Braid
Worth it · Strategy · 2009
Steam Deck VerifiedThe verdict
BUY IT.
Worth it at $14.99, a BANGER if it drops to $8.60.
- Length
- 5.1h
- Value
- $2.94/hr
- Reviews
- 93% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 768 MB of memory, Pixel Shader 2.0, 205 MB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux.
This is the original version of Braid from 2009, which may not work well on newer systems. For an updated version of the game with nicer graphics, more levels and a large amount of developer commentary, see Braid, Anniversary Edition.
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
The value story
December 2016 is where it bottomed out, at $1.49. It has been discounted 53 times in the 14 years tracked here, typically at 75 percent off, with about 8 weeks between sales. Past sales have already crossed the $8.60 BANGER line 52 times.
Value puts it in the top 2 percent of the games it competes with. It is pricier than 84 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 98 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Trine 2: Complete Story ($19.99, scores 77) beats it on value, while it beats Munin ($4.99, scores 61).
Steam's global achievement data puts 27 percent of players at this game's ending achievement. The median game this site can measure sits at 8. Of the 526 Steam-purchase reviews this site sampled, 3 come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written April 2020 to August 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 81 percent of the 1,091 reviews written there were positive, against 93 percent overall, and those are 16 percent of everything written about it.
It carries Valve's Deck Verified rating and runs 5.1 hours, about as long as a handheld game wants to be.
The drop-off
88% start to 27% finishA normal fall-off for a game this long. Steam global achievements
Players
5 players at peak in the last day.
The chart appears once this game has been counted more than once.Player counts via SteamSpy.
What players say
Fantastic game. Really makes you think. That ending was better than most AAA games today. Perfectly blended lore into gameplay.
Player reviews from Steam: the most helpful all-time, plus the newest that clear the same quality bar, with the hours each player had put in when they wrote it. The mix of Recommended and Not recommended follows the game's Steam ratio. Rotates daily. Opinions are theirs.
Cite this score
Embed the live badge, copy the line, or download the card.
Braid scores 75/100 on the BANG Score (worth it). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/26800/braidThe BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Aug 3, price as of Sep 24.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.