Manifold Garden (2019)

I first tried playing Manifold Garden a few years ago and bounced off fairly early on. I just couldn't quite wrap my brain around it. But I left it installed, and as I'm currently only allowed to play games I currently have installed I figured I might as well give it another shot. Plus, I wanted to mess around with the photo mode which I remembered being excellent.

I don't know what was different, maybe it was just that I had more motivation to keep at it since my options are limited, but something clicked this time. Certainly there were a few times when I just kind of wandered around in loops for a bit, not quite sure how to proceed, times when I felt right on the edge of giving up, but then something would fall into place (usually literally) and I'd see the solution. I never had to look up a walkthrough and I never ended a session feeling stuck and frustrated.

That being said, I also wouldn't say I necessarily always understood exactly what was going on; some levels recurse in very obvious ways, others are much more bendy, and once the giant tetrominos were introduced there was a lot of "I sure hope this does something." I'm not sure if the fact that I managed to get through it relatively smoothly is more a testament to the game design or to luck.

But anyway, the puzzles are fun and all but you gotta check out the photo mode:

There are ton of settings to play with, but for those of us who get a little overwhelmed by it all, there's also a randomizer button that will mess with everything except the camera position and direction (relative to other settings that change the perspective). This lets you line up the perfect shot and then go through a slideshow of possibilities until you find one you like, or one you want to use as a base then tweak manually. You could easily spend an entire play session just messing with the photo mode.

Also the music's really good, really elevates the vibe of the game. Not sure I like it enough to listen to it on its own but it makes me curious about Laryssa Okada's other work.

Glad I came back to this one, it's a good time.

This is a pretty good puzzle game/walking sim. The look and style of it is immaculate and I would describe it as a MC Escher themed but styled in a line drawing like that of Jean Giraud moebius due to the rotoscoped filter (I guess that's what you'd call it.)
Many of the settings resemble digital cathedrals, hanging gardens, and such

There are endless staircases, architectural columns, towering minarets and geometric architectural formations that repeat like fractals into infinity. You can change the perspective (and subsequent gravity) to fall in all 6 degrees of freedom to get to places to solve the puzzles (Think of a 3D anti-gravity-plane-switching of something like Viewfinder or Superliminal rather than shift your perspective to solve puzzles like in those games) The puzzles themselves are not too complex usually...
This hyperbolic bad-boy here is what you came for (hint don't leave it in it's reward-pedestal like i did. Doh!)

You move color-coded cubes to operate switches and other things in certain sequences (A bit like Q.U.B.E. though the puzzles themselves aren't as tricky as that and are more intuitive and straight-forward if you can see beyond the 3D planes in which each color block 'resides' to create it's intended falling effect) This translates to as "red cubes" falling to the ground on the "red" plane" and so one for each of the six rotational planes available to you. (This is ironically actually kind of one-dimensional approach to puzzle game, but they add in a few things now and then to mix it up such as rotating ball mazes, and block-changing beams) There are six colors and six planes and beyond that, they didn't get too complicated with solutions.

Sometimes 'puzzles' are simply popping the switch in front of the door. Sometimes they combine things and can be a little tricky. But usually nothing terribly inaccessible. It's also pretty easy to not get los or turned-around the wrong way)

Ultimately, this is a stylish, super-trippy game where you feel like you're in an infinitely-rendered simulation/alien/god-tech construct of some kind, the music is soothing psychedelic ambient and the game looks smooth and good in it's chosen style. The puzzles are pretty approachable (I found myself only having to look a few up at the beginning as I didn't know what the game was wanting from me or how it worked, but once I figured it out, I was flying through the rest of them, pretty much.) You get six 'worlds' where you unlock a hypercube at the end, followed by a final seventh world. Each world takes about 45-60 mins to complete.

Overall, I would recommend this game to anyone who it looks interesting to. I recently played a free game on steam that is basically going for the same kind of directional-switching mechanic, and a rotoscope monochrome look to it but has much more clever puzzles but with less of the infinity mechanic called Frame of Mind (took about 20 mins to finish check it out if you're on the fence here) But I would particularly recommend it to players who are looking for some of those games I mentioned (or walking simulation type fare that takes you through interesting places) or just something that looks cool and is an immersive experience. Just know that the puzzles aren't terribly challenging (I thought they got the difficulty perfect, and at a pace that scales nicely by the end... but I know some may expect something more difficult from a game that clearly has puzzle mechanics in it) and also the game isn't that long... Also there is no story or anything really, it's one of those super-minimal games with no UI, etc. (the best, IMO, but I know some don't like that) Not sure what the replay value on it really is but it could be fun after a few years in the right mood after forgetting about it (similarly to some of those others I mention)

Pretty awesome experience in a VR headset (desktop mode) wiggling in different wonky directions to trigger vertigo and going into freefall (Mirrors' Edge) Use your best judgement if you are sensitive to those things (I am not at all)

Maybe the only time a puzzle game (outside of a narrative-driven one, like Portal) has managed to evoke a genuine emotional response from me. Granted, that response was anxiety, due to how it asks you to constantly take leaps of faith and just be lost for long stretches while you analyze and find your way through, around, up, down, and over your surroundings. But still.

This thing is stunning to look at, engaging as hell to play, and only a wee bit daunting at times. But the vision for this is something truly unique, and for me it worked. It's not the longest game of its ilk, but I find that to its benefit—much as I loved a lot of The Witness, I found it overstayed its welcome by... a couple of hundred puzzles. The Portal comparison here is apt: while narratively the two are drastically different (this has a narrative of sorts, though it is decidedly esoteric and implied), the feel of moving through the world is similar, as is their length.

More than anything, it does what a good puzzle game should: it makes you equally baffled as to how anyone could conceive of such madness, and feeling like a genius when it finally clicks—when you realize, at long last, you're able to read the language of the world and react accordingly with less trial and error.

I really enjoyed this game. The graphics were minimalist but at the same time like entering an exploring an Escher painting. The puzzles were a good challenge and kept you thinking in 6 directions alongside the necessity of exploring in free fall...this could be an amazing VR game too. Fun to the very end....up there with Talos Principal, Portal and The Witness.

And do yourself a favor and read the short story Library of Babel and the novella A Short Stay in Hell to get your head in deep to the infinite context that this game brought alive for me.

When I first saw screenshots of Manifold Garden, before I knew anything about the game, I was immediately reminded of the famous lithograph Relativity by M.C. Escher:

The resemblance is no accident. When development of the game started, Relativity was its working title, and it was heavily inspired by the works of Escher, along with many other earlier puzzle games such as Portal and Antichamber. The game's world includes structures that repeat unto infinity and many sets of staircases that ascend in multiple directions so that any one of those directions could be considered to be "up".

One of the wonderful things about the game is the fact that those paradoxical, infinitely repeating structures aren't just scenery. Every bit of them can be traversed. Every staircase can be climbed. In keeping with this is a mechanic that allows you to shift the direction of gravity: by looking at a wall and hitting a certain button, that direction becomes the new 'down'. Gravity will pull you, and any objects, in that direction.

One early puzzle teaches you about moving around in this world by having you drop off of a structure (which repeats vertically) in order to fall on to the next instance of the same structure so that you can activate a switch on the top of it. The fact that you can fall freely, without limit or any penalty means that slipping off of a ledge is never frustrating or irritating as it might be in a game like this. You know you'll just end up falling on to the same platform you fell off of!

When it comes to the actual puzzley bits, they're a bit more orthodox. You have cubes that need to be placed on switches, flows of water that can be redirected. Being able to change the direction of gravity, though, helps to keep these puzzle mechanics interesting and adds conditions that need to be taken into account. For example, cubes have one specific direction of gravity and can only fall in that direction. Water can also only fall in one direction, and if you switch gravity to another direction, the water becomes frozen in mid-air, a solid object, which you can walk on like a bridge.

There's something serene about playing this game, something that's hard to put into words. Just being able to look at the mind-bending environments, letting your eyes and brain take it all in, allowing yourself to fall through endless space as you look around to get your bearings, there is something meditative about it. Though I often didn't know where I was going in the game, I always felt I could explore completely freely, without having any worry of getting "lost". Either I would end up somewhere I needed to be, or I'd end up somewhere familiar.

The puzzle bits are really only half of what Manifold Garden is about; the other half is just exploring the complex geometric worlds, and the game does a great job of making that exploration a wonderful, rewarding experience. In addition to the environments being beautiful, they're also very carefully designed so as to always point you in the right direction, in ways subtle enough that you usually won't notice them. It's clear that the game involved extensive playtesting -- roughly 2000 hours of it, according to the developer own reports. Everything the game does helps to provide visual cues that help your brain to orient itself. Each direction of gravity has a color, and that color is present on cubes, water flows, and also floor and wall surfaces so that you can easily keep track of which way you're going ("okay, I need to be falling in the yellow direction").

When you clear an area, you're rewarded with a kaleidoscopic sequence of animation, of shapes twisting and turning, emerging from the center, as the color and structure of the whole seem to slowly invert. It's like watching a fractal in motion.

Overall, this was an amazing experience and one I can strongly recommend.

One last thing I want to mention is that the main developer, William Chyr, apparently experienced a lot of funding difficulties along the way. He made one-year exclusivity deal with the Epic Game Store which helped him to get the funding to bring the game to completion and cover it until it began to sell. Afterwards, he stated that he probably wouldn't develop another game, because of art games not being financially sustainable. To me, this is pretty unfortunate, if true, because I was a big fan of this game and I'd have a great interest in anything William Chyr were to produce in the future.

This is why, I think, it's always important for us to support indie devs whenever we can. There are many wonderful indie gems out there which aren't well known, but which dedicated developers have put their hearts and years of work into. But funding is always hard to come by. If we want to see more works like these, then we need to do what we can to support their efforts.

I only realised yesterday that Manifold Garden was actually released back in October with little to no publicity or fanfare. Quite peculiar. I was waiting for this game for almost a decade, then I go to check up on it and it's suddenly out of development hell?

It was released to Epic Games Store. I was a bit sad at first, because I'll be waiting at least a year or two to play it. Though the developer posted this fascinating video (link) explaining his position, and it really shifted my opinion of the Epic exclusive thing. I don't support it, I don't like when devs do it, but I can sympathise with this guy.. and I can also see how an Epic exclusivity deal can actually have a silver lining. The Epic deal actually gave this dev the resources to finish his game and release it in full, which never would have happened otherwise. So in this case I'm glad for the Epic exclusivity deal; better to play this game 12 months late rather than not at all.