Braid Anniversary Edition is out now, rewinding time approximately 15 years

Look, you've had 15 years to play that well-regarded time-bending puzzler sitting in your Steam library, staring at you this whole time. Well, now you can have another 15 years. Braid Anniversary Edition is out on Steam now, a high definition remastering of a classic indie. It got stuck in time following a few delays but it's finally defrosted now. The sharper look will appeal to pixel perfectionists, but there are also 40 new levels for serial rewinders. And - for those interested in the thought processes of designer Jonathan Blow - a bunch of developer commentary.

Braid is basically an artifact of platformer history now, yet still qualifies as one of our best platformers on PC. It took the rewind-on-death mechanic of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and asked: "What if that, but with a sad boy in a suit?" The results were more clever than my glib summation: a smart puzzler where you had to rethink the rules in nearly every room.

The artwork for the re-release has been repainted "pixel by pixel", bringing time-schlepping protagonist Tim into sharper focus, while the sound design and musical score has been re-imagined by Danish soundfolk Hans Christian Kock and Martin Stig Andersen. You might remember the latter composer as the guy who recorded sounds for platformer Inside through a real human skull. That's certainly how I remember him.

What will drive preservationists and game history likers to the re-release, though, is the many hours of audio commentary from Jonathan Blow and artist David Hellman (among others) about the game's creation. Blow has always been an outspoken figure in the industry, so there might be some interesting and forthright opinions or revelations in that commentary. I once interviewed J Blo many years ago, as Graham has reminded me, and the core memory was him slamming timesinky social media games while munching on a dry croissant. It's possible he's mellowed in the 13 years since then.

You can pick up Braid Anniversary Edition on Steam, where owners of the original will get a 50% "loyalty discount" for a limited time.