Tag Archives: Jonathan Blow

It would appear that Jonathan Blow, the time-defying mind behind Braid, is looking to set a new project into motion. Over on the official Braid blog, Blow’s hoping to hire a programmer to “do very interesting work with full-body motion tracking.”

When asked by Joystiq if motion controls were being applied to his previously announced new project, The Witness, Blow was only able to say that he “can’t talk about this right now,” and added that “it may not even actually happen (depending on whether I can find someone qualified to do it!).”

So there we are.

You can now buy Braid for £3.39 on Steam. That’s very cheap, so you probably should.

And that’s that. Thanks, EG.

A teaser’s gone live for The Witness, apparently the name for Jon Blow’s next game.

It’s “an exploration-puzzle game on an uninhabited island.”

We say “apparently” as there’s nothing to link it to Blow himself on the site, although 50 million web reports can’t be wrong. Ever.

Hit the link and see why. It should be out in 2011.

Braid creator Jonathan Blow has elaborated a bit on the project 3D puzzle-exploration game he is hiring for.

According to a chat with Joystiq, Blow can up with the concept behind the game before the release of Braid but was unsure if he could pull it off due to it being “a more-expensive, harder-to-make 3D game.”

He stated that he and the team just started “working on the game in earnest” a few weeks ago, and folks should not expect it for at least another two years.

More through the links.

According to a post over on Braid’s official website, the game’s creator Jonathan Blow is looking to hire a 3D Environment Concept Artist for the development of a 3D “puzzle-exploration game.”

The project is described as “a puzzle-exploration game that is philosophical, and quiet, and is being made for reasons other than crass profit motive.”

Hilariously, here is what Jonathan is not looking for:

The majority of [your] portfolio should consist of things absent from the following list: Girls With Big Tits; Barbarians Wielding Axes, Covered in Blood; Aliens; Space Ships; Gangsters Getting Shot in the Face; Orcs; Giant Robots; and, of course, Postapocalyptic Wastelands.

Good for him.

Via Shack.

Jon Blow’s confirmed on the Steam forum that a level editor has been included in the PC version of Braid:

Yeah, after I get a new version out in a few days that fixes the problems some people are having, and when more people have played/finished the game, I am going to post some documentation for the editor. The way it works is you can make levels with the editor (up to a full game, potentially) and run that with -universe later… also a tool will be released that lets you take Photoshop files and import them into the game, if you want to put new graphics in your levels.

The editor’s already in the game, apparently. Press F11 and see what happens.

Greenhouse just posted up a demo of the PC version of Jon Blow’s Braid.

It’s 120Mb and contains a good chunk of the time-warping puzzler. You can unlock the full thing for $15.

Thanks, RPS.

Talking at GDC 09 in San Francisco, Braid creator Jonathan Blow has revealed that the rather superb puzzler cost around $200,000 to make.

However, he reckons if he lived in squalor whilst creating it, he could have cut costs even further:

“Also, a lot of that 200k was spent because I didn’t want to live in a shack somewhere… It doesn’t require $200,000 to make a game,” he said.

“It requires a PC, a dev kit and enough money to live on for the time it takes to develop, plus extra time because it will always slip. If you can live for three years at your Mom’s house, you can make a game for free.”

More over at EG.

Braid developer Jon Blow has told UK mag Total PC Gaming that his next project will be a complete departure from his time-bending smash.

“I’ve got a lot of projects that I’m always thinking about, and I’ve got one that I’ve started that’s very different in almost every way from Braid,” he said.

Despite Blow’s apparent desire to get away from Braid, the game’s been good to its creator.

“[Braid has] made more money for me than if I had been working in a high-paying job for all the time I was developing the game,” he said.

“It has been very profitable.”

Thanks, NowGamer.

Developer Jonathan Blow’s announced a drop of $5 to the PC version of Braid, as seen on his blog.

“Yesterday, Stardock announced that they would be selling Braid at the end of March for $19.95,” he said. “This price has proven to be unpopular in certain areas of the Internets, so I’ve reduced it to $14.95.

“Pre-orders from Stardock have not been charged yet, so if you pre-ordered at $20 you will still get the game for $15.”

Go Blow. The PC version of his time-warping puzzler’s out on March 31.

Offworld’s reporting that the PC version of Braid will release on March 31 for $20.

It’ll appear on Stardock’s Impulse distribution platform for definite, but don’t be too shocked if Steam gets a look in as well.

Thanks, IndieGames.

Jonathan Blow, the man whose melodically beating heart birthed XBLA title Braid, is unsurprisingly working on something new. Speaking with Gamasutra, Blow dubbed his latest a 2D role-playing game.

“Yeah. It’s an RPG right now, a 2D RPG that I’m working on,” he said.

However, the game’s destiny is far from set in stone.

“You never know,” he added, “Next month, it could be a Pac-Man clone or something.”

If Braid was Mario after a make-over from Blow’s agency of the avant garde, then Pac-Man clone might be stretching it a little.

A whole lot more through the link. Seriously, thing’s a monster.

By Nathan Grayson

Jonathan Blow’s Braid will release on PC in “February-March 2009,” the developer’s said on his blog.

Blow had originally planned to release the platformer’s new version this year, but… didn’t.

“I had originally announced the release date for the end of 2008, but for various reasons, this hasn’t happened,” said Blow.

“Once we slipped into mid-October and all the big Christmas-season blockbusters started coming out, it just seemed like a bad idea to schedule Braid for that time period, as it seems likely it’d get released and then disappear.”

More through there.

According to this Wall Street Journal piece, XBLA platformer Braid cost developer Jonathan Blow $180,000 of his own money.

The game’s already sold around 30,000 units – probably a lot more by now – at 1,200 MS Points per throw, so that wasn’t the silliest investment he ever made.

More through the link.

According to this official Braid blog post, the platformer is now the best ranked game ever released on XBLA, with a Metacritic average of 92 percent.

Designer Jon Blow also quotes a VGChartz figure there, which is generally unwise, claiming the game has sold around 28,500 units in the past week, describing the number as being in the “right neighbourhood.”

More through the link.

Braid designer Jonathan Blow has hit out as XBLA regulations, saying that restrictions on the service are damaging the quality of its games.

“They removed some of the requirements for XBLA games, but there are still a lot of requirements, and I believe that, at least for a single-player game like my game, the vast majority of these requirements are unnecessary,” he told Gamasutra.

“I put in a tremendous amount of work meeting all these requirements, when I could have put that work into the actual game, and made it even a little more polished, little bit better.”

More through the link.

Speaking on Braid’s official site, developer Jonathan Blow’s said that he’s not overly keen on Microsoft setting the price for the game at 1,200 MS Points, but he’ll suffer it.

My feeling was that Microsoft would price the game at 1200 no matter what I said; however, I never pushed them to that point. Late last week, Microsoft and I had a conversation where we talked about a bunch of issues and I agreed on the 1200 point price.

There are good reasons why I picked 1200 instead of 800 (I thought about writing them up today, but I’m not sure it’s really appropriate; I might, though, tonight. We’ll see how I feel about it later.)

The Reader’s Digest version is, I would have been perfectly happy with a launch price of 800 points. At 1200 points I am less happy, but I am okay with it.

You’ll make more money, dude. Try not to worry too much. Just keep focus on the helicopters and hookers. Thanks, Destructoid.

The Major’s announced that Braid is now available for download on Live. Eurogamer gave the arty platformer a 10 this morning, so at least try the demo. The full game’s 1,200 MS Points.

We could almost use words like “lovely” and “pleasant” to describe this. It’s the start of indie darling Braid, and it all looks very nice. The platformer’s being developed by Jon Blow, and will release this year for PC and XBLA. See for yourself.