braid time travel

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Buy Braid, Anniversary Edition

About this game, manipulate time to move forward, a fresh coat of paint, go (deep) behind the scenes.

• Created By thekla, Inc.

System Requirements

• Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
• OS: Windows 10 64-bit
• Processor: Intel Core i3-7100 / Ryzen 3 2200G
• Memory: 4 GB RAM
• Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 660 / AMD Radeon HD 7870
• DirectX: Version 11
• Storage: 4 GB available space
• Sound Card: DirectX compatible
• OS: Windows 11 64-bit
• Processor: Intel Core i5-11400F / AMD Ryzen 5 3400G
• Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 1070 / AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT

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Things Of Interest

Time travel in braid.

I bought Braid on the promise of lavish visuals and neat puzzles with temporal mechanics, and on this basis I was rewarded. I found some frustration with the controls, which I eventually traced to dodgy keyboard drivers - the game wouldn't register the up or down arrows while I was holding Shift, making it impossible to rewind at high speed. Since I wasn't even aware that you could rewind at high speed, this made one particular puzzle impossible until I eventually caved, broke a long-standing personal rule and looked the answer up online. The game itself, though, is joyous. It's old, I guess, which means either you've played it already or you haven't and never intend to. In the event that you've never played it and can be swayed, I suggest you check it out. Well-judged puzzle difficulty, extraordinary visuals, super desktop wallpaper material, cool new gameplay mechanics, and I discovered some good new music as well. Most of the music in this game is by Jami Sieber, check her out.

I actually severely dislike Mario and Mario games, so this game has that going for it as well.

I don't think I play enough games to be able to say with confidence whether Braid is/was a quantum leap forward for puzzle games or videogames in general. Other than being wonderfully well-executed, the main differentiator for this game is the story, and I really couldn't tell you anything about the story, except that I found each individual paragraph quite hard to swallow. As far as I can tell, Braid 's story is deliberately constructed and presented to be super-ambiguous in a way which fosters energetic discussion of possible interpretations. This is a narrative practice which I'm instinctively dubious of. It strikes me as deliberate obfuscation, a way of avoiding stating anything clearly and directly, offloading the author's work to the reader. When I'm invited to lay my own interpretation of events on top of a thing, more often than not I feel an impulse to just step back and give no interpretation.

What I'm saying is that I'm not writing this writeup to cover the text. From my perspective Braid is all about aesthetics, and superbly constructed puzzle scenarios, and mechanics . Braid introduces one new time manipulation mechanic in each of its six worlds. Some of these technically qualify as time travel, some of them don't; some of them have storytelling possibilities, some of them don't. (This is independent of the actual story of Braid , which as far as I can discern is not actually a time travel story at all, although I forgive it.) These possibilities are what I want to focus on here.

Nevertheless: spoilers?

I've written numerous times about time , time travel and time travel in specific works of fiction . One thing I keep coming back around to is the fact that there are models for time travel ; in fact, very broad classes of models, which individual time travel stories select among, and then refine for their own specific storytelling purposes. Another topic I've revisited several times, inescapable to any time travel nerd, is that many time travel stories have rough edges or deliberate errors in their models. There will be moments in the story where the strict rules, if there were any, are deliberately disobeyed because they are inconvenient, and because the story needs to go in a different direction from what was previously established to be possible.

This happens because in fiction you can put together whatever sequence of words you like, and nothing can stop you. Your need for one word to follow the other is more important than the need of your universe to be internally consistent. In practical terms, there is nothing which can stop you from making a film whose main conflict is resolved when, say, objects suddenly start to fall up instead of down.

Contrarily, inside a computer game, there are rules. A computer game, like any computer program, can only behave in the way in which it has been programmed to behave. (Give or take hardware faults and solar flares, obviously.) And if you have written your computer program to instantiate and execute a virtual environment, and to allow a player character to navigate that environment, then what you have built is a universe with a model; a model which is inviolate. This is a great way to immediately avert all possibility of inconsistency.

(In The Matrix , while standing inside a virtual combat environment, Morpheus explains to Neo: "It has the same basic rules, rules like gravity. What you must understand is that these rules are no different than the rules of a computer system. Some of them can be bent. Others can be broken." This speech always rubbed me up the wrong way, and not just because it's "different from ", not "different than ". You can't bend a computer, unless you want to take some kind of science fictional electromagnetic effector to it. A more correct statement would be: "Some of the rules have faulty implementations, which may be exploited. Other rules are correctly implemented but poorly thought out, leaving loopholes." In any case, let's assume the opposite. Yes, Braid may have a rampant buffer overflow which, like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time , lets you warp directly into the closing credits. But no one's found one yet, so let's assume it doesn't, and that the world the game presents is correctly implemented, not exploitable.)

Braid is a conventional platformer plus a whole slew of time-related game mechanics. Some of these mechanics only dubiously qualify as "time travel". But I can say for sure that all of these mechanics are implemented consistently. To the extent that there is time travel in Braid , and to the extent that the game doesn't just crash when something weird happens, and to the extent that the game isn't loaded with hard-coded one-time special-case exceptions, time travel in Braid is consistent; contradiction-free. This is a good win for time travel fiction!

There's a slight down side to this approach. A game universe, no matter how advanced, is necessarily simpler than the real universe. Braid , like almost every game ever made, does not model air particles, or the real-time propagation of light and sound. The game's collision detection is (is able to be) pleasantly forgiving. Individual breaths of air and blades of grass are not modelled.

So, just because a game presents a consistent model doesn't mean that this model can be transplanted back into "the real world" without contradictions arising. I don't even mean contradictions with the established laws of physics, because unless the world flips upside-down tomorrow and we discover exotic matter, modern physics pretty much conclusively rules out macroscopic time travel. I mean really glaring scientific objections, like, how does Tim's nervous system actually work?

Tim is the name of the player character. Tim/time, get it? Get it?

Of course, a game needn't feature time travel to have these problems. How many games have teleportation? Infinite ammo? Perpetual motion?

2. Time and Forgiveness

The first world, numbered 2 for reasons which become clear later, introduces Braid 's core mechanic. This persists through the whole game, and works like this:

• You can "rewind time". You can travel backwards along your personal lifeline, watching events play out in reverse. You can even rewind time at high speed, or wind forward again if you go too far back, or stall entirely. You continue to perceive normally through this.
• After rewinding as far as you like, you can let time flow normally again, fully cognisant of everything that happened in all previous timelines.
• You can use your foreknowledge to do something different from what you did before.
• Get-out clause: if you die, time stops, and you can/must rewind to save yourself.

This has some interesting consequences. As the game designer, you don't need restart points, a save system, lives or health anymore. You can just rely on the player to rewind time any time they make a mistake, such as falling into flaming spikes. If a situation turns out to be thoroughly doomed and inescapable, they can simply rewind further, all the way to the beginning of the level if need be.

If the player forgets something, they can wind back and get it. Say, if there's a gap which can only be crossed by bouncing on an enemy from high above, but they already killed that enemy, they can wind back and deliberately leave it alive when they pass it in the next timeline. There's a micro-puzzle, right there.

And if a particular obstacle can only be overcome with precision jumping, and there's a near-bottomless pit below or a risk of instant death from a hundred fireballs, you-the-game-designer can make that task unusually difficult and unfair, because if the player screws it up it only takes a second to rewind the entire scene and try again with slightly different timing.

So, these are puzzles and challenges. Fairly basic stuff, and this mechanic alone only sustains one brief world. Are there also stories that can be told with this mechanic? Of course. For a character to be apparently unkillable, supernaturally well-prepared, and a supernaturally lucky guesser, is a legitimate superpower. The scope of applications ranges from winning coin tosses, to always choosing the perfect words in every important conversation, to never missing a shot with any kind of firearm.

As with many time travel models, this ability is so powerful it probably needs to be toned down before it becomes practical for a story. Some things to explore: the sheer boredom of constantly experiencing the same day or hour or minute over and over again until you get it right; the discontinuity when you "resume" after rewinding time a little; the agony of experiencing the same unpleasant fight over and over again until you win. There are also deep paradoxes which arise when one character with this power runs into another character with the same power. What does this person perceive when you rewind time, and vice versa? In a fight between you, who wins? How far back can you go? How much of your life are you willing to unravel and experience again just for the sake of a particular confrontation? How much of your life would you simply go back and re-experience over and over again?

The more I think about this, the more I think I need to write it. Although, I can't imagine nobody has written it already.

3. Time and Mystery

In the second world, the time-reversal phenomenon remains, but new rules are added.

• Luminous green objects are not subject to your time-reversal power. They always behave normally, whether you are winding time forward or backward, or even while you are dead and time has apparently frozen.
• When you rewind time, you travel backwards along your established historic track, all the way to the level entrance at the beginning of time. This remains the case even if (1) a green platform now presents an obstruction which was not there in the original timeline (you will rewind straight through it) or (2) a green platform which you used to reach a certain area is missing in this timeline (you will appear to run across thin air).
• If you unfreeze time while you're inside an obstacle, you'll probably die. If you unfreeze while running across air, you'll fall.
• Some green platforms are "contagious". While you are standing on one, you become green, and therefore immune to your own time-reversal power. This essentially erases your past history. You can rewind all the way to the beginning of time, with the whole universe at first positions, but you'll still be on the platform, instead of at the level entrance.

Green objects break "history", if there ever was such a thing. Green objects force us to accept that the universe of Braid has at least two time dimensions. This is the only way in which a green object can obey "forwards" physics while the universe is rewinding around it. (Psst. In fact, this has always been the case since world 2. Notice how you, the player at the computer, are also glowing green?)

What happens when a game designer starts playing with these rules? There's no point in me going over that because what happens is almost exactly this game , starting with this world and then every world after it. Each individual jigsaw puzzle piece puzzle (?) explores a distinct ramification, starting with The Pit and finishing with the boss, whose health is persistent across multiple timelines and who is defeated by dropping the same single chandelier on his head five times in five timelines.

There is a synergy, some kind of weird -morphism, between science fiction stories and puzzle games. In I, Robot , Isaac Asimov invents Three Laws of Robotics, then uses them in various combinations and variants to generate a wide slew of different short stories. It's a technique with very broad applications. You spin up a new law of physics or a new MacGuffin and then think, "What if? What are the consequences of this rule or object existing? How does the universe change? How must the universe change retroactively to allow this thing to exist in the first place?" Then you turn the handle until a story appears. I've done this myself numerous times, particularly with time travel stories. As you go through my fiction archive in reverse order, it becomes increasingly blatant.

The best example, although I sort of cringe at my own writing when I re-read this one, is Be Here Now . Here I started with a simple model of time travel:

• You can go back in time.
• Going back in time causes an entirely new universe to fork off from the old one, at the moment of re-entry.
• You can never return to the original universe - from their perspective, you have disappeared forever.
• In the new universe, you can freely e.g. kill your grandfather.

With this model in mind, what happens? Well, after jumping back in time by one week, now there are two of you in the same universe. That's inconvenient, because you need to share your life and identity with your other self. But there's an easy way to solve the problem: send your other self back in time just like you, leaving you to take over in this new universe. Tell your other self to do exactly the same thing in their new universe.

But this creates an infinite regression of new universes being created. Most of the copies of you will be copies sent back from other universes; only the first copy will be the original you. So there's an interesting scenario already: What must it be like to be a copy of yourself who exists a long way down that infinite regression, so far down that you're unable to see the top of it? How could you be sure where the regression truly started, or what its circumstances were? How could you trust your other self?

And does the regression ever end? The answer is yes: sooner or later, after ten thousand or a million stages, one of you dies in a freak accident, and the other one of you decides not to continue looping.

And that's it. That's essentially a complete story.

Meanwhile: you, the game designer, are building a puzzle game. You develop a new mechanic or a small pool of new mechanics, and you implement a game universe where these rules are law. Then you start toying with what you've built, discovering the brain-swivelling results. Then you develop puzzles such that each individual brain-swivelling result is the solution to a puzzle.

Obviously now I have to skew sideways into the vast list of reasons why these two tasks are actually totally unlike one another. Such as the fact that the purpose of a puzzle is to be impassable until the player thinks and then solves it, earning that spark of achievement... whereas the purpose of a story may be to cultivate literally any imaginable reaction, but whatever happens, you can never stop a reader from reading all the way to the end.

But some science fiction stories really are just little puzzles, some of them (Asimov) really do just start with a wacky concept as a setup and conclude with a wacky consequence as the punchline. And there's something to be said for what I guess I'd call economy of invention when worldbuilding.

Getting back on topic, can this "green" stuff be turned into stories? I mean, stories which are more substantial than literal retellings of the events of some random individual playing Braid ? Well, possibly. I mentioned above that you'd need to tone down the time-rewinding power in order to make it less universe-endingly powerful. Introducing special entities which are simply immune to that power is a great start. The boss I mentioned is actually the concept with the most obvious potential here. An alarming development: "I see what you're doing, protagonist! You can't hyper-prepare your way out of this one. I'm coming for you!"

"Time and Mystery" is also the world where we start to run into paradoxes. To be explicit about what I mean here, a paradox is a scenario which apparently involves a contradiction, but actually does not. Paradoxes are completely standard fare for time travel stories. Seen from the perspective of a time-locked, non-green Goomba, the Braid universe is highly paradoxical in nature. Tim somehow enters the level from a contagious green platform instead of via the level entrance; Tim apparently runs across platforms which only existed in a previous timeline; jigsaw pieces disappear spontaneously, collected by Tims in prior timelines.

None of this is actually problematic. Real contradictions would be problematic-- in fact, contradictions are highly undesirable in almost all kinds of story. The real physical world, almost by definition, does not contain contradictions, and ideally the same should be true of model universes constructed for fiction. But computer games, being both necessarily simpler than the real world and physically embedded in the real world, do not contain contradictions, except arguably when they crash. The Braid universe is highly paradoxical from most perspectives, but the game itself isn't famed for its instability. It behaves consistently, and does not contain contradictions. This makes it fair to set puzzles in this universe, and it ensures that these puzzles are solvable through rational thought.

4. Time and Place

In the third world we get another new rule. Tim continues to behave as before, with rewindable time. Green glowing objects are, as always, exempt from all time shenanigans and operate normally. But:

• The game level, including all Goombas, cannons, clouds, levers and platforms, is operating on a third time axis, one which is connected to Tim's X-position in the level.
• As Tim moves from left to right, events unfold according to what essentially amounts to a script. Tim can interfere with the script, by bopping Goombas and throwing switches.
• As Tim moves back from right to left, even if by a different route, events fold back up again, Goombas unbop and switches unthrow.
• Objects experiencing "backwards" physics (i.e. the game level, as Tim progresses from right to left) do not interact with objects experiencing "forwards" physics. For example, Tim cannot bop a Goomba while moving left, because this makes no causal sense.

The aim of the puzzles in this world, broadly, is to engineer a sequence of events, from left to right, which leaves you with all the jigsaw puzzle pieces you need. Instead of a "live" scene which is constantly playing out in time, the game level is more of a dynamic maze which you must navigate. History is almost a physical object laid out in front of you, with which you interfere until you get your way.

(It turns out that the behaviour of ordinary, non-green keys under these circumstances is truly bizarre, bizarre enough to warrant a whole level ("Fickle Companion") dedicated to exploring this behaviour. I have a hunch that this behaviour was not coded in deliberately; rather, the world's rules were programmed, and then this astonishing behaviour was discovered as an emergent property, after which puzzles were built around it. Under normal circumstances, the key sits still. Carrying a key from left to right, it follows your hand, as normal. Move from right to left, though, and the key rewinds along its personal timeline instead of following your path back across the level. The key jumps back up to a platform you fell from, and then instantly descends a vertical ladder which you climbed, with an unnerving visible discontinuity. However, a green Goomba can carry the key from right to left with impunity, effectively unwinding and rewriting part of the key's past history, placing it in the "past" at a place where it could never be put any other way. You can then retrieve it from this location in the past and carry it forward along different paths which were otherwise unreachable.)

Overall, as I think you can see, "Time and Place" its multiple time dimensions are quite hard to explain on paper. As complex as these rules are, they are far easier to understand when presented as an interactive game. If you're reading this essay having never played Braid , I dread to think how difficult it is to understand the paragraphs above.

Because of this I have difficulty imagining how you could convert this world or model into a coherent science fiction story. I guess the lesson is that some things are just better experienced interactively than any other way. Some models/mechanics/concepts are so convoluted that a game is really the only sensible way to explain or experience them.

I've run into this before. For example, I was tempted to try to make a game, or at least a demo, out of this absurdly complicated model . I didn't do it, as didn't think the model had enough value to be worth exploring that far. But I'm still sorely tempted to do this for Primer , just because it would make the whole film so much more accessible for the confused. And I think there might be a neat game in there.

Some models/mechanics/concepts, of course, are so sophisticated that even a correctly-programmed game can't help much. Among these models, alas, is real physics . Bad luck, everybody. We live in one of the bad universes.

5. Time and Decision

The fourth world drops the zoetrope-esque behaviour of "Time and Place" and replaces it with:

• You can see a shadow of the previous timeline. If you rewind time and do something else, you can watch a shadow of yourself carry out the same acts you just rewound - along with an entire shadow rest-of-the-world, including shadow cannons and Goombas.
• Once the shadow universe's prescribed sequence of events runs out - because player input ends, because you hit rewind - this shadow universe continues moving until it eventually fades. Even the shadow version of Tim continues moving until he comes to rest.
• All of which is absolutely useless without this extra note: objects which glow pink are present in both timelines. They interact with both the shadow universe and the present universe.

This leads to puzzles where you have to cooperate with your shadow self to get things done - and frequently, sacrifice your shadow self. This is obviously a potent storytelling concept with hooks both neat and grisly, although it can be executed very easily without invoking time travel, and indeed has been, numerous times. Just off the top of my head, you could go and look up the film The Prestige , or any X-Men story involving the character Madrox the Multiple Man.

6. Hesitance

The fifth world introduces a movement-slowing ring, which yields clever new platform puzzles. Unforgiving as these puzzles are (thanks to the still-present rewind mechanic), this isn't time travel by any stretch. In fact, time distortion of this kind is a genuine phenomenon in the real world, displayed by extremely massive objects and fully explained by the general theory of relativity. Possibly acknowledging this, "Time and" is missing from the world name.

I'm hurrying because the good bit is next.

The sixth and final world, "1.", is telegraphed since the beginning of the game. This is the one where the logic starts to get laugh-out-loud smart. In this world, game universe time apparently runs backwards. Goombas rise, dead, from the bottom of the screen, collide with flames which bring them back to life, and are sucked back into cannons.

Most jaw-droppingly, if you bop (or rather, unbop) a Goomba as it rises up from the bottom of the screen, you can retcon its death from death-by-flame to death-by-bop. This also retcons the Goomba's origin to a different cannon. You've switched it over to a different possible past!

I want to say that solving the first(/last) puzzle of this world was the most joyous moment in this whole game for me.

This game mechanic is absurdly easy to get wrong. After a little observation and study, it becomes clear that the game can't possibly be implementing the laws of physics in reverse somehow, because in the temporal universe in which we live this is actually impossible. Nor is there a pre-existing game history which is being rewound. Instead, the game is programmed to behave in a way which, when wound forward again, appears realistic. When a Goomba gets near a cannon, for example, it starts bouncing in such a way as to take it into the cannon's mouth, while the cannon's fuse withers to black. When the cannon swallows the Goomba, the fuse ignites and fills back up.

This takes a lot of care, and you can see that the puzzles in the first three levels of this world are very tightly constrained in order to avoid exposing the "scaffolding" which makes it possible. Green objects and mobile platforms are absent, for example, because they'd cause all kinds of causality problems. Not that it would be impossible to deal with them, consistently, even, but the conceit of backwards physics would be violated.

(Can you imagine trying to build a game with combat under these circumstances? Every time the enemy hits you, you gain health... What happens if you're hit while at full health? The universe explodes? I'm given to understand that all of Braid was originally intended to work in this way, but the concept was dropped when it turned out to be too difficult to do. Considering what the Braid team did manage to do, this is an alarming statement.)

In fact, there is at least one visible slip-up. In the climactic final section of this world (and the game), there is a cannon which is constantly sucking in fireballs, which are flung at it spontaneously by a far wall. The far wall continues to fling fireballs up to and after the point where the cannon is swallowed by the moving wall of flame. When this happens, the backwards-travelling fireball, having no coherent past history track , simply halts in mid-air and disappears. A more advanced game would have to look into the realtime future of the game level, determine whether the cannon was going to still exist for long enough, then use this to decide whether the wall should produce a new fireball or not.

And yet... fireballs don't disappear accidentally. Somebody discovered this issue and had to code that code path to make it happen. Remember what I said about hard-coded one-time special-case exceptions?

In summary, causality is really, really hard to do without. I know of only one other work of fiction which uses this model, the Red Dwarf episode "Backwards", but it, like that whole show, leans heavily on comedy to hide inconsistencies. Which is a totally legitimate way to play it, and possibly the only way to play it.

In the final section of the main game, Tim runs through a tunnel pursued by fire, while the princess - who, and I'm just mentioning this because I want to make sure I'm not crazy, does not have a braid in her hair - pulls levers to help him progress. As Tim reaches the princess's bedroom, time suddenly reverses, and the whole level plays out backwards. Viewed in reverse, it becomes clear that in fact the princess is fleeing from Tim, pulling levers to try to trap him. You thought the princess had escaped from a villainous knight; actually, she was rescued by him.

This is actually no great narrative trick.

Alright, I admit it. It's genuinely brilliant, and effective, and it's a knock-out climax to the game. Whether it illuminates the story any, I don't want to try to say. But at the time I played it, I was super impressed.

But a while after I finished Braid I suddenly realised that I'd played this game before. The game of reversing a story, I mean. We did this with films.

The Matrix : Neo, the One, the most anomalously powerful human in the Matrix, fights and is trounced by a particularly dangerous agent of the system, Smith. Although Neo recovers, his psyche is so damaged that he loses his reality-shaping abilities and then his basic combat skills. He becomes gradually weaker and less confident; eventually, useless. The crew of the Nebuchadnezzar reluctantly plugs him into the Matrix, essentially turning him over to Smith, to live a dismal life out as an insensate drone. Neo is left with nothing but a grey cubicle job and a nagging suspicion that something is wrong with the world. Humanity, meanwhile, is doomed without their saviour.

Toy Story : Arriving at their new home, Woody and Buzz immediately head next door and execute an elaborate prank on their new neighbour kid, Sid. It turns sour when Sid captures them, torturing Buzz to the extent that he loses his mind and begins hallucinating that he is a real space ranger. Somehow they escape alive, but Buzz is never the same again; eventually, his owner, Andy, gives him away. And the other toys forget he ever existed.

Reversing the order of events of a story almost always totally alters its meaning. Naturally! This shouldn't be a surprising discovery. Stories have arcs. They have structure, and finish up in a different place from where they started. Stories with perfect symmetry - palindromes - are very rare, and have to be deliberately constructed to be so.

And notice how much "fuzz" I used in my two examples. Naively running a film backwards doesn't work; listening to human speech backwards doesn't yield meaningful words. Of course, I had to reverse the films thematically, using broad strokes.

Now go and play that final level, which is called "Braid", again. Notice how the princess pulls unnecessary extra levers, both on the first pass and the second. There are ladders on the second pass, which Tim should have been able to climb, but they weren't there on the first pass. Tim leaps up to platforms he should not be able to reach. The dialogue is delivered in a different colour, conveying a different tone of voice. Even the princess's facial expression as she's rescued is different from in the intro.

"Braid" is fuzzed, too. Because that's the only way to make a story read coherently backwards as well as forwards. Recontextualising a story to give it a whole new meaning is legitimate - but recontextualising it by not somehow accidentally reading it backwards ? This is the dictionary definition of the word "contrived".

In the epilogue, I see that there is still no princess, and Tim has built a castle of his own out of his experiences. And what have we learned?

Implementing a game can help you, the implementer, turn an ill-defined or inconsistent concept into something concrete.

A small pool of rules can yield huge storytelling possibilities - but you've got to do some exploring to find them. A game is an excellent tool for this exploration. You may discover things you originally had no idea could be possible.

Playing a game can make a complex concept easy to explore and understand. Some concepts are so advanced that they can't be understood any other way. Some concepts are far too advanced for their own good.

No matter what your chosen medium, no matter whether highly advanced time travel is involved, or just a guy jumping from platform to platform, successfully executing on an idea takes an insane amount of hard thought and hard work.

And you're still going to make mistakes, and nerds like me are still going to jump all over you for it, because that's how I entertain myself, because the real universe is terrible.

I had a great time with Braid and it looks like I have new projects as a result. Good stuff, five stars.

Discussion (27)

2015-03-04 00:51:31 by toakraka:, 2015-03-04 03:16:06 by gazza:, 2015-03-04 04:20:04 by t:, 2015-03-04 09:45:04 by toph:, 2015-03-04 13:00:24 by john:, 2015-03-04 14:13:08 by wfn:, 2015-03-04 15:58:49 by voidhawk:, 2015-03-04 16:25:40 by gwern:, 2015-03-04 17:26:57 by toph:, 2015-03-04 20:43:06 by foxfire:, 2015-03-05 15:07:07 by anonymous:, 2015-03-06 16:09:36 by aegeus:, 2015-03-06 18:45:18 by jymbob :, 2015-03-06 23:56:25 by warlock:, 2015-03-07 00:17:55 by daniellc:, 2015-03-08 00:13:07 by black noise:, 2015-03-09 18:24:14 by p:, 2015-03-09 20:26:21 by qntm:, 2015-03-09 22:21:13 by infz:, 2015-03-10 20:11:00 by salty-horse:, 2015-03-10 23:35:22 by dan hite:, 2015-04-04 05:23:47 by david delaney:, 2015-08-31 17:46:49 by tyr:, 2015-09-18 16:09:28 by turgid:, 2017-03-29 12:01:03 by madblade:, 2017-04-10 09:51:35 by codemon:, 2021-02-10 08:14:13 by matthias_code:, new comment by :.

Game length provided by HowLongToBeat

• Forgiving yet challenging gameplay: Braid is a 2-D platform game where you can never die and never lose. Despite this, Braid is challenging — but the challenge is about solving puzzles, rather than forcing you to replay tricky jumps.
• Rich puzzle environment: Travel through a series of worlds searching for puzzle pieces, then solving puzzles by manipulating time: rewinding, creating parallel universes, setting up pockets of dilated time. The gameplay feels fresh and new; the puzzles are meant to inspire new ways of thinking.
• Aesthetic design: A painterly art style and lush, organic soundtrack complement the unique gameplay.
• Nonlinear story: A nonlinear fiction links the various worlds and provides real-world metaphors for your time manipulations; in turn, your time manipulations are projections of the real-world themes into playful "what-if" universes where consequences can be explored.
• Nonlinear gameplay: The game doesn't force you to solve puzzles in order to proceed. If you can't figure something out, just play onward and return to that puzzle later.

Mac notice: The game is 32-bit only and will not work on macOS 10.15 and up.

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13 Vacation Braid Styles for Your Next Trip

For anyone who enjoys a good recharging vacation during the spring and summer months, now is the time to be thinking about outfits and hair. Vacation braids are a common natural hair go-to because, in addition to looking incredible, they save so much time when you’re out trying to enjoy a new place, experience, or activity. You may have to carve out six hours to get them installed, but no one would do it if it wasn’t worth it.

We thought we’d round up a few vacation braids styling ideas that might catch your eye as you plan your next excursion, big or small. Ahead you’ll find 13 variations of box braids, cornrows, and some in-between styles that you can peruse to your heart’s content. Hopefully, it’ll make planning for that vacation just a little easier!

Fulani-Inspired 

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Mélissa NEROVIQUE (@melissa_nerovique)

Source: @melissa_nerovique

These braids are Fulani-inspired, but the style certainly has its unique flavor! First of all, we love a two-toned look on braids, and the blonde pops out here. And the claw clip is very current and super functional for keeping braids out of the way when necessary.

Waterfall Ponytail

Source: @sbm_beauty_

These half-up half-down braids look eye-catching with loose, curly ends. Loosely secure the front half of your hair with a hair tie to get good height on the ponytail and create the “waterfall” effect that almost looks like one super long ponytail.

Classic Straight Backs with Design

Source: @harmonicurls

Break up the simplicity of straight-back cornrows by throwing a design or two in there. Mairaly (pictured above) did her braids that turned out fabulously, but if you let your braider know you’re interested in designs, you’re sure to walk out of the salon with something amazing.

Half Feed-in Half Sew-in

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Braid Bar Ldn (@braidbarldn)

Source: @braidbarlbn

The age of the sew-in is returning, and we’re not mad at it. If you’re into straight hair at the moment, but not so into straightening your hair, there’s always a good ol’ sew-in. The overall look is fairly simple, but so very clean and sleek.

Beach Wave Braids  

Source: @caeliya.a

If your destination of choice is somewhere tropical with a beach, consider this wavy look. Leaving the ends loose and wavy is like having the best of both worlds if you don’t want to be fully committed to loose or braided hair–it works so well together.

Raindrop Braids

View this post on Instagram A post shared by MB | Hair Content Creator (@amencis.mb)

Source: @amencis.mb

The creativity of this one is on another level. Who made the rule that we can only wear braids on the ends of our hair? We could have been wearing them like little “raindrops” all along.

Long Braided Pony

Source:@yaaskhalifa

That whip-action on a braided ponytail never gets old. With a bundle of synthetic hair (or real, if you’d prefer) you can have a sleek result with minimum effort.

Beaded Fulani-Inspired

Source: @dhatgirlbecca

This style is also Fulani-inspired but with a bit of a zig-zag pattern and some accent beads. There’s a tutorial on this exact look-over on Beauty and Curls on YouTube.

Bantu Knot Crown and Beads

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Oriane Adjibi (@myfashionbreak)

Source: @myfashionbreak

Now that we’ve reclaimed bantu knots in Black hair culture, we’re never letting them go. They’re so versatile. And the braid work here is incredible–unless you’ve got top-notch skills, you’ll want to book an appointment for this one. 

Small Knotless Braids

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Natasha Robinson (@curly.strands)

Source: @curly.strands

Have you ever wanted your knotless braids to look more natural and lay down close to the roots while still adding a lot of lengths? Natasha Robinson shows her followers the trick to achieving that look at home and saving a few hundred dollars. 

Braided Ponytail Piece

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Pearl Ransome (@pearlthestylist_)

Source: @pearlthestylist

Did you know you can buy braided bundles now? Try a 22-inch straight braided pony or a 30-inch curly braided pony from @naturalhairrocks for those quick on-the-go moments. The install takes less than 30 seconds and they come with convenient combs to keep everything in place all day. 

Waves on Straight Braids

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Lesley (@freshlengths)

Source: @freshlengths

Got a fresh install of straight braids but are suddenly feeling more of a wavy look? Heat up some water and braid the braids into chunky sections. Dip the ends in the piping hot water, and voilà. Insta-waves.

Elevated Omarion Braids

Source: @tatayshasha

Does anyone in the older Gen Z or Millennial crowd remember Omarion’s braids from his B2K days? The cornrowed front with individual braids in the back was a look that identified the singer in the early 2000s, and today we’re still rocking similar styles with a modern take. Having individual braids in the back also allows for styles like buns and ponytails, rather than committing to a pattern with cornrows.

Comment below which of these you’re most likely to wear on your next vacation.

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The 28 Best Games Involving Time Travel

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The 20 Best Post-Apocalyptic Games of All Time, Ranked

The 14 best anime that deals with time travel, 15 jrpgs perfect for newcomers to the genre.

In video games, time travel can be as simple as rewinding gameplay or as complex as hopping across space-time dimensions. Furthermore, the concept is not limited to a single genre and is often manipulated in a variety of ways.

Ranking Every Mainline Final Fantasy Game By Its Battle System

Every Final Fantasy game has put its own unique spin on the battle system — some moreso than others. Today, we rank them from worst to best.

Undoubtedly, people have been fascinated with time travel for a long time, even if the actual technology seems destined to remain exclusive to fiction. While some projects use it as a simple mechanic for retrying an action, other time travel games travel deep down the theoretical wormhole.

Updated on January 27, 2024, by Ritwik Mitra: Games need to understand the concept of time well if they wish to use it in their video games. Many titles have failed to adapt the full potential of the fourth dimension, which makes it all the more impressive when some games use the concept of time travel to great effect, elevating the quality of the final product as a result. These titles are incredible video games that fans should check out, especially if they want to see how effective time travel can be in a medium this immersive.

28 The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom

Zelda travels back in time to heal the master sword for link, the legend of zelda: tears of the kingdom.

Tears of the Kingdom had some big shoes to fill and took its sweet time to come out. This wait was worthwhile since players got to experience what many people consider a worthy sequel despite retreading familiar ground.

The story is certainly improved by leaps and bounds, with Zelda's tale being a fascinating one. She decides to become a dragon and help the Master Sword repair for ten thousand years before Link can finally harness its power once again.

27 Twelve Minutes

A time loop adventure that is pretty intriguing despite its missteps, twelve minutes.

The voice cast of Twelve Minutes was its biggest selling point, with James McAvoy, Daisy Ridley, and Willem Dafoe taking on the role of the three characters who play a central role in this narrative. The story focuses on a husband who is killed by a home intruder, only for time to rewind twelve minutes after these events have transpired.

The repetition and frustration caused by the time loop mechanic can make things somewhat irritating, but the central mystery at the heart of things ties events together in a neat way. That being said, this plot twist can also have a mixed reception from players.

26 Prince Of Persia: Warrior Within

The prince embarks on a journey after being punished for his use of the sands of time.

After the success of Sands of Time , Ubisoft took the bold approach of making the sequel darker and more foreboding to appeal to a new audience. The results were pretty mixed, with some people hating the edgy nature of this title while others loved how metal this game was, with everything from the storyline to the characters reflecting this.

There's a lot of time travel involved in Warrior Within , and it's handled with great care. While backtracking can be a huge issue in this title, the rest of the experience is a rollercoaster ride that players just can't get enough of!

25 Steins;Gate

A mind-bending time travel adventure that explores trauma and ptsd in a nuanced manner, steins;gate elite.

Steins;Gate is an anime that many people consider to be one of the best sci-fi shows of all time. However, some people might not be aware that the show is an adaptation of a visual novel that uses time travel as its central mechanic. Players control the protagonist Rintaro Okabe, a self-proclaimed mad scientist, who discovers a way to send messages back in time via his phone.

15 Video Games That Will Help You Relax

Not all gamers are seeking high excitement or thrills. Sometimes, it's better to chill out with the relaxing gameplay these titles have to offer.

The game involves navigating various branching timelines and making decisions that affect the outcome of the story. The use of time travel creates a complex and engaging narrative that keeps players invested throughout the story, with its many alternate endings revolving around whether players choose to mess around with the fabric of time or not.

24 Final Fantasy 13-2

The search for lightning spans different time periods, final fantasy 13-2.

Final Fantasy 13-2 serves as an official successor to one of the most divisive Final Fantasy games of all time. The sequel promotes Noel and Serah as protagonists and follows them as they travel through different moments in time in search of Lightning, who disappeared after the events of the first game.

Players who liked Final Fantasy 13 will likely have a great time with its sequel, especially if they wished the original game had more open areas and exploration. However, the story is pretty confusing, and even die-hard fans of Square Enix's franchise may find it hard to follow along with the plot.

23 Singularity

Time manipulation plays a central role in this underrated fps, singularity.

Singularity is a first-person shooter built around time manipulation. The game is set on an island in Russia called Katorga-12 where experiments with a substance called E99 have gone wrong, causing time anomalies and mutations.

Players use a device called the Time Manipulation Device (TMD) to navigate the island and manipulate time in various ways, such as aging or reversing objects and enemies. Singularity 's use of time manipulation creates unique and creative gameplay opportunities, making the FPS stand out from other entries in the genre.

22 Shadow Of Memories

A time loop adventure where players prevent the protagonist's death by traveling back in time, shadow of memories.

Shadow of Memories is a unique adventure game where players are tasked with preventing their murder by traveling back to the past. The protagonist, Eike, explores different time periods and makes several critical decisions that send ripples across the fabric of time and affect the outcome of the story.

A post-apocalyptic setting adds a certain uniqueness to a game. These titles left an everlasting impression on gamers.

The use of time travel in Shadow of Memories creates a sense of mystery and suspense, as players try to unravel the events leading up to Eike's death. It's easily the most underrated game on this list that fans should check out.

21 TimeShift

An overlooked fps that lets players mess around with time.

TimeShift is an FPS where players control a soldier who is equipped with a suit that allows them to mess around with the fabric of time. The game involves navigating through various environments and using time itself to solve puzzles and defeat enemies.

This innovative use of time manipulation in TimeShift adds a layer of strategy and creativity to the gameplay . It's a shame that many people don't talk about this title since TimeShift had many great things going for it despite also having its share of faults.

20 Outer Wilds

One of the best implementations of a time loop seen in a video game, outer wilds.

Outer Wilds is a pretty unique game that has been criminally overlooked by many fans. The game deals with a time loop where the Sun turns into a supernova in 22 minutes, prompting players to explore the world and figure out its secrets piece by piece.

The time loop mechanic of Outer Wilds makes every batch of exploration a joy to go through. Fans of great sci-fi narratives will have a great time piecing together the mystery of this game.

19 The Legend Of Zelda: Majora's Mask

Time resets when the moon crashes into the earth every three days, the legend of zelda: majora's mask.

Majora's Mask builds upon the amazing engine of Ocarina of Time which was just a legendary title in its own right. It placed Link in a darker world where the moon would crash into the Earth and end all life in three days .

This set up a perpetual cycle where players had to slowly get through the game while keeping this three-day limit in mind. It made for a great time, with Majora's Mask being a fan favorite of many despite the game being in the shadow of its predecessor.

18 Prince Of Persia: The Two Thrones

The prince finds the dagger of time once again, with the vizier coming back after a major time reversal, prince of persia: the two thrones.

The Sands of Time trilogy is where many fans think the Prince of Persia series peaked. The first game was a masterclass, with Warrior Within improving upon the combat system extensively despite the tone becoming a bit too mature and edgy for its good.

The Two Thrones serves as a perfect middle ground between the approach Ubisoft took for the past two games in the series. The great combat innovations were kept intact while the overall vibe of the game was more in line with The Sands of Time . Of course, as is the case with most games in the series, The Two Thrones also lets players mess around with time for their benefit throughout this journey.

17 Day Of The Tentacle

A classic lucasarts point-and-click game that dabbles in time travel quite a bit, day of the tentacle.

Day of the Tentacle is a beloved point-and-click adventure game that many fans still hold in high regard to this day. The remaster of this game ensures that players can enjoy what made this game special without being deterred by its old visuals.

For fans of traveling to the past or the future, these following time travel-themed anime shows are some of the best to watch.

Day of the Tentacle prioritizes time travel quite a bit, interacting with environments across different time periods. It makes for an innovative premise with the puzzle-solving using this mechanic heavily as well.

16 Deathloop

A time loop that resets whenever colt fails to kill all eight visionaries by midnight.

Deathloop is another gem from Arkane Studios, combining their expertise in developing immersive sims with the concept of a time loop. Players need to kill eight targets in a row in the one-time loop to essentially finish the game.

This is easier said than done, and players need to come to grips with the mechanics of the game over multiple loops before attempting this herculean feat. It's a great gameplay loop, with the addition of Julianna making each journey through the loop a blast in its own right.

15 Back To The Future: The Game

A fun addition to the popular movie series with its own set of time-traveling shenanigans, back to the future: the game.

Back to the Future is one of the most iconic movie franchises of all time that focuses on time travel. However, most people aren't aware of the Back to the Future game released by Telltale that allows for a new chapter in this celebrated franchise.

Taking on the episodic format that was present in their adventure games, Back to the Future: The Game is a worthy addition to this celebrated franchise. The shenanigans that Morty and Doc Brown get up to throughout this title are quite entertaining and make for a fun adventure title.

A Revolutionary Indie Game Where Rewinding Time Is Critical To Solving Puzzles

Braid is one of the most innovative and entertaining indie titles of all time. The game's haunting story and excellent puzzle-solving mechanics make for an unforgettable experience that most people won't be forgetting anytime soon.

Rewinding time to figure out solutions to puzzles serves as the initial draw of the game, but it's the story that hooks players over time. Players who want to believe that they're the good guy in any video game will be in for a rude awakening when they check out Braid .

13 Dishonored 2

The stilton manor level is arkane at its very best, turning the concept of time into an ingenious gameplay mechanic, dishonored 2.

Arkane Studios has constantly been at the forefront of delivering spectacular immersive sim experiences. Dishonored 2 is no exception to this golden rule, with some people considering it to be superior to the critically acclaimed first game.

The level where players need to roam around Stilton Manor is easily one of the best parts of the entire game. This is mainly due to the innovative time travel mechanics present in this level that allow players to shift from the past to the present at a moment's notice.

12 EarthBound

Time travel plays a central role at both the start and end of the game.

The SNES was home to some of the most iconic games of all time. One such game was EarthBound , which has carved its way into the hearts of several gamers due to its amazing charm and imaginative gameplay.

The JRPG genre is relatively newcomer friendly. But these titles stand out as the most easily accessible.

The game starts with a time traveler from the future who warns Ness about an impending apocalypse. Finally, near the end of the game, the party travels back in time so that they can fight the antagonist — Giygas — where he's at his most vulnerable.

11 Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective

Time is wound back before someone's death, with players using ghosts to manipulate objects and change fate, ghost trick: phantom detective.

Ghost Trick is easily one of the most underrated games ever made. The brainchild of the Ace Attorney series — Shu Takumi — was at the helm of this innovative mystery title that went under most people's radar upon release.

It's a shame, since Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is one of the most imaginative titles that uses the concept of time travel to great effect. Players need to prevent untimely murders by manipulating events as ghosts a few seconds before the time of death. Succeeding in doing so allows the player to alter the flow of time and help the story move smoothly.

10 Blinx: The Time Sweeper

Blinx: the time sweeper.

Released as an exclusive for the original Xbox, Blinx: The Time Sweeper is based on an anthropomorphic cat that can influence time in many ways. With the ability to speed up time, slow time down, stop time, and reverse events, time travel is an integral part of the game.

Blinx: The Time Sweeper is a fantastic game with immense replay value. How the medium of time is weaved with gameplay helps this title age spectacularly well, and it's a shame that this character didn't hit the ground running.

9 Quantum Break

Players use time powers in a sci-fi romp that can be a bit too overindulgent at times, quantum break.

From Remedy Entertainment comes an explosive action-adventure game out of science fiction. Quantum Break was released on PC and Xbox One in 2016. Initially, it would be a sequel to Alan Wake until the focus shifted to time travel.

Powers like "Time Vision" and "Time Echoes" are great examples of how the fourth dimension is used to elevate the title's gameplay, even if the nomenclature of these abilities could've used some work. The time-bending shenanigans in Quantum Break make it a fun game for players to get invested in.

Best time travel games

Here's our list of the best time travel games with more timeloops and grandfather paradoxes than you can shake a stick at.

Looking for the best time travel games? These 10 entries mark the highlights of a genre that has been going strong for decades – promising the awe of hurtling forward in time, manipulating the present, or changing what’s happened in the past. Haven’t we all wanted to do that at some point?

Is time travel possible? Well, time travel is a pretty recognizable concept by now and has been around for as long as there have been people, whether in Hindu mythology or Japanese fairy tales. The idea of time travel in pop science fiction was widely popularized by H.G. Wells, who wrote the 1895 novel The Time Machine, as well as other stories that saw protagonists propelled into different eras.

While many modern games utilize some kind of repeating loop, like Hades or Loop Hero, the best time travel games take this a step further – allowing the player to distort time for their own ends, or forcing them to adapt to imprisonment within it.

These games don’t just use time travel as a story hook, but an integral part of how the game works – which is what helps them stand out among the bog-standard shooters, puzzle games, and platformers out there. 

So, if you loved watching the likes of Groundhog Day or Russian Doll , then these are the games for you. Who knows, maybe one of these titles will end up on our (or even your) space video games that should be movies or TV shows list. While you’re at it, make sure to check out our guide to the best time travel movies too, or if you’re after more games then these upcoming space games will interest you. 

10. Deathloop

• Release date: September 14, 2021
• Platform: PlayStation 5, PC, Xbox Series X/S

Possibly the best PS5 exclusive to have released on the console at the time (though it has since released on Xbox too), Deathloop is a thrilling time-travel first-person shooter (FPS) romp from the developers behind Dishonored.

You play as Colt, an assassin, who is on a mission to eliminate eight ultra-powerful individuals. These gifted beings are exploiting a time loop machine on a subarctic island to live the same day over and over, essentially becoming immortal and being able to do whatever they desire every night without consequence.

You must take out all eight to stop the loop from restarting – using what you learn across multiple loops to navigate the island and complete your mission in one perfect run. With slick gunplay, a gripping story, and a fascinating sci-fi premise, we don’t recommend you sleep on this one.

9. Twelve Minutes

• Release date: August 19, 2021
• Platform: Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, PC

It’s a fun, curious mystery game, with plenty of satisfaction to be had from toying with the objects and locations in your compact apartment to see how it’ll affect the outcome.

A curious time loop game, mostly in the star talent brought in to voice its trio of main characters: Daisy Ridley (Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker), James McAvoy (X-Men: First Class, Trance), and Willem Dafoe (Spider-Man, The Lighthouse).

The action takes place in a small, one-bedroom apartment, where McAvoy’s protagonist comes home to find a number of surprises waiting for him – one of which is an armed assailant claiming to be a police officer pounding on their door. When you’re knocked unconscious, you begin the time loop again and have to figure out what’s really going on in order to escape the loop for good.

8. Titanfall 2

• Release date: October 28, 2016
• Platform: Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC

The sequel to Respawn’s futuristic mecha-combat FPS is a thrilling ride. It has a single-player campaign that pivots effortlessly between fascinating game mechanics, never feeling a need to dwell too long on each one.

The time travel mission, ‘Effect and Cause,’ is a real standout. It allows you to shift between the past and present mid-air as you run, shoot, and platform your way across an expansive military facility. Paired with Respawn’s excellent gunplay, this acclaimed shooter offers far more imagination than the average Call of Duty game.

The brisk campaign has plenty of other thrills to recommend it, but its seamless utilization of time travel as an integral game mechanic – even while limited to a single level – makes it well worth inclusion in this list.

7. Outer Wilds

• Release date: May 28, 2019
• Platform: Xbox One, PlayStation 4/5, Nintendo Switch, PC

Another time loop game, you say? Outer Wilds is a standout indie game, so much so that it’s made our best space games list. It sees you scour a solar system to unpack its mysteries, over a series of 22-minute time loops that reset your progress just as the nearest sun explodes into a supernova. Phew.

As with Deathloop, you’ll have to do more than simply map out the game – needing to learn when certain events occur, or which actions are available in the orbits of the solar system’s planetary bodies. Starting out as a student project, Outer Wilds has gone on to be one of the best indie games in recent years, with a heady mix of environmental exploration, galactic mystery, and survival sim all in one.

6. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

• Release date: November 21, 1998
• Platform: Nintendo 64, GameCube, Wii, Wii U, Nintendo Switch

The best game of all time? It’s hard to argue with this assessment for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (OoT), a landmark 3D action-adventure game that launched on the Nintendo 64 in 1998. In it, the young hero Link finds a magical ocarina which is able to change the weather, transport him across distant lands, and even propel him through time to a post-apocalyptic world.

It’s not a one-way trip, thankfully, and much of the puzzle work in OoT is in traveling back and forth between time periods, using what you learn and obtain to progress in each setting. As ever, you’re fighting a great evil, battling monsters, gathering weapons and tools for your journey, and figuring out troublesome dungeons – but time travel is what elevates Ocarina of Time into a game of truly mythical proportions.

It's an oldie, but a goodie. You can find the game through Nintendo Switch Online, or on Nintendo DS systems.

5. Quantum Break

• Release date: April 5, 2016
• Platform: Xbox One, PC

Back in 2016 when Quantum Break released, it was the best-selling game published by Microsoft on the Xbox One. While it soon ceded that title to Sea of Thieves (who needs time travel when you have sea shanties?) it’s still a landmark game, and a fascinating experiment in interactive storytelling.

The main conceit of Quantum Break is its mix of gameplay with an interactive TV show that breaks up the story’s five acts, allowing you to make key decisions that affect the narrative for the rest of the game.

Originally conceived as a sequel to Alan Wake, before pivoting into a new IP, Quantum Break is set in a world where a failed time travel experiment allows you to halt, freeze, accelerate, and generally manipulate time around you – inevitably used to ramp up combat as you take on hordes of soldiers and try to fix a fracture in time itself. Time ‘stutters’ can also freeze objects in your environment, creating obstacles or platforms that help and hinder your progress along the way.

4. Life is Strange

• Release date: January 20, 2015
• Platform: Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, PC, Android

While more recent Life is Strange games play around with the powers of empathy, or telekinesis, the original game is what started the franchise off with such aplomb – following the fortunes of a young girl who is able to rewind time.

Maxine ‘Max’ Caulfield discovers her time-manipulation ability when a classmate faces an unexpected danger – managing to undo the day’s events and keep them alive. As ever, time travel has unintended consequences, and while Max can aid or even save various people in her life, she finds the outcome isn’t always for the best in the long term. 

With a strikingly impressionistic art style, branching narratives, surprisingly high stakes for a high school story, and a good helping of teen angst, this episodic adventure is well worth a try.

3. Wanderer

• Release date: January 27, 2022
• Platform: PlayStation VR, SteamVR, Oculus

If you’re looking for a time-travel VR game, you’ve come to the right place. Wanderer is a first-person puzzle adventure that has you traveling back through time to prevent an apocalyptic present.

With a talking watch on your wrist, and the ability to jump to different places and periods, Wanderer lives up to its name, seeing you jettison across centuries of history and even to the moon. In each case, action is found in localized puzzles (escape rooms, essentially), some of which take imaginative back-and-forth travel to get the right objects for the right situation. 

You’ll get around 10 hours of play out of this one, along with some brain-bending puzzles that make the most of the VR medium (along with one of the best VR headsets )

• Release date: August 6, 2008
• Platform: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Switch, PC, Mac, Linux

Few games play so successfully with time as Braid, a 2008 indie platformer initially launched on Xbox 360 to great acclaim. The developer went on to create The Witness with the profits from this game.

You play Tim, who is trying to find and rescue a princess from some unspecified monster. So far, so Mario. However, things aren’t quite so simple as running and jumping on Goombas: Braid utilizes a number of different time-based mechanics, from a simple rewind (helpful after jumping and missing a ledge) to whole levels that move forward in time as you move right and backward as you move left.

It’s a mind-melting game in many ways, and you may find the story elusive at first, it being gradually pieced together by jigsaw pieces you collect throughout your journey – and blown open by its subversive conclusion. But a recurring theme is the idea of wanting to redo or undo the past, and you won’t find a game that needles this idea as effectively or imaginatively as Braid.

1. The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask

• Release date: April 27, 2000
• Platform: Nintendo 64, GameCube, Wii, Wii U, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo DS

How could we list the best time travel games without Majora’s Mask? This follow-up to Ocarina of Time takes place in the same land of Hyrule as its predecessor just two months later, even re-using many in-game assets. The key difference is that an unhinged-looking moon going to crash into the Earth, obliterating everything – and you find yourself reliving the same three days over and over in an attempt to prevent the cataclysmic event from happening.

Those three days come to around an hour of actual gameplay time, meaning you play through a loop quite swiftly, but the real magic of Majora’s Mask is in how it expands on the time-warping magic of OoT. Here you’ll use the ocarina to jump back to the start of the loop, slow down the passage of time, or jump forward to a later day, navigating time like a puzzle dungeon in need of solving.

Earning widespread acclaim, Majora’s Mask has been rereleased several times throughout the years. For modern gamers, you can find the game through Nintendo Switch Online, or on Nintendo DS systems.

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Henry St Leger is a news writer, commissioning editor and all-round geek for the worlds of technology and entertainment. He has years of experience in gadget reviews, has been interviewed live on both BBC World News and Channel News Asia, and will talk endlessly about Neon Genesis Evangelion to anyone who will listen. Bylines include TechRadar, Edge, Space.com, Digital Camera World, and Little White Lies.

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"Braid" time travel mechanic | GDevelop 5 tutorial

That’s exactly for making this kind of things easier to do that I wanted to add functions to dump important properties (animation informations, angle, position, variables, etc) and set it back.

I think it would be better to do it as a behavior. The maximum array length could be set through the behavior properties. Then the replay function also sets a variable “__animate” to tell a doPostEvents (or whatever it is called) to not animate if it was called. At the end of that last function it would reset this variable for the next frame. Then the user would only need to disable/enable the behavior to stop/restart recording

Thanks for the feedback!

That’s a good point, it could very well be a behaviour.

Sounds exciting! Looking forward to seeing it!

Thank you for sharing the tutorial, it’s awesome!

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20 Braided Styles on Screen That Were Culture-Making Moments

Braids are the ultimate go-to hairstyle for when you want to take a break from wearing natural hairstyles, especially during the summer.

Once the warmer weather hits, it’s almost like clockwork to see an influx of braided hairstyles. Despite the endless number of styles to try, one of the biggest benefits of braids is their protective elements. Protective styles will always be in the natural hair community’s back pocket for all curl types and textures. 

While it’s fun to experiment and be creative with different curly hairstyles, it can get exhausting. From the extensive wash day routines to frequent manipulations, the peace of having braids is incomparable. The versatility, designs, lengths, and colors offer endless style opportunities. 

Image Source: @marsaimartin

Braids are an art form that, at one point, was not as remarkably celebrated in pop culture as it is today. Now more than ever, braided hairstyles are celebrated across music, film, TV, sports, print, social media, and other mediums. Celebrities such as Gabrielle Union , Lupita Nyong’o, Kerry Washington, Marsai Martin, Janelle Monae, Tracee Ellis Ross, and other high-profile individuals wear braids on-screen and off. 

With the help of mainstream media, other women have been empowered to wear braids in other industries opposite of the red carpet. Lawyers, news anchors, politicians, corporate employees, legal professionals, and others freely flaunt their braids online and in real life. 

Some may view the increased representation of braids as another trendy moment worth joining. But for Black and other people of color, showing off their braids is an acceptance of African culture. With each new creative design and style exposed to the masses, another opportunity is presented that keeps African and Black culture alive. 

If you need some braid inspiration, here are 20 culture-defining braided styles worn by society’s most influential people.

1. Beyonce – Lemonade Braids

Image Source: Pinterest

Beyoncé released her sixth studio album, “Lemonade” in 2016. Her “Formation” video featured the superstar in a series of braided hairstyles, including the well-known “Lemonade” braids.

2. Keke Palmer – Micro Braids

@oscars It’s been 18 years since Keke Palmer taught us how to spell prestidigitation. Film: ‘Akeelah and the Bee’ (2006) Written and directed by Doug Atchison Starring: Keke Palmer, Laurence Fishburne, Angela Bassett and Curtis Armstrong #akeelahandthebee #kekepalmer #spellingbee #scrippsnationalspellingbee #prestidigitation #spelling #moviescene #film #angelabassett @kekepalmer ♬ original sound – The Oscars – The Oscars

Image Source: TikTok

Keke Palmer starred in this film as a child and has since impacted the lives of many young girls and women. Throughout the film, she is seen wearing braided micro braids.

3. Storm Reid – Braided Crown

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Storm Reid (@stormreid)

Image Source: @stormreid

During a 2022 visit to the “Kelly Clarkson Show,” actress Storm Reid took her followers backstage as she waited to make her special appearance. 

4. Janet Jackson – Large Individuals 

@around.the.way.braids Edits Poetic Justice/Janet Jackson. With the black girl/woman you find in the 90s. These braids are everything! #janetjackson #boxbraids #braids #plaits #90sthrowback #poeticjustice ♬ original sound – 106 & Park

Image Source: @around.the.way.braids

Janet Jackson was the leading lady in the 1993 film Poetic Justice. The popularity of her box braids inspired fans to recreate the look, which is now a highly requested braided hairstyle.

5. Snoop Dogg – Braids and Bobos

Image Source: Getty Images

Snoop Dogg has never shied away from wearing braids. Braids are one of his signature looks that fans of the artists have grown to admire about him and his music.

6. Brandy – Box Braids 

Image Source: @boshbabexoxo

Brandy is an icon for many reasons, especially regarding beauty and hair. She became the first Black princess to play “Cinderella” and, in the 1977 live-action musical, wore box braids as part of her costume.

7. Issae Rae and Yvonne Orji- Braided Space Buns

Image Source: @insecurehbo

Insecure served dozens of iconic styles courtesy of the amazing team behind the scenes. We saw Issa go from a TWA to fun, braided looks that put her coils front and center.

8. A$AP Rocky – Box Braids

@gq 8 hours 😳 #BoxBraids #ASAPRocky #Hairstyle #LordPrettyFlackoJodye ♬ original sound – GQ

Image Source: @gq

Rapper A$AP Rocky unapologetically wears his hair in braids and has been doing so for years. He isn’t afraid to feature them in his projects, as he has previously done for the album cover of “Long. Live. A$AP.”

9. Rihanna – Anti Album Promo

Image Source: @paoloroversi

Rihanna will forever be famous for impacting the beauty, music, and fashion industry. Her Anti album was a cultural moment that changed her presence in pop culture, served iconic music, and showcased a range of beautiful looks.

10. Nipsey Hussle – Cornrows

Image Source: @nipseyhussle

Nipsey Hustle barely strayed away from his signature look: cornrows . Here, he is pictured in one of his last campaigns for his collection Marathon X Puma 2019.

11. Zoë Kravitz- Micro Braids

Image Source: @highfidelityonhulu

“High Fidelity” actress Zoë Kravitz is known for her signature bohemian Micro Braids and the versatile ways she styles them. For Hulu’s series adaptation of the classic 2000s movie, Zoë is front and center as an executive producer trying to get over a former flame.

12. Alicia Keys- Beaded Fulani Braids

Image Source: @aliciakeys

Alicia Keys is hair inspo for many stylists and clients who want to mimic the style that put her hair on the map. She debuted onto the music scene with her debut album The Songs In A Minor showcased her beautiful braided style on the album cover and breakout single “Fallin”.

13. Omarion – Braided Man Bun

Image Source: @omarion

Singer and actor debuted his braided Man Bun in 2016 and ushered in a new wave of people interested in recreating the style.

14. Allen Iverson – Cornrows

@gq How AI decided on his braids before each game #GQ #StyleHistory #GQStyleHistory #SHOF #StyleHallOfFame #AllenIverson #AI #AI3 ♬ original sound – GQ

NBA player Allen Iverson was known for the creative designs of his cornrows, and he was just as famous for his basketball skills.

15. Aaliyah Edwards – Multi-colored Individuals

Image Source: @aaliyahedards_24

WNBA player Aaliyah embraces color braids as she has been seen wearing bright colors throughout the basketball season.

16. Zaya Wade – Micro French Curl Braids

Image Source: Instagram

The model stunned wearing these Micro French Curl Braids during the 2024 Paris Fashion Week.  

17. Tiffany Haddish, Braided Side Part

View this post on Instagram A post shared by #GirlsTrip (@girlstripmovie)

Image Source: @girltripmovie

To say Tiffany Haddish was a scene stealer in Girls Trip is an understatement. This movie marked the meteoric rise for this fabulous actress and comedian.

18. Zendaya – Bust Down Middle Part Individuals 

Image Source: @zendaya

Zendaya can own any hairstyle she tries, including the middle part Knotless Individuals, which she wore in 2020. The iconic high fashion breastplate with her soft makeup perfectly balances chic and femininity.

19. Sha’Carri Richardson – Small Feed-In Braids

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Nike (@nike)

Image Source: @nike

The track star showed off her floor-length small Feed In Braids in one of her latest Nike x Jacquemus collection campaigns.

20. Yara Shahidi – Braided Ponytail

Image Source: @grownish

The “Grown-ish” and “Black-ish” actress added her own flair to the popular braided ponytail, featuring slicked-down edges and gold adornments at the base of the style.

Learn more from celebrity stylist Vernon Francois about refreshing your curls, braids, and locs this summer!

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This new umbrella academy time travel transport solves a big comic book issue.

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Welcome To Derry: Bill Skarsgård's Return Avoids 2 Major Pennywise Problems

The umbrella academy season 4 just showed how the hargreeves regain their powers (& it comes with twist), the umbrella academy season 4 desperately needs to explain 1 big thing it's currently ignoring.

• The Umbrella Academy season 4 introduces time travel through the subway, solving a big comic book issue.
• The subway will take the Hargreeves to different points in time as a replacement for the Televator.
• The structure of the subway lines makes understanding the multiverse easier for the audience.

The Umbrella Academy season 4 is introducing a new way for the Hargreeves to travel in time, and thanks to it, the show is solving a big comic book issue. The Umbrella Academy has been full of twists and turns as the Hargreeves have done their best to stop the end of the world more than once, and they’re about to face their biggest mission in the show’s fourth and final season. The Umbrella Academy season 4 has many questions to answer and mysteries to solve, while also introducing new characters, weapons, and more.

Although plot details about The Umbrella Academy season 4 continue to be a mystery, the first teaser trailer gave viewers an idea of what to expect in the show’s final season. The Umbrella Academy season 3 ended with the Hargreeves landing on Reginald’s custom-made timeline, where he and his wife are alive, Allison has her daughter and her 1960s husband, Sloane is missing, and Lila and the Hargreeves are powerless. The Umbrella Academy season 4 has teased more time travel for the team as they try to fix this mess, and their new time travel transport solves a huge comic book problem.

The Umbrella Academy season 4 teaser trailer showed how the Hargreeves will regain their powers, this will come with a potentially dangerous twist.

The Umbrella Academy Season 4 Introduces Time Travel Through The Subway

The subway will take the hargreeves to different points in time.

It’s likely Five spent the years between seasons 3 and 4 investigating ways to return to their correct timeline and ended up discovering that the subway could take them back in time.

Up until now, the only ways for the Hargreeves to travel in time were through Five’s powers or with one of The Commission's briefcases – but Five will start season 4 without his powers and The Commission is no longer around. However, The Umbrella Academy season 4 teaser trailer has now revealed how the Hargreeves will time travel from now on, solving the mystery of why the promotional posters used subway maps. The trailer shows Five alone at a subway station, with Lila as they look at the map, and them coming out of a subway station and into a post-apocalyptic world .

It’s likely Five spent the years between seasons 3 and 4 investigating ways to return to their correct timeline and ended up discovering that the subway could take them back in time. The subway as a time travel machine in The Umbrella Academy season 4 is the perfect replacement for the Televator , which was teased in an Easter egg in season 2, where it was seen among Reginald’s plans back in 1963.

Why The Subway Works Better Than The Televator In Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy

The subway will do the televator’s work in netflix’s the umbrella academy.

The Televator is an elevator lift through which the users can travel through time and space and even different dimensions.

In the Umbrella Academy comic books, the Televator is an invention by Reginald. The Televator is an elevator lift through which the users can travel through time and space and even different dimensions, and is used multiple times in the comics. The Televator might already exist in the world of Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy as, at the end of season 3, the Hargreeves and Lila exited an elevator and stepped into Reginald’s new timeline, though this could have also simply been added to bring the Hargreeves into the new timeline in a visually pleasant and coherent way.

The structure of the subway lines makes it easier for the audience (and characters) to understand the multiverse of The Umbrella Academy and how the many timelines connect and even overlap.

Despite being a fantasy series, Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy has been more grounded and realistic than its source material, and as such, the subway is a much better time travel alternative than the Televator. The structure of the subway lines makes it easier for the audience (and characters) to understand the multiverse of The Umbrella Academy and how the many timelines connect and even overlap, whereas the Televator would be a more square way of explaining these upcoming multiversal travels .

While it could still be possible that the Televator exists in The Umbrella Academy and could have a place in season 4, the subway as a time-travel transport will make the Hargreeves’ new mission a lot easier to follow and understand.

The Umbrella Academy

The Umbrella Academy is based on the comic book of the same name created by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá. The Hargreeves — collectively known as The Umbrella Academy — were born with superpowers, and their adoptive father utilized their abilities. However, as they grew older, the siblings grew apart as they dealt with their trauma. They are brought back together after their father dies and Five returns from the future with grave news: The world will end, and The Umbrella Academy has to stop it before it happens.

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Air Travel Consumer Report: March 2024 Numbers

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) today released its Air Travel Consumer Report (ATCR) on airline operational data compiled for the month of March 2024 for on-time performance, mishandled baggage, mishandled wheelchairs and scooters, and 1st quarter oversales. The ATCR is designed to assist consumers with information on the quality of services provided by airlines. 

For March 2024, 0.9% of flights were cancelled, lower than the 1.3% cancellation rate for March 2023 and the 2.0% cancellation rate for pre-pandemic March 2019.  

DOT expects that airlines will operate flights as scheduled and that when they do not, airlines will provide consumers the services promised when a flight is cancelled or delayed because of an airline issue. After a two-year DOT push to improve the passenger experience, the 10 largest airlines now guarantee meals and free rebooking on the same airline and nine guarantee hotel accommodations. Consumer-friendly information regarding airline commitments to their customers is available on the Department’s Airline Customer Service Dashboard at FlightRights.Gov . DOT also pushed airlines to provide fee-free family seating and rolled out a new family seating dashboard that highlights the airlines that guarantee fee-free family seating, and those of the 10 largest that do not, making it easier for parents to avoid paying junk fees to sit with their children when they fly.

DOT recently announced two final rules that require airlines to provide automatic cash refunds to passengers when owed and protect consumers from costly surprise airline fees . These rules will significantly expand consumer protections in air travel, provide passengers an easier pathway to refunds when owed, and save consumers more than half a billion dollars every year in hidden and surprise junk fees. Provisions of the final rule on airline refunds were fortified through the FAA reauthorization bill that President Biden signed into law on May 16, 2024.

In addition, DOT is improving transportation for individuals with disabilities. In July 2023, DOT finalized a rule which requires airlines to make lavatories on new, single-aisle aircraft more accessible. Then, in February 2024, DOT issued a proposal to address other barriers that Americans who use a wheelchair encounter when it comes to air travel by, among other things, proposing to mandate enhanced training for airline employees and contractors who physically assist passenger with disabilities and handle passengers’ wheelchairs.

Further, when necessary, DOT takes enforcement action against airlines and ticket agents that fail to comply with the Department’s aviation consumer protection requirements. In 2023, DOT issued the largest fines in the history of the consumer protection office. This includes a $140 million penalty against Southwest Airlines for failing passengers during the 2022 holiday meltdown. That penalty, which was in addition to over $600 million DOT already ensured was refunded by Southwest to passengers, requires Southwest to establish a $90 million compensation system for passengers affected by significant delays and cancellations beginning April 30, 2024.  Additionally, DOT has helped return nearly $4 billion in refunds to travelers since the pandemic began.

In April, DOT announced the launch of the bipartisan Airline Passenger Protection Partnership with 18 state attorneys general to investigate airlines and ticket agents and hold them accountable when they violate aviation consumer protection laws. The partnership significantly expands the Department’s oversight capacity by establishing a new fast-track system prioritizing misconduct cases from state attorneys general who uncover unfair or deceptive airline practices. Through the partnership, DOT will provide state attorneys general with access to the federal complaint database and help ensure that airlines cooperate with state investigations.

Flight Operations

The 623,409 flights operated in March 2024 were 102.47% of the 608,387 flights operated in March 2023. Operated flights in March 2024 were up 2.47% year-over-year from the 608,387 flights operated in March 2023 and up 13.46% month-over-month from 549,439 flights operated in February 2024. 

In March 2024, the 10 marketing network carriers reported 628,786 scheduled domestic flights, 5,377 (0.9%) of which were cancelled. In February 2024, airlines scheduled 552,691 domestic flights, 3,252 (0.6%) of which were cancelled. In March 2023, airlines scheduled 616,234 domestic flights, 7,847 (1.3%) of which were cancelled.

March 2024 On-Time Arrival

In March 2024, reporting marketing carriers posted an on-time arrival rate of 78.7%, down from 83.7% in February 2024 and up from 75.4% in March 2023. The year-to-date on-time arrival rate for 2024 is 78.3%.

Highest Marketing Carrier On-Time Arrival Rates March 2024 (ATCR Table 1)

• Hawaiian Airlines – 87.2%
• Delta Air Lines Network – 84.8%
• United Airlines Network – 81.8% 

Lowest Marketing Carrier On-Time Arrival Rates March 2024 (ATCR Table 1)

• Frontier Airlines – 66.4%
• JetBlue Airways – 68.4%
• Spirit Airlines – 69.6%

For the first three months of 2024, the reporting marketing carriers posted an on-time arrival rate of 78.31% up from 76.89% for the same period in 2023.

March 2024 Flight Cancellations

In March 2024, reporting marketing carriers cancelled 0.9% of their scheduled domestic flights, higher than the rate of 0.6% in February 2024 and lower than the rate of 1.3% in March 2023. The year-to-date cancellation rate for 2024 is 1.7%.

Lowest Marketing Carrier Rates of Cancelled Flights March 2024 (ATCR Table 6)

• Delta Air Lines Network – 0.2%  
• Hawaiian Airlines – 0.6%   
• Allegiant Air – 0.6%    

  Highest Marketing Carrier Rates of Cancelled Flights March 2024 (ATCR Table 6)

• Frontier Airlines – 2.7%    
• Spirit Airlines – 1.7%    
• JetBlue Airways – 1.4%    

For the first three months of 2024, the reporting marketing carriers posted a cancellation rate of 1.7%, equal to 1.7% for the same period in 2023.

Complaints About Airline Service

The release of air travel service complaint data in the Air Travel Consumer Report (ATCR) has been delayed primarily because of the continued high volume of complaints against airlines and ticket agents received by the Office of Aviation Consumer Protection (OACP) and the time needed to review and process these consumer complaints. The Department is investing in modernizing its system for handling consumer complaints with the support of a Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) investment to improve the customer experience for the tens of thousands of consumers who use the system each year and enable OACP to more effectively engage in oversight of the airline industry. 

As DOT modernizes its system, given the continued high volume of air travel service complaints concerning airlines and ticket agents, DOT has revised how it processes consumer complaints received after June 1, 2023. From June 2023 until the date its system is modernized, DOT intends to revise the ATCR to display consumer submissions (complaints, inquiries, and opinions) as opposed to complaints for this period. The Department will continue to display civil rights complaints in the ATCR in a similar manner as before and anticipates publishing submission and civil rights complaint numbers for June 1, 2023 to December 31, 2023 in June 2024.

Tarmac Delays

In March 2024, airlines reported six tarmac delays of more than three hours on domestic flights, compared to 10 tarmac delays of more than three hours on domestic flights reported in February 2024. In March 2024, airlines reported one tarmac delay of more than four hours on an international flight, compared to two tarmac delays of more than four hours on international flights reported in February 2024. 

Airlines are required to have and adhere to assurances that they will not allow aircraft to remain on the tarmac for more than three hours for domestic flights and four hours for international flights without providing passengers the option to deplane, subject to exceptions related to safety, security, and Air Traffic Control related reasons. An exception also exists for departure delays if the airline begins to return the aircraft to a suitable disembarkation point to deplane passengers by those times.

The Department investigates extended tarmac delays.

Mishandled Baggage

In March 2024, reporting marketing carriers handled 43.1 million bags and posted a mishandled baggage rate of 0.52%, higher than the rate of 0.48% in February 2024, but lower than the rate of 0.58% in March 2023.

For the first quarter of 2024, the carriers posted a mishandled baggage rate of 0.58%, lower than the first quarter 2023 rate of 0.64%.

The Department began displaying the mishandled baggage data as a percentage (i.e., per 100 bags enplaned) in January 2022. This is consistent with the manner that the mishandled wheelchairs and scooters rate is calculated and displayed.     In the prior three calendar year reports (2019 to 2021), the Department calculated the mishandled baggage rate based on the number of mishandled bags per 1,000 checked bags. 

Mishandled Wheelchairs and Scooters

In March 2024, reporting marketing carriers reported checking 65,793 wheelchairs and scooters and mishandling 859 for a rate of 1.31% mishandled wheelchairs and scooters, higher than the rate of 1.30% mishandled in February 2024 and lower than the rate of 1.33% mishandled in March 2023.

For the first quarter of 2024, the carriers posted a mishandled wheelchair and scooter rate of 1.36%, lower than the rate of 1.40% in the first quarter of 2023.

To address many of the significant barriers and challenges experienced by passengers who use wheelchairs, the Department has proposed a rulemaking that, if adopted as proposed would make it an automatic violation of the Department’s Air Carrier Access Act regulations for airlines to mishandle a passenger’s wheelchair. This Notice of Proposed Rulemaking would also enhance training requirements for airline personnel who provide hands-on transfer assistance to passengers and handle wheelchairs. The proposal is available at https://www.regulations.gov , docket number DOT-OST-2022-0144.

Bumping/Oversales

Bumping/oversales data, unlike other air carrier data, are reported quarterly rather than monthly. For the first quarter of 2024, the 10 U.S. reporting marketing carriers posted an involuntary denied boarding, or bumping, rate of 0.27 per 10,000 passengers, lower than both the rate of 0.29 in the first quarter of 2023 and higher than the rate of 0.20 in the fourth quarter of 2023.

Incidents Involving Animals

As part of its IT modernization, DOT’s Office of Aviation Consumer Protection (OACP) is improving the options for covered carriers to submit their monthly and annual Reports on Incidents Involving Animals During Air Transport. While the new system is being developed, OACP is permitting covered carriers to delay submission of reports on incidents involving animals during air transport. Annual data on such incidents will be published when DOT receives carriers’ complete submissions of the 2023 data. 

In March 2024, carriers reported zero incidents involving the death, injury, or loss of an animal while traveling by air, down from the two reports filed in February 2024, and equal to the zero reports filed in March 2023.

Consumers may file air travel consumer or civil rights complaints online at   https://secure.dot.gov/air-travel-complaint , or they may mail a complaint to the Office of Aviation Consumer Protection, U.S. Department of Transportation, C-70, W96-432, 1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE, Washington, DC 20590.

The ATCR and other aviation consumer matters of interest to the public can be found at https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer .