Jonathan Blow
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'Braid Anniversary Edition' brings back the original indie hit in 2021
During its latest State of Play livestream, Sony shared footage of Braid Anniversary Edition. Braid Anniversary Edition will also include a developer commentary that will touch on aspects such as the programming, art and design thought that went into the game. It’s hard to overstate the importance of Braid to modern gaming.
'Braid' creator sacrifices his fortune to build his next game
One of the indie world's first superstar developers made millions from one game. He's spent it all to make his next. Jonathan Blow's beautiful, distinct 2008 platformer Braid is largely regarded as the original indie game -- The Notorious OIG, if you will. Blow spent roughly $200,000 to create Braid and it made him a millionaire. Blow said in 2012 that he was funneling all of the money from Braid into his next project, a Myst-inspired puzzle game called The Witness that he's been working on since 2009. He wasn't kidding when he said all.
The Witness and the joy of intuition
"[When making] adventure games, your puzzles should have a point," Braid creator Jonathan Blow said during a gameplay demonstration for his upcoming PlayStation 4 first-person puzzler The Witness at E3 today. Blow opened the demo by stating that his latest project was inspired by puzzle-driven PC adventure games. I admitted to Blow that I lacked experience with the point-and-click genre, and that I found their obtuse design decisions daunting when trying to approach them in the modern era. He assured that The Witness abandoned the trial-and-error gameplay of its inspiration, instead focusing on meaningful puzzles that educate the player and bring context to the game's world. [Image: Thekla]
Bear witness to new screens of The Witness on PS4
Indie developer Jonathan Blow has published a status update and a new set of screenshots for his PC and PS4 first-person adventure game The Witness, revealing that the game's core campaign is complete and mostly modeled. Currently, the team developing The Witness is working on framerate optimizations, texture streaming, and bonus campaign content. Gameplay in The Witness focuses largely on player exploration, making environmental modeling a key component of the experience. "We don't know the release date yet," Blow notes. "It's still officially 'when it's done,' but these days 'when it's done' is getting closer and closer. The Witness is an ambitious game with a lot of things for us to get right, and getting it right takes time; I don't want to rush the game out at the cost of quality." [Image: Thekla]
Sit back and take a gander at these idyllic The Witness screens
It's unfair of Braid designer Jon Blow and his indie team Number None to show these The Witness screens now, not only because we have to wait until "mid-2014" to play the game, but because they look much warmer than the bitterly cold winter that surrounds us. Brrr. The area in these screens of the PS4, PC, and iOS exploratory puzzler is apparently "the marsh," and if the marsh in this game is that colorful and vivid, then surely the rest of this game is just an endless field of double rainbows. But what does this mean? [Images: Number None]
The floating, fragile indie bubble
Days after Braid hit Xbox Live Arcade in 2008, we posted a story titled "Why should we care about Braid?" We liked the game and felt the need to explain: It was a simple platformer made by a handful of people, it was pretty and it had solid controls. This wasn't a review of Braid. It was a defense of the emerging indie industry, and an analysis of why a truly good, independent game deserved adulation, because some of our readers were uneasy accepting them as legitimate products. Now, we're writing about Sony dedicating a large chunk of its E3 2013 press conference – the one just prior to the launch of the PS4 – to indie developers. We're writing about Indie Megabooth being the largest display at PAX. We're writing about Vlambeer, Klei, Hello Games, Dennaton, Fullbright, Polytron, Chris Hecker and Team Meat without having to remind readers who they are or why they matter. We're writing about Flappy Bird. We're not just writing about the existence of Flappy Bird – a free, tap-to-fly, pixelated mobile game from a young developer in Vietnam – we're writing about Flappy Bird spawning game jams and knock-offs from Fall Out Boy. "The biggest change now is that it is so much easier to make games and it is so much easier to find an audience for games," Braid creator Jonathan Blow tells me. "This means a lot more people can build games and make a living off it, which is nice. However, it also means there is not so much of a crucible against which people refine their skills, so if one really wants to become a top game developer, a lot of motivation is required above and beyond that which gets one to 'baseline success.'"
Braid creator working with Valve to bring The Witness to VR systems [update]
Puzzle fans eager to be stumped by The Witness' island might have noticed a coy post in November from game designer Jonathan Blow, which featured double-vision screenshots of the game's environment. Blow followed that tease in December by announcing The Witness' 3D TV and Oculus Rift support, but an update from this week revealed that the initial post had more to do with Valve than the Oculus Rift. "Last year I was pessimistic about VR systems in the near future, since the ones I had tried didn't seem to offer much," Blow wrote, noting the bulkiness of headsets and the nausea associated with some forms of virtual reality. "But I was fortunate enough to get a sneak peek at Valve's virtual reality system. It is so much better than anything else I had used that I was instantly very excited by it." It's worth pointing out that while Valve worked with Oculus Rift on the Crystal Cove prototype shown at CES, Valve also showed its own VR hardware at Steam Dev Days. Valve has announced no plans to bring the latter to retail. We've reached out to Blow concerning whether fans can expect to play the game using VR at launch and will update if we hear back. The Witness is planned for release on PC, iOS and PS4 sometime in 2014. Update: In response to our question about potential day-one VR support, Blow replied, "We will see what happens ... The interesting part of the situation to me is the working-with-VR itself. If we do any kind of business thing to launch with something or whatever, I don't know, maybe that will happen and maybe it won't."
The Witness at least tripled in size during development
Following up on a recent playthrough, Braid developer Jonathan Blow revealed that his upcoming PC and PlayStation 4 open-world adventure game The Witness ballooned in scope during development, and now spans between 25 and 40 hours of gameplay. "Just the other week, we played through the game from start to finish, to get a fresh perspective and to see everything that is here," Blow explains. "Originally I had meant to design an 8-hour game, but The Witness is more like 25-40 hours depending on how much you play (some of the game is optional)!" Announced for the PlayStation 4 at the console's reveal event earlier this year, The Witness is an independently financed puzzler that Blow describes as "a game about epiphany - that instantaneous transition of the mind that takes you from confusion to understanding." A release date has not been announced.
The Witness shares some gameplay secrets in developer video, post
Since announcing The Witness is on its way to Sony's PS4, Jonathan Blow and his development team have remained mostly mum about development. The game is still coming along, with Blow refining all of the details before the game launches, he explains on the PlayStation Blog in a video and a written post. Video-Blow says The Witness is a true, financially independent game: His studio has the freedom to not make a profit, since it's not beholden to a publisher and doesn't "need" to. This shifts his team's goals from money to quality, he says. "I would definitely like to make our money back on this game and I would like to make a profit on it, but it's not actually the No. 1 priority," Blow says. "The No. 1 priority is to make the best possible game that we can make, that brings the most beneficial experience to the players." The Witness is an open-world, non-linear puzzle game that is as deep as the player wants it to be, as Blow describes it. It has no release date yet, but it's in development for PC and PS4, with the latter as a timed console exclusive.
Jonathan Blow bears Witness to getting an indie, PC game on PS4
Jonathan's Blow's next mind-melting puzzler has a bright – and colorful – future in the next generation, as he took center stage at Sony's conference last night to announce The Witness would come to PlayStation 4 as a timed exclusive. After the show, Blow told us that his team is hard at work on the PS4 port of The Witness, and a PC version is still in tow."Basically, you'll see The Witness on PS4 before you'll see it on the next Microsoft console or on the Wii U, presuming we eventually do ports to those consoles," Blow said. "Ideally we want the game to be in as many places as we can get it, but since we are a small developer and it's a complicated game, we can only do so much at once."Blow decided to port The Witness to PS4 because he liked the console, not to snub players on other platforms or simply make a quick buck, he said:"People are speculating that we did this because of money, but that is not the case at all. We like the console and we like the people we are working with; we were already developing a PS4 port of the game, which prevents us from doing other console ports anyway, again because we can only do so much. So it was only a small step to go from this practical fact of development to a formal agreement signed on paper."Besides, signing a contract with any company wouldn't be too difficult for Blow and his team, since they already have at least one Witness.
The Witness trailer requires your corroboration
From the mind that made you tear your hair out at slow-moving clouds, The Witness looks a bright, colorful, and serene prospect in this trailer from last night's PS4 reveal. After gawking at Braid's darker side, we know better than to assume a Jon Blow game is all cuddles and rainbows.%Gallery-179476%
Jonathan Blow reveals 'The Witness' coming to PS4
At the PlayStation 4 reveal event, Braid creator Jonathan Blow has announced that his upcoming puzzle title, The Witness, is coming to Sony's new platform.Blow revealed that only Sony's new hardware will house the console version of The Witness during the game's "release window."The developer described his new first-person puzzle title as "a game about epiphany, that instantaneous transition of the mind that takes you from confusion to understanding."The Witness, said Blow, will have 25 hours of unique puzzles to play through, and the game's exclusivity will include the new console's "release window," so presumably the title's availability is open after that. Blow then showed off a quick video of the game, which looked about like what we've seen before, though perhaps with a few more bits of graphical flair thanks to the PS4's shiny new hardware.[Ed. Note: We have edited this post for accuracy.]
PSA: Watch Indie Game: The Movie now on Steam, other places
Indie Game: The Movie has come full circle, first covering games as they limped their way to their first platform launches, only to end up on one of those very platforms itself. Indie Game: The Movie is available on Steam for $10 as the first feature-length film to ever be hosted on Valve's service.The full documentary is also now available via iTunes and on its official site.
The Witness cares about you more than you know
Soon after launching his debut hit, Braid, on Xbox Live Arcade in 2008, creator Jonathan Blow issued a cheeky walkthrough tip on his personal site. In so many words, it said "suck it up and don't use a walkthrough" – a statement which many saw as reflective of a perceived "my way" attitude to game design.Others saw it more expectantly, knowing Blow to be a perfectionist and not one to offer hints on his games. He hates games that hold your hand. "Treating the player like a baby all the time, I don't like that," he told me during an interview last week at GDC.That's why he's designed his latest game, The Witness, to hold your hand just long enough to find the path. "What I do is I work really hard to not condescend the player and to not treat the player like they're stupid, but at the same time to follow good game design practices. This game has to be learnable, and there has to be tutorialization in it, but it's not patronizing tutorialization."Unlike Braid's more linear pacing, The Witness is designed as an open world – albeit a very small open world – so that difficult puzzles can either be skipped (not all must be solved to reach the end) or passed by for later on. Blow said this was intentionally designed to respect the time of players. "It's more about crafting a small, heavily interconnected jewel that gives people the highest density experience, respecting their time that way. There's not gonna be a lot of walking around through empty lands in this game."Though the game is looking more complete than ever, The Witness has no set platforms or launch window beyond PC and iOS, and "some time in 2012."
The Witness is Jon Blow's second shot at all or nothing
When is Braid creator Jonathan Blow's second game, The Witness, going to launch? None of your damn business is when. "When it's good," Blow told Joystiq during a GDC 2012 preview meetup. He's not even sure where The Witness will end up -- beyond PC and iOS, that is. "PSN a year from now? XBLA a year from now?," Blow said. It's possible, but more of a question of if it's worth the expense. The Witness is Blow's second ambitious attempt at crafting a story built around brilliant yet obvious puzzles, but this time it's a fully 3D world. A beautiful and complex one at that. And expenses are adding up.He hired two new programmers not so long ago. Blow can't continue development forever, of course. "In the case of this game, the answer is also when I run out of money. Which may happen," he said. But wait a minute -- didn't Braid rake in boatloads of money and cost around quarter of a million bucks to make?"Like I said, I just hired two more programmers and that's expensive. I'm spending all the Braid money on this game," Blow said. That's right: all the Braid money. Right on time, Chris Hecker -- SpyParty dev, hotel room roommate, and good buddy of Jon's -- shouted, "Crazy person!" To temper the jest at his friend's expense, Hecker admonished, "You attain orbit, and then you stay in orbit!"
'Everything's happening now:' Indie Game: The Movie at Sundance
In many ways, documentaries are not truly tools for documenting events. Instead, many documentaries choose to delve into the minds of their subjects, presenting not documentation, but something else entirely -- an up-close trip into the human psyche.During one such moment from Indie Game: The Movie, which I caught at a screening at the Sundance film festival, game designer Phil Fish states that if he couldn't finish his long-awaited game Fez, he would commit suicide. The camera remains on him for an awkward moment, and the line draws a number of uncomfortable chuckles from the audience. He seems to rethink his outrageous statement and then states once more: "I will kill myself."This attitude for the most part represents the majority of the film. Focusing primarily on the development and production of Fez and Super Meat Boy, Indie Game is really the story of obsessed developers pouring their insecurities and hearts and souls into a game, without leaving much, if anything, for themselves.%Gallery-145969%
Architecture in The Witness is more than a pretty placeholder
Developer Jonathan Blow's coming title, The Witness, blends a new brand of storytelling with what he hopes is immersive gameplay, founded largely on the environments that Blow and two teams of architects designed. In his most recent blog post, Blow describes the intense detail hidden within each building and feature in The Witness: "The game is constructed so that the more you pay attention to tiny details during your travels, the more insight you will have to the central story, even though it may not be obvious at any given time what a particular detail has to do with that story," Blow writes. This all leads to a much deeper, philosophical understanding of the game, and we assume life, love and religion as well -- not that Blow said that last bit, but these things do tend to happen with his games.
The Witness may come to consoles after all
It seems Jonathan Blow is reconsidering his stance on consoles after all. In an interview with Game Informer, Blow said the game would be on PC and iOS initially, and then target other platforms. "My current idea is to launch on PC and iOS, and then maybe one of the consoles which has not been decided, and later to bring the game to all other platforms," he said. "We can only do a certain number of platforms at launch, because we're small," he added. "A few months ago, I was doing all these interviews, and I didn't think we were going to do a console at launch. But we're hiring two more programmers, which has a huge impact on what we can do. So now the idea is open again, that we might do a console launch, but now what exactly that is depends on all sorts of business things that we just haven't figured out yet." The Witness will launch sometime next year.
The Witness coming to PC and iOS, Blow says consoles are too old
Jonathan Blow recently explained to Edge why his next project, The Witness, was only coming to PC and iOS: Because the 360 and PS3 are both grandpas. "We like 360 and PS3, but their specifications are over five years old now, and that's a lot in computer years," Blow explained. "The kind of tricks we'd have to perform to get this game working on those platforms are such a lot of work that to port it over at this point is just not worth it for us." Blow also expressed interest in bringing the game to the iPad, explaining, "We do have to compress the game for that platform, but we don't have to do the certification stuff we would have to on consoles, so we can live with doing just one of those giant tasks." He added, "And I like this as an iPad game. It's a natural thing. But we'll see how that plays out."
The Joystiq Show - Gamescom 2011 Day 0
Gamescom is just officially kicking off, but there has already been a cavalcade of news. As usual, the big press conferences took place before the actual convention festivities began, and Alexander and Ben were on site to deliver the news to your eyes. And now they're here to deliver it to your ears. In this late-night conversation, Ben and Alexander are joined by Jonathan Blow, designer of Braid and The Witness. Get the podcast: [iTunes] Subscribe to the Joystiq Podcast in iTunes [Zune] Subscribe to the Joystiq Podcast directly in the Zune Marketplace [RSS] Add the Joystiq Podcast feed to your RSS aggregator [MP3] Download the MP3 directly Hosts: Alexander Sliwinski (@xandersliwinski), Ben Gilbert (@BigBossBGilbert) Guest: Jonathan Blow (the-witness.net) Producer: Jonathan Downin (@jonathandownin - Game Thing Daily) Music: "Bust This Bust That" by Professor Kliq See all show links, and stream the show, after the break.
