Braid creator secretly showed new game at PAX
Any witnesses?
Braid creator secretly showed new game at PAX
THE CREATOR of indie time-warping puzzler Braid was at PAX over the weekend to show off his new game. He just neglected to tell anyone.
Jonathan Blow set up his demo of The Witness on a single desk in the same booth as two other indie developers and told nobody about it.
“I had several reasons for wanting to show the game this way,” he said on his blog. “Firstly: At a show full of companies trying to capture your attention and sell you things, I wanted to do something that is subtle, and a surprise — if you notice it, and decide to investigate, you find something unexpected.
“Also, 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.
Although some people recognised the game straight away, a lot of folk simply sat down without knowing what they were getting into or who the developer was. Blow says this was precisely the idea.
“PAX is a huge show, with tons of stuff to see everywhere; if the game could hold peoples’ attention under those conditions, purely on its own merits rather than by hype or pedigree, then I would know that it was really working.”
Brendan Caldwell
