Braid

"Tim is off on a search to rescue the Princess. She has been snatched by a horrible and evil monster. This happened because Tim made a mistake."

This is fan art for a game called 'Braid'. I heard about it in a game magazine I got a few months ago. The design was really different so I read about it. The review they made about it was so freakin' mysterious, I couldn't resist researching it more.

I dunno what else I can say besides my mind being fucking blown away. The mind fuckage it produces is like.... wat. XD It's for Xbox I believe, you buy it through some 'Arcade' thing (I'm not sure, I don't have Xbox). It's basically side scrolling, similar to Mario in ways but focuses more on puzzle solving. I've watched walkthroughs on Youtube and looked up a lot of information on it from various sites and forums.

You might wanna try it and figure it out yourself before getting spoiled, though barely anyone has heard of this game it seems. There's about 10 pictures of fanart on DeviantArt... total XD

*Lawl spoiler alert Snape kills Dumbledore... spoilers below XD*

Like the intro quote says, Tim is on a quest to find his Princess. As simple as that seems, the use of metaphors and all that kinda stuff is like... holy fuck. The game can have two meanings really, one deeper then the next if that could even be imagined.

The game deals a lot with time... Slowing time, freezing time, reversing time... All to help assist finding this Princess. Like in Mario Series, she's always in another castle.

One way to interpret it, the more simple way I guess is that Tim is NOT trying to save the Princess from a horrible, evil Dark Knight. The last level can only be completed a certain way, involving reversal of time. But before you do that, you find yourself trapped underground as the Princess is carried down by the Dark Knight. She leaps away and cries for help, up above. The Dark Knight appears and summons a wall of fire that chases both you and the Princess. As you run to the end of the level, both you and the Princess pull levers to activate contraptions that help you get across obstacles in once piece. When you finally reach the end, the Princess runs into her room... You climb up to her window... and the entire scene plays in reverse.

This is the true story of Tim. In reverse you find that the Princess, in her room, is startled by Tim at the window. She gets up and runs away on the top floor. Tim chases her from below. She begins pulling the levers from before, but this time, since it's in reverse, the levers are to stop Tim from pursuing her. Whereas Tim is pulling levers to trap the Princess. Finally, she reaches the end and cries for help. The Dark Knight appears, she jumps in his arms and is carried away.

So basically... Tim is just a delusional man, obsessed with the Princess, stalking her. In his mind, he thinks he's 'saving' her when really he is what she needs to be saved from. Shit like that is like... Silent Hill meets Mario meets Fantasy. I dunno, maybe it's just me but something about that just totally made me go crazy, in a good way XD

[link]

But hell... the story goes even deeper then THAT.

I'm not gonna say too much detail here, you can look this part up yourself if you want... but what the game is truly about is Tim's quest in discovering the Atomic Bomb. The princess represents the bomb; a mysterious beauty that eludes him ( being in 'another castle' ) and doesn't want to be found, because having control of that kind of power would change the world... and not for the better.

Now we are all sons of bitches.