We've been updating the Braid executable on Steam recently and will continue to do so in the near future. We're not adding anything to the game or changing the gameplay in any way; the updates are just about fixing problems running the game for people whose operating system / driver / hardware config is causing problems.

The biggest things we've done are:

* Add a launcher in Windows which will help you set options easily. If you have a mysterious crash, you might try running in windowed mode, for example.

* Enabled Steam's crash reporting, which will help us see what kinds of problems are out there in the world and how widespread they are. (This feature of Steam did not exist when Braid was launched).

It appears that some people are still having crashes even after the update. Usually these crashes are related to graphics drivers, so we always encourage people to try updating their drivers. Apart from that we'll be looking at the newly-instituted error reports and seeing what we can improve.

If you have been having problems on AMD cards running Braid, this driver is likely to fix the problem:

http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/latest-catalyst-windows-beta.aspx

Over time this fix should make its way into the non-beta driver.

There is a new beta up that will hopefully fix crashes and other misc problems that people have been having.

To try it, pick "newbeta" from the betas tab. Then (for good measure) right-click on Braid, to a Delete Local Content, and install the new version.

Please let me know if this version works for you! If it does not cause any major problems I would like to move it to the main branch.

Changed package format. (May reduce crashes on startup.)

The beta has been updated. Fixes since the last beta include:

Mouse handling robustness improved; mouse drift on puzzle screen should be gone.
More-robust selection of fullscreen display modes. Fall back to windowed mode if a fullscreen mode cannot be found.
In windowed mode, the window can be resized.
(Note: -width and -height arguments will not currently affect fullscreen mode; they only affect windowed mode).
Hopefully runs on Windows XP again (not yet tested locally, but if someone out there could try it, that would be great).

The new update solved some problems for some people, but apparently it created new problems for other people. So I am rolling back the main version of Braid to the old one until all problems are solved.

Among the problems introduced in the new update:

* The game no longer worked on Windows XP (this was caused by the updating of the game to the new Visual Studio 2013 compiler; Visual Studio now breaks XP compatibility by default).
* The mouse got stuck on the puzzle screen for some players, making puzzles unplayable.
* The game sometimes cannot find a good display mode for some players, whereas it found one before.

I apologize for the inconvenience. It's very hard to know what a Windows game is going to do when released to a large number of people, these days. Developing for Windows now is basically a giant disaster (Windows has become very complicated). The strategy with new versions going forward will be to minimize the amount of Windows functionality that they rely on for the game to be playable (for example, the next release will no longer attempt to go into a fullscreen display mode; it will just render to an offscreen buffer and then stretchblit that to a fullscreen window). Also, I'll test the next update much more thoroughly before releasing it as the main version.

The new update is still live on the beta branch and the password has been taken off the beta branch to make it easy for everyone to get at. New updates will be published on the beta branch until such time as they are determined to be working very well.

Expected features for next update:

* Fix XP compatibility for new version
* Render 'fullscreen' without attempting to switch display modes
* Change the way the game interfaces with the mouse, to minimize problems

Thanks for your patience and again I apologize for any inconvenience.

If the old version of the game doesn't work for you, you might want to try the beta in the meantime and see if that works better.

People are wondering about the update; so far it is some bug fixes for Windows:

Fixed: Mouse creep on puzzle screens on some systems.
Fixed: December savegames said (null) instead of the month name.
Fixed: Crash due to out-of-bounds access when loading shaders, sometimes.
Took out "How to Play" menu, renamed Help & Options to be just Options.