witness, his next major game project. The web site for the game is already up which says that the title is an "exploration-puzzle game on an uninhabited island".

According to Blow, in a statement on his blog site, " . . . the game is very visual, and once we have developed those visuals to the point where they are representative, I'll start posting them there." Don't look for them anytime soon, though. The Witness web site states that the game isn't due for release until late 2011.


Download Braid Demo (119 MB)

The acclaimed puzzle-platformer Braid was just released for the PC last week and today word has leaked out that the PC port has something the Xbox 360 version does not have: A level editor. Jonathan Blow, the creator of the game, confirmed that launching the game with the "-editor" parameter, and then pressing the F11 button on your keyboard brings up the editor.

In a post on the Steam message board Blow also states that he plans to " . . . .post some documentation for the editor" in a few days after releasing a new version of Braid that fixes some post-release bugs. In addition, a tool will also be release that will allow new Photoshop-based graphics to be put in user-created Braid levels.

[Via Shacknews]

It's one of the most acclaimed Xbox Live Arcade games ever made and after months of waiting the PC version has finally arrived. We are speaking of Braid, the puzzle-platform game with a temporal twist that was mostly created by Jonathan Blow. The PC version of Braid is now available to download and purchase for $14.99 from a variety of sites including Impulse, Greenhouse, Steam and Gamersgate.

With a unique looking illustrative art style Braid uses time manipulation in order for the player to solve the many different puzzles in the game. If you don't want to dive head first into purchasing the game a demo has also been released and can be grabbed right here at Big Download.

Ah, typos. They are fun aren't they? We all make them and we get embarrassed when we get caught doing them. Braid's creator Jonathan Blow must be blushing right now with today's announcement in his blog of a delay in the PC release of his temporal-themed down downloadable game.

Originally set for release on March 31, Blow states that the game has to deal with a few extra bugs that have cropped up during testing and will delay its release 10 days . . .until August 10. Now, we are pretty sure that he meant to write "April 10" so until he surprises us with some kind of temporal flux that makes 10 days so long it extends an extra four months we will assume he meant April 10 as the new release date.

On Tuesday we reported that Stardock was allowing people to pre-order the upcoming PC version of Braid on their Impulse web site. At the time the price was for $19.95 but apparently that price caused some fans of the game to protest, saying that the price was $5 more that what the original Xbox 360 version of the game sold for.

Well, it looks like those protests have indeed had an effect. Today the price of the PC version of Braid has been reduced down to $14.95, the level of the original Xbox 360 game. On the official Braid web site, its creator Jonathan Blow states he originally set the price at $19.95 because other downloadable PC games like Crayon Physics Deluxe and World of Goo are also sold at that price point. However he added that he didn't care much about what the price point was, saying that while " . . . it would be nice to earn the optimal amount of money from that release" he would " . . . rather have people talking about the game itself, what they like and dislike about it, than about how many American Fiat Currency Dollars it costs."

By the way, Impulse won't be the exclusive download distributor for the game. Blow states that it will also be made available on " . . . two or three Windows PC-oriented download sites that I have signed with."

Late in 2008 it was announced that the PC version of the acclaimed Xbox Live Arcade title Braid would be pushed back until sometime in the first quarter of the year. Today Stardock has announced that it is now taking pre-orders for the PC version of Braid to be released via their Impulse service.

The PC version will cost $19.95 and will basically be a port of the temporal themed platformer-puzzle game created by Jonathan Blow. Stardock currently has listed a March 31 release date for the game on their Impulse web site. However as we all know release dates can and do change. There's no word yet what or even if other download services will also have Braid available to download.

While all of us are still waiting for the long awaited PC-Mac version of Braid to be released, its creator Jonathan Blow is thinking about creating his next game project. In a recent chat with Gamasutra, Blow gives a hint as to his next game (which even he admits might change).

Blow is quotes as saying, "It's an RPG right now, a 2D RPG that I'm working on." However don't get too settled into that concept because Blow then adds, "Next month, it could be a Pac-Man clone or something." But it seems like the 2D RPG is something that Blow wants to do at the moment, saying, "My newest game I started is looking very promising. I'm very excited to do it." Meanwhile the PC port of Braid is due out sometime in February or March.