If you haven’t already played Braid, you simply must boot up your Xbox 360, hit XBLA and download the game right away. Simply put, this time manipulation / puzzle centric game is a must-play.
Although Microsoft has yet to announce official sales numbers for the game, Braid’s creator, Jonathan Blow, has updated his blog, revealing some statistics from the game’s first week of being available on XBLA.
As I write this, there are 62,242 entries on the main leaderboards. I don’t have official sales numbers for the full week, but I would guess about 55,000 people have bought the game so far.
18,141 have completed the game (or at least gotten 60 puzzle pieces, since that is what the leaderboard shows).
528 people have completed the Full Game Speed Run. Of these, 238 have beaten the challenge time, and thus gotten all 200 Achievement points that you can get from Braid on Xbox Live.
Thousands of people have been playing the single-level speed runs. There are 5,098 people on the Leap of Faith speed run leaderboard, for example.
Sales are now slower than they were on launch day, but not too much: the sales didn’t just die after the first few days, as they do with some games. As a result, it looks like I will be able to make the next game, without needing to get a job that would interfere with that. (The estimated sales so far of 55,000 are not enough for this, but extrapolating into the future, the situation looks safe). Thank you, once again, for making that possible. — Jonathan Blow, creator of Braid
Fantastic news, indeed. Jonathan Blow is quickly earning a name for himself, and rightfully so. Braid is f****** brilliant. I eagerly anticipate whatever he thinks up next.
