Braid is a new game on XBOX Live Marketplace. It was something I bought because I was bored, but I was completely blown away. It is fabulous.
The thing that caught my attention was, at first, not the game itself. It looks like a pretty basic platform game. I was impressed by the artistic graphics in the background. It is layers upon layers of artistic artwork that moves independently as you move around. And on top of that, there are a number of extra lighting effects and subtle animations. The background looks so good that you get annoyed by the foreground platforms.
Try it, if you got an XBOX. You need to see the animations to get a feel for the visual effects.
What makes it even better is the incredible soundtrack. It has none of that techno or rock music junk that most other arcade games feature. It features quiet emotional tunes (Soundtrack here).
The game is, at first, pretty basic. I am not really into these platform games. But it does have an interesting twist. Many new games explore how we perceive reality. The game Fez explored how we could use 2D and 3D to challenge how we deal with the world.
Loading Video
(Note: You need Flash 9+ to watch these videos)
Braid is all about the concepts of time. You cannot just go from one place to another, you need to manipulate time, explore parallel universes, freeze or rewind time in ways that are not physically possible.
Giant Bomb has created a great 3 minute review:
Loading Video
(Note: You need Flash 9+ to watch these videos)
This is a part of a larger trend that combines physical possibilities in ways that are not physically possible. Things like modifying time, dimensions, big and small, and using opposites to your advantage.
And it is not just for games. These concepts are also moving into the business world of productivity applications. It allows us to present highly complex things in a simple form.
Forget about the structured path, where each thing is preceded by another. This allows you to work organically.
The Swedish company “People of Lava” has come out with a new spiffy looking TV running Google Android.
Here is a brilliant idea. What if your furniture could react intelligently to your presence and anticipate when you need it. Or what if it could move out of your way out of the way when you are just passing by? What if your furniture could help out in social situation? Wouldn’t that be something?
There are many online image editors. Like Picnik (which was recently bought by Google), Pixlr, Aviary Phoenix, Photoshop online and many others. All them require that you go to their website to edit your images. Wouldn't it be interesting if you could bring the online image editor into your own web apps.?
Back in late October 2009, Adobe Labs showcased an upcoming feature in Photoshop called Content Aware Fill. And it was absolutely amazing. Now they have released another video, showcasing even more impressive image manipulations.
Earlier this week Penguin presented their vision for how they could translate their book into the ebook format. Or rather, how they can really make us of digital publishing to create much better books.
Remember Microsoft Surface? You know, the big multi-touch coffee table? Now Microsoft is working on a much smaller version with Mobile Surface.
Today, Microsoft announced "Windows Phone 7 Series", featuring a completely new edition to the long infamous Windows Mobile operating system. It looks modern, polished, graphically exciting and nothing like the tiny windows 95 that we have been used to seeing.
The newspaper industry is falling over themselves in the fight to come up with a ever more impressive newspaper tablet. The problem is that they miss the point completely (as I wrote about in "The Future of News, Tablets, and Business Models").
As you probably know, both Google and Microsoft have entered into a partnership with Twitter and is now incorporating social search into their regular search engines. This is a big deal because social is a very important element of the future of search... it's not the only part though.
Wouldn't you like to mix wild hand gestures, cute birds flying around your screen, Twitter, tweeting bird sounds, and your web camera? Well, now you can with Flyar.
Subscribe