When it released, Braid blew the entire world away with its art and some of the most amazing, innovative gameplay mechanics anyone had ever seen. And the fact that it snuggled comfortably into the Microsoft Xbox 360 exclusive stable all this time didn’t make the PC gamers all too happy, especially considering the PC version kept getting pushed back with each passing day.

Not anymore. According to Stardock software, the PC version of Braid is coming to their Impulse digital distribution platform come March 31, 2009! According to the pre-orders page on the ImpulseDriven site, the game will cost $19.95, almost $5 more than the Xbox LIVE Arcade version does, which should probably start another rant from the PC camp, but hey, at least you didn’t have to invest in a console, right?

According to creator Jonathan Blow’s comments on his blog, while Valve initially wasn’t too enthusiastic about the project appearing on the Steam catalog, the success of the game has made them reconsider enough to open negotiations with Jonathan. Unfortunately, according to a forum post, it may not have worked out. Braid’s mommy has said that he has signed on with three online distributors, and Impulse is just one of them. Are Steam and Games For Windows LIVE the other two? We’re just gonna have to wait and see…

But if you’re worried about whether your computer would be able to run the game, well, take heart, as long as your computer has anything better than a mid-end GeForce 6x series card, you’re good to go. Talking about minimum system requirements for the game in a post, Jonathan said:

…Braid is presenting a specific, carefully-tailored experience to the player. That’s one important reason why people like the game. The more random and un-cared-for your player experience is, the less it’s the case that what you’re playing is really Braid.

So it may be that, initially, fewer people can play than I would like. That’s unfortunate, but at the same time, I made Braid for the long term, not the short term. It’s not just a game for people to play in the winter of 2008 and the spring of 2009. It’s a game for people to play, and find interesting, 20 years from now. If you look forward even 5 years, most peoples’ low-end computers are going to run Braid just fine.

In an ideal world, Braid would run perfectly on everyone’s computer right now. But the game we ended up making is far too resource-hungry for that.

On the bright side, I don’t expect RAM or CPU to be a problem for people. (The game runs fine on the Xbox 360 with 512MB of RAM; on Windows it might require more, because of Windows, but that still gives you an idea). CPU probably just isn’t a concern at all. It’s only the graphics processor that is the problem. I haven’t done any testing yet to determine which graphics processors are fast enough. (I am not even sure about the comment I posted above, about the 6800 being fast enough. I think I may be remembering that wrong.)

So, there you have it. If you haven’t splurged on a video card yet, better do so now!

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By N2H

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