Fifteen minutes. That’s how long I spent on Braid’s title/level-select screen. Well, calling it a ‘screen’ isn’t totally fair – it’s a small environment for you to run around in, about three screens in size. Not that there’s a lot to do here – there isn’t – but it’s just a nice place to be. I could’ve run ahead and started the game proper, sure. But I was quite happy where I was, staring at a blurry, glowing cityscape while absorbing the absolutely stunning soundtrack.

Still, let’s take the wank-hat off for a minute. What’s Braid about?

Put simply, it’s a puzzle-based 2D platformer where you can rewind time, due out on Xbox Live Arcade within the next few months, with a PC release to follow. And yet, while comparisons to Prince of Persia or Blinx: The Time Sweeper will inevitably be made, they are wholly unfair. It’s certainly true that Braid takes a lot of familiar elements from previous games in order to ease the player in and avoiding pissing you off – but there is no denying that you haven’t played anything quite like this before. The main reason for this is that within each of the game’s worlds, time itself behaves differently. While your own time-manipulation abilities barely extend beyond your ‘rewind’ button, the things you can do just by bending each level’s rules to your whim is absolutely incredible.

The puzzles start off simple – early on, the game introduces objects that exist ‘outside’ of time, and aren’t affected by your rewinding – they travel along a set path no matter what you do, or try to undo. Several worlds later, you’re co-ordinating movements with an alternate-reality self whose actions you set up to interact alongside your own by acting those actions out yourself, then rewinding time. You watch your ‘old’ self act out what you just did, whilst also doing stuff in the present in order to solve the current puzzle.