I often feel like I have no idea what I’m doing, but I never feel despondent or troubled by that confusion. Chyr has been working on the game for seven years, and he’s used that time to design a world that challenges its inhabitants without being cruel. Manifold Garden is not frustrating or confusing, even if my explanations of what I do in it may be. The blocks I found and their uses change as I enter more complex areas, and later I stumble upon waterfalls, another Escher reference. In this world, the void offers solutions. When I look into the void, the void doesn’t look back. I can finally reach a different area, falling past different variations of the world, controlled by which plane I was on when I pitched myself into nothingness. Except I’ve shifted to another plane on that structure, which means the stairs are now horizontal, not vertical. I fall, and fall, and fall, until I land right back on the very same platform. There is no jump, I can only walk until there is no longer floor. And I must fall into the void to do so, I jump, or, rather, fall. Then I realize I need to go across the short gap. The stairs loop around a vertical structure that extends forever in both directions I move up and down the structure in both directions, but I always return to where I started. I encountered this lesson early on in an area with Manifold Garden’s never-ending stairs. And the place where my anxiety and the game’s design collide the hardest takes place on the edge of a platform, over which I must throw myself.
The loops, like the blocks, are tools to help me escape, to interact with the environment and solve puzzles. The truth of that these environments don’t go on forever. I’m chasing something through a looping forest, but whatever I’m following I never know what it is remains just out of reach. Manifold Garden invokes a sense of anxiety, like a dream I’ve always had and never understood. Just when I think I’ve grasped the logic of the world, something changes, my perspective shifts, and the uneasiness of infinity settles in again. Early puzzles are meant to teach me the way the garden works more than challenge me, but puzzles become more complex as Manifold Garden opens up.
Anyone who enjoyed Portal or Portal 2 may have some understanding of the sort of thinking required to solve Manifold Garden’s puzzles easier. But it’s not as simple as picking up the block and moving it to its gate blocks are locked to their respective color planes, and I must manipulate gravity to get it where it needs to go. Elsewhere, there’s a door to unlock, powered by a receptacle where I’m to plug in the correctly colored block. The objective is often immediately clear when entering an area: I see the trees, growing their blocks. The blocks are each associated with a color, depending on what tree they’re pulled from. Blocks grow like apples from geometric trees dotted across the world, and it’s these blocks that are the keys to the world. Manifold Garden isn’t a garden in the traditional sense. The game can be finished in up to six hours, although time starts to have less meaning the more you dig in. I learn more about the world and its story with each new garden I reach, although the specifics are often more implied than explained. Doing so rids the world of an implied corruption that’s taking over, represented by dark clouds that obscure parts of Manifold Garden’s geometry. From there, I continue to play with gravity to solve the game’s puzzles. I mean this in a literal sense: With a click, the wall becomes the floor and a new world opens up to explore. I have to shift perspective by activating a different plane, which changes my view.
My assumption of how things are supposed to work are broken down by the game’s mechanics. It will make more sense as you play hands on, but trying to explain what’s going on verbally, or even written out, is a significant challenge. To get there, I essentially switch into different dimensional planes, each of which is associated with color. A button is dangling from the ceiling, and I have to walk on walls to reach it. There is no one guiding me through the garden instruction is built into its design. It’s a game I’m drawn to and terrified by, an unsettling yet stunning experience set in an MCE inspired world, where each structure is a puzzle and brings with it a sense of “impossibility” shapes that shouldn’t work, but do. Mantifold Garden after 7 years of creation there’s an uneasiness in Manifold Garden, developer William Chyr’s architectural oasis that shifts Mantifold Garden after 7 years of creation there’s an uneasiness in Manifold Garden, developer William Chyr’s architectural oasis that shifts and repeats itself into seemingly infinity.
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