Manifold Garden Reviews
Manifold Garden is a wonderful, mind-bending puzzle experience. After 7 years of development, the five or so hours of the game are unique yet familiar. There is nothing else quite like it, and is one of the best puzzle games ever created.
William Chyr’s passion project is among my favorite first-person puzzlers for its ambitious scope, entrancing visuals, and brain-breaking conundrums.
I want to love this game, but I don't. It's an exquisite piece of design with a beautiful aesthetic that just needs a little more sense of direction in my honest opinion. Explorers and puzzlers will grow to love this game, but casual players looking for a coffee time headscratcher will probably grow tired of the scale and endless searching around for something to do quickly.
Manifold Garden proves that a game doesn’t need a narrative to be enjoyable!
Whether it's the influence of all the shapes and all the colours, or the enjoyable "clack" sound of cubes tapping along staircases, Manifold Garden is totally hypnotic. It's easy to get lost in a flow state while traversing between cubes to switches and other cubes, imbibing in the phenomenal, ever building soundtrack. It has none of the script or context of a title like Portal, but one would easily suspect that that would conflict with the undiluted audio-visual treat that this experience proffers. Manifold Garden builds a compelling, meditative world, and easily stands on its own merit as a highly recommended first person puzzle. It is short but sweet, as they say, and paced excellently. Jumping off into the abyss, and thinking about how to solve the next puzzle will never fail to reward - it makes one feel clever and always fits within the framework of rules which were previously set.
Manifold Garden is probably one of the best and most daring puzzle games of the past two decades. Referring to the greatest classics of the genre, it manages to present an absolutely simple concept both in terms of aesthetics and gameplay, with the right rhythm in beautiful and ingenious challenges.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Manifold Garden's unique aesthetic and creative puzzles result in a memorable journey that is well worth the price of admission.
And it takes an artist's touch to so masterfully combine gameplay, art direction, architecture, logic puzzles, spacial subversion and audio-visual elements into such a coherent package. I've a feeling Chyr's next project might manifest as an art installation rather than a game. If so, I'll be holding my breath for a fall as I step tentatively through the doorway.
I have never encountered a more beautiful, entrancing and sublime gaming experience
Part of my love for indies is that the best of them dare to be different and then unapologetically deliver something new that challenges and defies your normal expectations...
Manifold Garden is a serotonin-inducing triumph of a puzzle game that will captivate anyone who loves abstract aesthetics. Every single frame of this game is a screenshot, and every puzzle one that challenges the brain to think of the world in a more incorporeal manner. If M.C. Escher is your favorite MC, Manifold Garden is an absolute must-play, and I cannot envision a better platform for this geometric garden than PC.
Manifold Garden is a puzzle game that’ll blow your mind, challenge you, and please both your eyes and ears. Despite looking very simplistic in still images, the game is stunning with its perfect use of subtle colours and non-textured design, delivering a unique-looking experience that will stick with you for a long time. The infinite nature of the game will leave you in awe as you fall into the never-ending depths, forcing you to think outside of the box in order to discover the solutions to the many, many increasingly difficult and tricky puzzles. If you consider video games to be art, Manifold Garden is a masterpiece.
Excellent use of the DualSense haptics, improved visuals and 4K resolution @ 60 frames per second mean that the PS5 version of Manifold Garden is the definitive version of a truly excellent game. Transforming the tenets of M.C. Escher’s artwork into a fascinating and enigmatic puzzle game, this title is still one of the best in the genre to release in recent times. If you’ve yet to play it, this is the best way to do so. If you’ve already got it on PS4, you’ll get this upgrade for free and it’s worth another look.
I’m happy to say that Manifold Garden is one of the few first person games I found myself enjoying immensely with little fiddling required. The puzzles are tricky and the lack of hints is definitely not for everyone, but the gorgeous world, tight controls and ease of access make for a fun experience worth playing to the end if you can.
Manifold Garden achieves its goal of being a beautiful and unique experience, but at the cost of navigable environments and user experience.
in the end, it can be said that Manifold Garden is a very worthy puzzle title. Although the game environments are designed to be very simple, they often find a special beauty during the gameplay, especially in Photo Mode, and the puzzles in them are also cleverly designed and challenge your mind. However, this particular identity of the game will not be to the liking of a number of players, especially those who have problems with the special and three-dimensional nature of the puzzles.
Review in Persian | Read full review
After finishing my play-though of Manifold Garden, I’ve been left with a strange mix of elation and melancholy; a longing for just one more of those beautifully crafted, wonderfully challenging and intensely peaceful levels. Yes, it’s fair to say that I loved playing this game. Everything about Manifold Garden is right up my street; it has a unique concept, a compelling soundtrack and it’s full of intriguing puzzles and impressive visuals. It fills your mind with the experience it creates so that it’s easy to lose yourself in the game without feeling time pass. All of this combined is my equivalent of gaming catnip.
Manifold Garden is excellent visual poetry with different perspectives. It will make us think deeply at certain times and even get confused. It is short but it is compensated by its elaborate development and precious audiovisual section.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Manifold Garden challenges our intuition and gets its inspiration on impossible geometry and at the same time inviting us to think of impossible solutions.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Manifold Garden is an experience that mixes physics with puzzle solving. For anyone interested in the absurd ambience of Escher's illustrations or surrealist art, the game offers a sense of closeness. But this setting is sometimes confusing (on purpose) and can cause some discomfort. Considering that the developer’s intention is to make players feel lost and out of place, the game does its job well, forcing us to relearn how to look at the world around us.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review