Tony Wang的游戏之家

quoted from: http://www.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/955510/53842
 
Braid is a puzzle-platformer, drawn in a painterly style, where the player 
manipulates the flow of time in strange and unusual ways. From a house 
in the city, journey to a series of worlds and solve puzzles to rescue an 
abducted princess. In each world, you have a different power to affect the 
way time behaves, and it is time's strangeness that creates the puzzles. 
The time behaviors include: the ability to rewind, objects that are immune 
to being rewound, time that is tied to space, parallel realities, time 
dilation, and perhaps more. Braid treats your time and attention as precious; 
there is no filler in this game. Every puzzle shows you something new 
and interesting about the game world. 这游戏太强了，强烈推荐大家玩一下来体会一下这个
游戏的深度。这位仁兄对这游戏的解说可以说是完美，就算你没玩过这游戏光看看他的解说我相信你也会
学到一些东西的。。。。。。
 
Braid is about a bomb.

Well, it's also about a princess. There are actually two levels of story in 
this game. One is for the casual observer, the kind of guy who simply needs an 
excuse to go from one level to the next. For this person, Braid is about a guy 
chasing a princess from castle to castle, her always being in another one. The 
books vaguely reinforce this idea, and for the casual observer this explanation 
will suffice.

I'm going to assume you do not fit this description because you are reading 
this FAQ.

Braid is about chasing an evasive goal and the consequences suffered both 
chasing it and ultimately reaching it. It's about learning from your 
experiences and mistakes chasing that goal. And yes, it is also about a bomb.

Let's rewind.

THE STORY OF BRAID                                                    {castle2}
*******************************************************************************

1945, Manhattan

Tim walked anonymously across a bridge, stopping occasionally to admire the 
magnificent sunset gracing the heavens this afternoon. The sun itself glowed 
intensely, low in the New York skyline. As Tim approached his house, dusk 
turned to night, and he looked up to stare at the cluster of stars above. It 
had always looked like it wanted to form a picture of some sort, but Tim had 
never been able to connect the dots.

As a child, Tim and his mother would pass in front of a candy store. Everything 
he wanted was on the opposite side of that pane of glass. The store was 
decorated in bright colors, and the scents wafting out drove him crazy. He 
tried to rush for the door, or just get closer to the glass, but he couldn't. 
She held him back with great strength. Why would she hold him back? How might 
he break free of her grasp? He considered violence.

They had been here before on their daily walks. She didn't mind his screams and 
his shrieks, or the way he yanked painfully on her braid to make her stop. He 
was too little to know better.

She picked him up and hugged him: "No, baby," she said. He was shaking. She 
followed his gaze toward the treats sitting on pillows behind the glass: the 
chocolate bar and the magnetic monopole, the It-From-Bit and the Ethical 
Calculus; and so many other things, deeper inside. "Maybe when you're older, 
baby," she whispered, setting him back on his feet and leading him home, "Maybe 
when you're older."

Every day thereafter, as before, she always walked him on a route that passed 
in front of the candy store.

As a result, Tim grew to become an obsessive man. His lonely house reflected 
this well. Among the items he kept in his home were a guitar, a model ship, a 
kite, and nearly all of his childhood belongings.

Tim was a man of diverse interests, a tinkerer. He often spent his time 
daydreaming, bent over a drafting table or stretched out on the sofa, reliving 
old memories and dreaming up new ones. He would go home after work in the 
evening and completely submerge himself in his idiosyncratic thoughts, losing 
track of the hours as they ticked towards morning.

Tim was a scientist by profession, an occupation that served his personality
well. He was one of the key scientists on the Manhattan Project, a mission to
develop the world's first nuclear weapon. It was World War II, after all, and
the Americans were anxious to establish nuclear capability before the Germans.
Tim considered the so-called "atomic bomb" his Princess - his obsession and the
goal which he dedicated his life to achieving.

He worked his ruler and his compass. He inferred. He deduced. He scrutinized 
the fall of an apple, the twisting of metal orbs hanging from a thread. He was 
searching for the Princess, and he would not stop until he found her, for he 
was hungry. He cut rats into pieces to examine their brains, implanted tungsten 
posts into the skulls of water-starved monkeys.

But the bomb did not want to be made. It knew that its creation would change 
the world irrevocably. The world doesn't have a rewind button, after all, and 
to bring a force of this magnitude and power into being would be a mistake. Tim 
couldn't see this. Ghostly, the Princess stood in front of him and looked into 
his eyes. "I am here," she said. "I am here. I want to touch you." She pleaded: 
"Look at me!" But he would not see her; he only knew how to look at the 
outsides of things.

But to be sure, Tim did encounter several warnings. Red flags, you could say. 
None of which he took heed. "Listen to me," pleaded one. "Stop," begged 
another. "Stop instantly." "You are running into danger!" warned the third. The 
final cried out, "No!"

The Princess eluded him constantly. Always in another castle. If she exists - 
she must! - she would transform him, and everyone.

Tim wanted, like nothing else, to find the Princess, to know her at last. For 
Tim this would be momentous, sparking an intense light that would embrace the 
world, a light that would reveal the secrets long kept from us, that 
illuminates - or materializes! - a final palace where we could exist in peace.

But how would this be perceived by the other residents of the city, in the 
world that flows contrariwise? The light would be intense and warm at the 
beginning, but then flicker down to nothing, taking the castle with it; it 
would be like burning down the place we've always called home, where we played 
so innocently as children. Destroying all hope of safety, forever.

Every time he thought he was on the brink of capture, the Princess would do 
everything she could to stop him, burn him, kill him. Her knight in shining 
armor would be there, ready to rescue the Princess from her incessant stalker. 
Tim wouldn't give up, though. He never saw that side of the Princess. From his
perspective, she needed Tim to save her.

He scrutinized the fall of an apple, the twisting of metal orbs hanging from a 
thread. Through these clues he would find the Princess, see her face.

On July 16, 1945, after an especially fervent night of tinkering, Tim found 
himself kneeled behind a bunker in the New Mexico desert. He held a piece of 
welder's glass up to his eyes and waited, staring intently at the Trinity 
detonation site located 10 miles away.

This time he was ready. The fulfillment of his obsession was imminent. The 
stars had aligned for Tim, and he knew that time was finally on his side. Tim 
quickly cornered the Princess. She responded by exploding in a violent, white 
burst of rage.

She stood tall and majestic. She radiated fury. She shouted: "Who has disturbed 
me?" But then, anger expelled, she felt the sadness beneath; she let her breath 
fall softly, like a sigh, like ashes floating gently on the wind.

She couldn't understand why he chose to flirt so closely with the death of the 
world.

"On that moment hung eternity," wrote journalist William Laurence, "Time stood 
still. Space contracted to a pinpoint. It was as though the earth had opened 
and the skies split. One felt as though he had been privileged to witness the 
Birth of the World..."

Nearby, director Oppenheimer said: "It worked."

Director Bainbridge said: "Now we are all sons of bitches."

One evening back in New York, Tim looked up towards the sky, and for the first 
time saw the clear figure in the stars. It was the constellation Andromeda - 
"The Chained Maiden". A reminder that he had finally captured his Princess, 
once and for all.

To this day, Tim continues his ritual of dreaming around his house, floating in 
the clouds, reconstructing memories of his past, deconstructing experiences 
that may or may not have already occured. His journey is an inward one, and he 
hopes to learn from his mistakes in his next adventure.

He cannot say he has understood all of this. Possibly he's more confused now 
than ever. But all these moments he's contemplated - something has occurred. 
The moments feel substantial in his mind, like stones. Kneeling, reaching down 
toward the closest one, running his hand across it, he finds it smooth, and 
slightly cold.

He tests the stone's weight; he finds he can lift it, and the others too. He 
can fit them together to create a foundation, an embankment, a castle.
	
To build a castle of appropriate size, he will need a great many stones. But 
what he's got, now, feels like an acceptable...

Start.