Manifold Garden

The sublime power of Manifold Garden’s visuals is never matched by its puzzles. Rather, the puzzles skitter across the surface of every new idea, dipping into each one just enough to suggest fascinating interactions and then move on at a brisk pace. Manifold Garden never dives into its concepts, or, perhaps, it only dives far enough to end up back where it started.

Manifold Garden is a peculiar and attractive experience. In many ways, the game feels more like an audiovisual experience than as an interactive work and its art style and soundtrack definitely stand out as indispensable elements. At the same time, some of its puzzles turn out to be less enjoyable than they should, and the game's short lifespan and little motivation to pick up again after completed mean that even though it has outstanding qualities, Manifold Garden falls short of its potential.

It almost feels like Manifold Garden might have fared better as a "walking simulator" at times; its infinitely-folding environments are works of art from any angle, and it's a little difficult to appreciate them when you're solving yet another samey block puzzle. Still, it'd be churlish to mark it down for being a game when solving its riddles isn't unenjoyable by any stretch of the imagination. We just found ourselves a little impatient to be done with them so we could hurry into the next astonishing panorama of abstract, impossible imagery. Manifold Garden is a lovely game, but sometimes the "game" bit gets a little in the way.