In Rev's gushing preview of Braid, he touched on something I've been thinking a bit about lately. That is, he held up Braid's foundation on simple, intuitive platformer mechanics, with the deep, added mechanic of time travel as proof of Braid's accessibility. I've seen other games that presented a similar case like this, such as Fez, Portal, and many, many others. And all of these games (that I've gotten a chance to play) have been pretty much awesome.

I'm gonna be bordering on NVGR, here, but I've noticed this phenomenon in other mediums as well. In particular, Death Note, at its core, is a fairly straightforward mystery tale, built on the foundation of a set of arbitrary rules. Where the twist comes in is the complex philosophical conundrum that rides on the concept of Kira. All the suspense we feel throughout the series is characteristic of mystery thrillers, the added ingredient is our contemplation of justice and its costs. It's no coincidence that Death Note's my favorite anime ever.

So, it looks like the format of "familiarity with a well-crafted twist" is very successful, both in video games and other artistic fields. My question is, why is this so compelling? Feel free to let me know.