10 Video Games Where You Were The Bad Guy All Along

Braid is a mechanically tight platformer where the everyman protagonist hops, dodges, and runs across a colorful fantasy world while attempting to rescue a captured princess. Outside of its revolutionary time-reverse mechanic, you would be hard-pressed not to immediately think of Nintendo’s famous Italian plumber and his never-ending quest to rescue Peach from Bowser - but there was much more to this.

The game was a big deal at the time of its release, one of the first in a flood of revolutionary indie games that threw gamers back to the golden retro years... while also evolving, modernizing, and reintroducing the genre to a whole new generation. It was a novel concept, which feels fairly routine nowadays, but the one cutting-edge addition - the elaborate time mechanic - turned the concept on its head, not just via gameplay, but through a subtly building plotline that hinted at something much more sinister beneath the surface.

When the reveal comes… It’s a doozy.

The last moments of the game reveal the player was not the hero of the story at all, but rather a stalker figure who chased the princess (actually, an unwanted target of affection) to the point of obsession, with the enemies actually her protectors, keeping the player away from her.

Was it a simple Mario spoof? Or a metaphor for the atom bomb? No one will truly know... that doesn't make it any less impactful.