Manifold Garden is a puzzle game with a beautiful aesthetic setting, made by a one-person studio William Chyr Studio. The development on the title began in 2012 under a different name and since then William Chyr has been working on Manifold Garden and now the game is finally out for consoles. It was earlier released on PC via Epic Games Store however a Steam version is also in the works and will be released later this year. This is our review of the PS4 version of Manifold Garden in which we play around with gravity and fall into the eternal space.
Manifold Garden is a puzzle-game that highly depends on you altering and playing around with gravity in order to solve puzzles and move ahead. The game is set in an M.C. Escher-esque world where the world has different gravities and every surface that you see, you can walk on it by altering the gravity and completely switching the plane to suit your needs. This means that nothing in the whole world can limit your progress since you can just flip around the world and use any surface to move around and solve different puzzles.
Most of the puzzles simply involve you taking colored cubes and putting them in their right switches from where they will unlock doors for you. The starting level teaches you everything that you need to know as well. The most powerful tool that you have in your hand is the ability to change the world all-around you by manipulating the galaxy. This changes the entire perspective of the game and how you look at it. The roof becomes the floor and the sidewalls become the roof and you can navigate on them like they are the floor. This is just a small example of how you can manipulate gravity and space to solve some of the puzzles in the game. The blocks are marked with particular colors and
After you complete the initial level and come out in the open, you are on your own and you must figure out what to do next. The very first puzzle that you have to figure out on your own actually involves you falling down and down into the void until you reach the same area again but you have to move ahead while falling and holding another cube so that you land on the next platform rather than the previous one. You have to figure out everything yourself because there is no guidance offered by the game as well.
That being said, this is the beauty of Manifold Garden that despite having no guidance from the game, the colors built into the game present themselves as the perfect guide. The green cube will go into the green switch, the yellow cube into the yellow one, and so on. Each cube is color-coded and so is the switch where it is meant to go. However, the switch is not always marked with the right color so you might have to look for colored lines heading to the switch. In addition, each plane has its own unique color and you can only interact with a particular cube unless you are on the same color as well. This makes solving certain puzzles extremely tricky as the switch is not always on the same color plane making you think out of the box in order to solve the puzzles.
As you progress further in the game, the puzzles keep getting trickier and trickier with a single puzzle spanning over a greater area than before. The simple pick up and drop puzzles get trickier and trickier because the levels get really confusing as well and you can easily get lost if you are not really good at remembering where you came from. When you switch the world once, everything around you moves and gives you a brand new perspective which changes how the camera works and even how you move around. You have to quickly adjust your bearings and look for your next move or else, switch the plane for another time.
My worst moment in the game was when I accidentally changed the gravity while I was on stairs on a building that never ends. I made them turn upside down and I got lost so bad that I had to restart a previous save file. Since switching gives you a brand new perspective of everything around you, it is very easy for you to lose your sense of direction. Every time you switch, the camera controls are also changed so it takes a little time to get used to it. For me, I was lost in a never-ending cycle of either going up on the stairs or going down. Restarting the previously saved file showed to me that I was missing the path ahead because I was walking on the upside-down bit of the world where the door was hidden under a platform.
Manifold Garden was developed by William Chyr in over seven years and a lot of hard work and effort has been put into the game. You can see it in every pixel or shape that you see in the game. The game is extremely polished and frankly speaking, Manifold Garden is one of the most polished indie games that I have seen in a very long time. I did not experience even a single glitch or bug in the game. I have already played the title on Epic Games Store before but now I was a little worried while trying out the PS4 version of the game for two reasons. One, console ports usually do not live up to the PC version, and this time around, I was reviewing the title that means that I had to critically evaluate this brilliant puzzler from every aspect.
I was extremely relieved to actually see the PS4 version of Manifold Garden perform on the console just as good as it did on the PC. It looks beautiful with its unique aesthetics and gameplay is really smooth as well with its simple controls appointed to the controller in a very effective manner. If you missed the PC version, the console version is the one that you can opt for without any worries of missing out on the aesthetics or the gameplay smoothness of the PC version of the title. For me, Manifold Garden is more of an experience and less of a puzzle game. If I could, I would place the game among titles like Journey and Abzu where you explore the world and admire its beauty with minimalistic gameplay. Manifold Garden ups the ante a little with its hardcore and brain-tickling puzzles.
Final Verdict:
Manifold Garden is a game that I took my time playing. Not because I played it in short intervals because it took me a decent amount of time to actually complete this beautiful puzzle game. The puzzles might look straight-forward but the actual play of gravity and the space it offers is absolutely mind-blowing. There is no end to space in the game and because of this, everything you see in the game has no end to it. It is one of the few puzzle games where I actually stopped, looked around, and thought for some time about what I have to do next since the game literally opens up despite having a linear path to progression. This game is less of a puzzle game and more of an experience that you should definitely go for. If you are a fan of puzzle games, Manifold Garden is going to tickle every cell in your brain as you try to manipulate gravity and try to make sense of everything happening around you. With the game now released on consoles, you can experience this brilliant puzzle experience on your favorite console right now.
Final Score: 8.5/10
