On a narrow, vertigo-inducing ledge, we see a vast, neverending yawn rippling off in all directions. Manifold Garden’s puzzles also operate on a macro level, as we discover upon emerging into the game’s first outdoor space. This poses problems, but also provides solutions: for example, a red block can be positioned to function as a shelf across which a yellow block can be carried.īut that’s just the small stuff. The same goes for blue, green, or yellow. We learn that coloured blocks adhere to their own relative gravity-red blocks can only be moved when we’re walking on a red surface otherwise, they become stuck fast. First, a prompt tells us that any wall can become the floor at the tap of a button, meaning the world quite literally revolves around the player.
Manifold garden series#
We’re eased into the game via an initial series of modest instructive rooms, with geometric sunbeams strafing the space.
In these surreal modernist cathedrals, space can fold and repeat indefinitely, and gravity follows unfamiliar rules. While the game does involve ferrying blocks from A to B-plucked like apples from cuboid trees and planted into switch cradles that open the way forward-what’s interesting is the dreamlike world we traverse along the way. But to describe it as such is to do it a great disservice. A 2019 Apple Arcade title freshly ported to the Switch (as well as Playstation and Xbox), it’s ostensibly a block-based puzzle game. The eponymous Manifold Garden is one such place.
It’s one of the great boons of video games: their ability to provide us with otherwise impossible spaces. The rules of physics can be altered, stretched, or completely suspended, creating the potential for mind-bending dreamscapes that defy our expectations.
In virtual space, the only limits are those of the human imagination.
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