Manifold Garden

beautiful masterpiece. everything was wonderful: the puzzles, the graphics (rip my gpu), the music, how smooth the gameplay was, everything. i would replay just to enjoy the ending all over again

This is a perfect game in every metric: design, mechanics, sound, art.

Manifold Garden breathtakingly beautiful and serene environment full of moderately difficult puzzles with a strong focus on the main mechanic of gravity manipulation and a healthy dose of non-Euclidean space.

Worth full price. I would love to see a sequel or DLC levels.

Short but enjoyable puzzle game. Forces you to rethink how you perceive gravity in MC Escher-esque environments.

If the screenshots look interesting to you, don't even watch the trailer, just buy it. The less you know the better.

I had no idea what to expect really, just absolutely liked the art style, saw the positive reviews and decided to jump in. Fantastic decision and one of the few games that still managed to surprise me. I think it's my favorite puzzle game together with Portal and Viewfinder.

This (whatever it is) is as much art as it is puzzle game. The non-Euclidean, kaleidoscopic, Escher-esq geometry kinda broke my brain a bit. There doesn't appear to be any narrative of end-purpose to the game, or if there is it went completely over my head. Still, it was fun to play and to work out how to navigate the weird world and solve the puzzles. There's no tutorial; you'll just need to puzzle it out for yourself, but it's worth the effort. I'd give this a 7/10.

A puzzle game that is rather hard to explain. Without giving too much away, the mechanics revolve around rotating the world, infinitely recurring environments and the use of gravity. As with most puzzle games, new mechanics and more complex interactions appear as you go along (like water and moving blocks being added later for example). There is also a large exploration portion and you just needing to figure out what you can and should do next. The game also has a very unique art style, having a washed-out palette but with splashes of colors and interesting architecture. There is no narrative at all, no text, no voice, or anything other than what is implied by your progression. Even the tutorial portions tell you the absolute minimum to get you started. A very large portion of this game is just figuring out how things work on your own.

The best thing about this game is the originality. There is just nothing like it I have ever seen. Even though some other games mess with perspectives and rotating the world, this is just done differently and it interacts with other mechanics making it unique (at least from what I have seen). The puzzles themselves are all fair and mostly intuitive… if you get a grasp of the mechanics and get used to manipulating the world at least. There are some challenging ones, but I never truly felt stuck. There is a learning curve though and I did feel hopelessly lost in the early portions of the game. It is surprising what the brain is capable of though and it all eventually became “normal”. For me at least, the biggest challenge in the game was not the puzzles, but the exploration and traversal of the world. It can be challenging figuring out where you are supposed to go, or even if you truly finished an area and should try and move on or stay where you are.

And that is the games biggest negative for me. I didn’t enjoy the lost feeling I often felt. I finish a series of puzzles, which gives me some new block, but I have no idea what to do with it. Even after I figure that out, I don’t know where to go next. And this isn’t some normal world where it is easy to explore. The world is huge, there are doors (locked or open), all over that travel to whole different worlds. You can rotate the world and walk on the ceilings and the architecture is weird. And there is often a case where you can place things in different places, but you aren’t sure which one you need to do next. And sometimes weird stuff happens and you have no idea what it signifies. This is all a design choice, of course, and I’m sure some people will enjoy this aspect, but it wasn’t for me. Still the progression is largely linear, so it will eventually work itself out if you are patient. Another minor annoyance was that the world was a bit too big sometimes and traversing it could be a bit time consuming (though you usually have options to just rotate the world and quickly fall).

So, in the end, this is a recommendation for sure, but this definitely isn’t a game for everyone. Even people who love puzzle games could bounce off this one. If the mechanics sound interesting and you think you would like some truly mind-bending experiences, then you will probably love this game. If you just want some normal, logical, straightforward, real-world puzzles and exploration though, you should pass on this game.

I am at a loss for words at how incredibly beautiful and at times terrifying this game is. I'll say some things anyway.
The frankly brutal amounts of joy as I grew the first garden, of course the first step out into the impossible at the beginning and the sheer dread and transcendental levels of satisfaction and.. mind-blowingness (?) of the end - this single 5 or 6 hour experience has been one of the most fantastic experiences I *ever* had in media, and probably beyond even that.
And god damn, this MUSIC! One of the best soundtracks to anything I have ever heard, and almost perfectly implemented and utilised too. Every element of this game, be it puzzles, visuals or audio - all of them come together into an unforgettable masterpiece. Maybe I'm gushing too hard, but I don't give a f*** - this work of art deserves all the recognition or praise it already got - and loads more.

I've replayed this game 4 times and loved it every single time. It's entertaining and challenging and everything about it, the visuals, game mechanics, the music and the sounds, even down to the sound of falling on glass, is beautiful. Hands down one of the best games I've ever played. My only complaints is that there's only one game.

Real mind bender, closest in feel to portal of any puzzle game I've played.

And evidently there's an intended way to beat it that involves not doing any of the main mechanic, so if you really want to kick it up to 11, there's that.

I beat it in 4.6 hours, I enjoyed using my brain that seems pretty good with 4th dimensional thinking, if my playthrough is anything to go by, and really enjoyed the colorful fractals.

What an incredible and beautiful game! Serene and mind opening.

10/10, no notes.

Not only am I left entirely speechless upon completion of the game, but I also feel that each word I say would be a stain upon this work of art.

Manifold Garden is a fantastic mind bending puzzle solving experience and i loved every bit of it. this game felt vary zen through out the whole play through, and if i got stumped i left the game for a day and came back with my mind refreshed and find that sometimes the most complicated feeling puzzle had the simplest solution.

i recomend anyone who likes a good puzzle to play this

Mindbendy of my liking. Only recommendation, when you pause playing, save in a in a place that makes sense, or when you'll get back to the game you will feel very lost. Super good game

It's basically exactly what you'd expect, and it's amazing. If you want a chill puzzle game where every shot is beautiful, this is the game for you. The game is short, but there are some additional secrets for those who are looking for something more after finishing the first time.

top tier puzzle game with waves and waves of ah-ha and wondering moments, difficulty is medium comparing to other top tier puzzle games

Imagine a puzzle game set within a series of nested, infinitely repeating, MC Escher paintings. That is essentially what this game is. It bends your mind in the best of ways while also being of manageable length and full of secrets on top of that.

One of the best, most creative beautiful games I've ever played. I only have a question for the developers, which did you do and how many?

Best puzzle game I've ever played. The visual seems simplistic, but the vistas and views are just breathtaking. The gameplay is awesome and the puzzle isn't that hard to figure out but requires a lot of contemplating and a need to take a step back to fully see it. Highly recommend.

Like Antichamber, this game deserves a special spot for creativity. This one is slightly shorter, and/or perhaps easier. Kudos to the creator for turning my head and visuals inside out. 10/10.

If you like puzzles and something simultaneously very chill, this is for you.

I'd recommend it mainly for the simple but breathtaking scenery. As a puzzler, it seems pretty daunting at first when it presents you with its infinite nature. Once you get a handle of that, the puzzles become disappointingly simple and it doesn't really keep pace with the promise it shows in the first couple levels when it gradually adds mechanics. Not saying the puzzles are bad, but it can't stand on the puzzles alone.
Lucky then that it is an absolute technical marvel how it'll render your world repeating infinitely in all directions. It makes for some jaw dropping visuals. I took more screenshots in this than I have in any of the thousands of games in my library.

今年玩过最受震撼的游戏之一。游戏中有两个很重要的机制，一个是分形四维空间，但是在空间陈列上不单调，有着是斜向分布的，在空间上可以从左上走到右下，第二个是重力场，玩家可以从六个面中选一面激活重力场，从而影响自身和物体，使其下坠。总之这两个结合起来几乎创造了无限可能，只有玩了才知道有多奇妙。
去GDC听了听创作思路，主创居然是自己一个人完成了原型，讲得举重若轻，可见主创想象力和执行力之强令人汗颜。

3d puzzle game testing your spatial awareness in looping environments you'll hopefully never meet in real life; despite the geometrically complex settings though are clear and accessible puzzles, so you're pretty much never thrown into unfair situations. Definitely recommended for puzzle enthusiasts.

beautiful game, puzzles are challenging but not impossible, love the music - highly recommend.

Awesome! Puzzles are pretty straightforward thanks to great level/game design. Feels great once you let go and fall everywhere you want to go instead of trying to walk

Like NaissancE meets Antichamber.
Not overly taxing, but a lot of fun working through the physics.

Always worth remembering that you can't get stuck.

This game does something to you. Feels like good anxiety? I don't know how else to describe it.

Great game. I love the idea, music, and level design. Sometime I just wondered around , enjoying recursive architecture. Pure meditation with not too hard puzzles.

Manifold Garden is a 3D puzzle game set in infinite looping 3D environments. There is no story to speak of; you are simply in a strange space full of puzzles you have to solve, with no instruction on how to do so. It is very much one of those games where you have to figure out what it is you’re even supposed to do being part of the puzzle.

The core of the gameplay is pretty standard box-and-switch-and-laser gameplay, but with with the twist of the looping 3D spaces and the ability to shift gravity so that “down” is any of the six X, Y, Z directions of a cube (though you must be adjacent to a wall to do so). Many of the boxes spawn on trees instead of on the ground, allowing you to pick them up again if you lose them – a somewhat necessary concession in the often-large levels – and the gravity change restrictions means you often have to navigate to spaces the hard way in more closed rooms, whereas in more open ones you can exploit the looping nature of the world to fall down from “above” to get to where you need to go.

This game is one of those games that is full of non-continuous geometry, with levels that loop back on themselves impossibly, doors that lead to places in other rooms that are impossible to line up in 3D space, and various other nonsense. It has a rather nice style to it and the gigantic looping rooms can be quite cool.

However, there’s a problem – many of the rooms are FAR too large for the puzzles they contain, making them way more tedious than they need to be. Many times I was confronted with a puzzle, only to find out there was a simple solution in the huge level and I just couldn’t find the right place to go or to find some item. As such, the game’s style actually sometimes undermines its own puzzles, and this happens more and more as you get deeper into the game. There’s also some places where, if you go through a door, it will seal up behind you, meaning that if you needed something from that room, you now have to backtrack all the way through multiple puzzle rooms to get there – which can be very annoying, and did happen to me once during my playthrough.

All in all, the game is a reasonably decent puzzle game with some fun ideas, but the huge puzzle rooms ended up wearing on me by the end of the game, as while they looked impressive, smaller, more condensed puzzle rooms are easier to navigate and easier to parse.

This game is special, not in the same way that other games are. Some games make you feel a certain way, think a certain way, act a certain way, or even play a certain way but this game forces you to do it all, it puts you in a truly unique position. Not only that but this game is breathtaking as you step out onto the first platform this incredible combination of music and scale and majesty combine to make a truly one of a kind feeling. If you've ever wanted to play a game that makes you think beyond just the game itself, I really couldn't think of a better selection (Bonus Points if you read House of Leaves (an inspiration to this game)) it is a work of art and I could think of very few better ways to spend $20. What an experience this game was and honestly I can't believe how good it is, it is one of a kind and is magical, you won't find anything like it and you won't feel the same after you play it, so enjoy.

This is the first game that I'd point to show that Video Games can indeed be art. This is Kaleidoscope, the Game. Some of the puzzles could've been trickier, you could feel that even the developers were struggling with the geometry. But I don't think that this is really the point, the point is to marvel at the environment.

Reminds me of 'Antichamber' a game made in 2013 which explored non-euclidian geometry as well. Similar artstyle and same calm ambience. Though, it doesn't have the gravity manipulation mechanics of this game.

8.5/10 would recommend!

Super unique puzzle game with a great art style. 10/10 would play again

Simply beautiful.

Puzzles were challenging enough.

Tbh visuals made me feel sick (vertigo-wise) several times but I would say that adds charm to the game really. I hope the ending is satisfying.

Whole game took less than 5 hours, really recommend it for puzzle lovers, great visuals and audio, 5/5

This game, was an experience.

I absolutely love the atmosphere of liminal spaces, I love infinite spaces as well, they give me a sense of peace that I cannot explain.

The creativity in the puzzles of this game is next level good, so satisfying once you figure out each trick, that then plays in to the next level as well, which might bring back some elements from a former level too.

Beating this game, after being stuck on what turned out to be the final puzzle for a very long time, was so cathartic.

The ending is sublime and leaves you with a sense of awe.

For a game with no dialogue it has a lot to say.

Highly recommend purchasing this game.

I really enjoy this fun puzzle game and I love showing it to people and having their minds explode.

good puzzle game. if you played antichamber, you'll be pleasantly reminded of it while playing this game, although Manifold Garden is different enough to stand on its own. i found it to be both easy and relatively short, but it seems to take most people more time/effort to beat so maybe you'll get more out of it than i did. the music is also quite nice, and the environments are large (through use of recursion, mostly), impressive, and pretty

Awe inspiring, mind bending, beautiful, and simple in its offering, just right. Will take you 5 hours or something.

You can flip gravity in any of the 6 directions and the levels are all designed around this, forever repeating on itself when you try to escape one. It's a little disorienting and really makes you feel like there's some other worldly 4th dimensional god who designed this place that you wander through, but the puzzles are surprisingly approachable even till the end so don't be afraid.

No loading times, everything is one single sequence that you can explore freely as everything is connected by seamless portals bringing you from one level to the next with some hub locations as well. No doubt there are secrets to be found amidst the chaos.

Crazy how good and impressive the environments look when it's just cubes with good lighting. The sound design and music are also very good and perfectly accompany your journey. Someone had fun with shaders in this one...

The end is really beautiful and up to your interpretation.

Fairly short for a single play through. Well worth the purchase if on sale just for the visuals alone.

Great gameplay and puzzle mechanics in non-Euclidean space.

Beautiful design, great soundscape.

This game allowed me to transcend reality.

As you are probably aware, this game uses impossible geometry and dabbles with the use of higher dimensions. Through the desolate halls of this game I wandered in search of answers.
How does this world work?
Why does it work?
What's the point?

Let me to tell you, this game does not disappoint. As I write this, processing what I have just witnessed, I am unsure whether to even call this a game. Its an experience that allows you to truly understand a higher plane of being. The simple graphics hide a truly profound idea that has afforded me new knowledge of how our universe works.
Obviously, the first course of action now is to exploit this new knowledge. And let's just say, I did.
To make a long story short, I am now in jail. Do you know any good lawyers?

Great game with a great soundtrack, would be cool to see a challenge mode/dlc that puts the puzzle pedal to the puzzle metal.

10/10

Manifold Garden captivates with its unique manipulation of gravity and interconnected, repeating environments, creating a visually stunning world.
However, the game feels too expansive, with many areas going unused, which diminishes its impact.
The puzzles often solved themselves or relied too heavily on exploration, lacking the challenge I hoped for.
It’s an atmospheric experience, but its vastness and simplicity holds it back.

I love the sense of scale, and the puzzles are pretty interesting too! (they are somewhat easy although I don't really think that's really an issue)

Overview - "Great base game / 100% game"

There was such a large difference in the experience between the two halves of the game I have to split the review into the Base and 100% (No God Cube Run)
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Base Game - "Unique, and fun" [9/10]

The base game is such a fun experience, I strongly recommend people to play.

Pros

• Great puzzles
  
• Unique systems
  
• Fun with gravity
  
• Amazing looking
  
• Some lite Existentialism for flavor.
  
• Intuitive designs.
  

Cons

• The Tetris blocks that showed up later were too big to really see the puzzle, It wasn't hard just hard to see. Felt better to just fiddle with gravity till things worked, than to try and see where they needed to go.
  
• It was difficult to get a sense of progression through the maze of the game. Have puzzle between different god cube rooms wasn't bad and added to a sense of being lost in the fractals, but it would of been nice to see a big colored door showing the player that they have reached the next god puzzle. I regularly wasn't sure how close I was just to realizes I was part of the way through a god puzzle.
  
• The world regularly looks same same, which can add to a sense of being lost. Not bad if it was only for a time but the whole game feels like this so eventually you just cant remember where you've been.
  

Worth

• The base game only takes about 4hours, but with how unique and fun the puzzles and world are I could easily see it being worth $10 maybe $15. The $20 asking price seems a bit much so I would Wishlist and wait for a sale.
  

-----"Buy, play the base game, uninstall, leave a positive review"-----
[hr][/hr]

100% Game - "Madness, Buggy, Nightmare" [0/10]

This part of the game/review primarily centers around the achievement "The Game Is Not Enough" or the "No God Cube Run." Achievements are a way for the developer to reward/encourage players to interact with all the features of a game. I debated talking about this but considering this is an achievement I feel the developers consider it a part of the complete experience which makes it a part of the complete review.

No God Cube Run

On the surface I expected gameplay that would be inline with the types of puzzle the game had introduced me to with a few extra challenges to get around each god cube. Or something where you get around the god cubes using back rooms and solving new puzzles. Sounded cool either way. This was not the case. This was a horrible experience. A torturous one. All the cons from the base game got so amplified during this run. It had bugs that reset large parts of my progress and the quality of the puzzles dropped so drastically during this run. Every part was not about finding clever solutions it was about how much mental you have to deal with highly obscure and tedious tasks. This was not a puzzle anymore. This really should of just been an Easter egg not an achievement.


-----"Behind these invisible doors there are bags of keys...if you try all the correct keys the doors will lead you to another room with doors. That's the puzzle."-----

Pros

• Its a cool idea to find backrooms in the fractal world to skip around the god puzzles.
  
• Its a cool idea to steal boxes from other puzzles.
  

-----"Cool ideas mean nothing if poorly executed"-----

Cons

• Obscure places and hidden doors make everything feel disconnected you cant tell what goes where or where you need to go.
  
• No clear progression or checkpoints.
  
• Constantly having to retrace tracks you see so many of the same places over and over you start feeling genuine madness.
  
• Every task was massively tedious. I'm not talking move one block to get through door. I mean go find 5 cubes you don't even know you need and inch them through hell.
  
• Bugs regularly de-spawned the cubes I needed to make progress. Spent 30 mins carefully finding and removing the right cube that was buried deep in a multi layered puzzle for it to just disappear. So you have to do it again.... this happened at least 3-4 times.
  
• Game stopped let me save at a curtain point. So I had to lock in and rush through 2+ hours of work to finish so I wouldn't loose hours of tedious work I'd already done. Was genuinely worried the game might crash.
  
• I had to do so much double backing across areas it felt so horrible.
  
• You never really know where you are in anything. Its just an abyss of fractals at some point.
  
• So many hidden door.
  
• After finishing the achievement the legitimate way I found out you could glitch through doors...Which means the rare achievement is owned by more people who glitched it than people who had to do what I did. SO LAME.
  
• No one would leave a positive review if any of the tedious puzzles form this achievement made it into the base game.
  
[*]This last achievement takes longer than the entire base game.

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Conclusion - "I spent more time hating the game than loving it"

Honestly, buy the game on sale and have some really great fun for the first playthrough. Than uninstall because there is nothing more worth seeing. Leave a positive review.
-----"4 hours of great fun - 6 hours of nightmare....."-----

Though bordering on too hard for me personally, I love this game so far. I'm a massive fan of puzzle type mindbender games and am usually dissapointed when a lot of them don't pose as much of a challenge as I'd like. This one however leaves me stumped on a seemingly simple puzzle for hours. Not a complaint at all, just expressing that this game is a humbling experience for those who pride themselves on problem solving abilities and critical outside of the box thinking

One of the greatest puzzle games to ever exist. Entertaining levels with the right amount of difficulty to let you use your brain and think, and not too difficult to frustrate you.
It is short and that's a good thing, otherwise it would have had repetitive levels.
Art style is astonishing and the music is ethereal.
10/10

AMAZING puzzle game. Puzzles are challenging but not complicated. And beautiful. Where The Witness' beauty was in brightly colored scenery, Manifold's is in pastel colored complex architecture. And like Witness the first playthrough is the magic.
At first it can seem confusing but again like Witness you can't die or mess things up beyond repair. The intelligence in this game is off the charts. Unlike Witness however, there's no wandering looking for what to do. Wandering yes, but with a purpose. It replicates open-world by using infinite space. It's a must-see experience.

This game is a unique experience. If you like puzzle games you'll probably at least like it. But if you're a fan of the art of Escher or the writing of Borges, or if you're a math nerd and like topology (I'm all three of these), you'll absolutely adore it.