The time-bending mechanics aren’t just important for the gameplay, they’re inextricably linked to Braid’s narrative. Each world is prefaced by several optional short prose passages that don’t so much tell a story, but rather beautifully describe moments in a life.

Even if you ignore that fact that Braid is really one big allegorical tale containing profound life-lessons, you can’t help but notice the obvious metaphorical gameplay elements – the most simple and obvious example being the desire to turn back time, to erase past mistakes and make different choices.

You can really read into Braid’s cautionary tale as much or as little as you’d like, as there are no cut-scenes to be skipped and the narrative is never forced upon the player. However, to ignore it would be the equivalent of only watching The Godfather trilogy for the parts where someone gets shot.

Braid not only provides nourishment for the brain, but is a visual and aural delight as well. Artist David Hellman has created a vibrant world, jam-packed with colour and incidental details. Backgrounds are drawn in a wonderful hand-painted style that simultaneously holds the eye, whilst never distracting from the gameplay.

The soundtrack is hauntingly evocative at times, and the sound effects are consistent with the feel of the game. Wonderfully, the audio is distorted when time is being manipulated, resulting in surreal noises and reversed music. Similarly, the colour palette becomes muted when time is being rewound and more vivid when time is being sped up. These effects help to tie together the different elements of game design into one superb consistent whole.

Each completed puzzle adds another section to a ladder on the level select screen, which can eventually be ascended to a short finale which will leave you speechless (in a good way). Braid is a game about the difficulty of relationships, about opportunites missed, about obsession, about wrong decisions, about unattainable goals, about overlooking what is right front of your face, about our perceptions of reality, about looking too much towards the past or future, about devotion, about expectations.

As much of the game is open to interpretation, Braid can be all of these things or none of them. If you like, it can simply treat it as a ruddy good puzzle-platformer. If you only buy one XBLA game this year, make it this.

The only criticism that could potentially be levelled at Braid is in regards to its length. Speed Runs and secret stars aside, depending on your logical capabilities the main game will probably take between 3-5 hours to complete.

The fact is, Braid is art. There, I said it. Not only can it be appreciated aesthetically, but it was clearly created with the intention of the finished product being a work of art. If we are to truly view games as art, then they must be evaluated on a proper critical basis. In this context, talking about how a long a game takes to complete is as irrelevant as a literary critic complaining a book had not enough pages. If the finished article is successful in its purpose of making those who experience it think and feel new emotions then that’s all that matters.

Braid should be an inspiration to developers, managing to be a better example of the interactive medium than products with hundreds of times the budget and manpower.