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.
Manifold Garden offers an experience both challenging and stunning, in equal measures. With absolutely beautiful visuals and a set of simple mechanics it cleverly takes to its limits, it is not an exaggeration to affirm we are before one of this genre’s best and most creative games. Above all, Manifold Garden is memorable and easily recommendable, even to those less used to puzzle games.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
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.
Completing puzzles and unlocking the various ways the game plays with its central mechanic all provide the catharsis of truly understanding each new environment and admiring the clever ways the developer wrapped everything together. From a pure gameplay perspective, it's a bit clunky, but you could say that about the work of many of the great artists and composers. Manifold Garden may not be much of a game, but it's surely an adventure that's worthy of some attention.
Manifold Garden is the best first person puzzle game since Portal 2. Unique spatial mechanics, a world that brings to life M.C. Escher’s work, a winsome art style and masterfully designed puzzles make this one of the easiest recommendations of 2020 so far.
Despite the relatively short playtime and little replay value, Manifold Garden is worth exploring. Just be prepared for an existential trip into the world of William Chyr.
I wanted to love Manifold Garden. It has a gorgeous design, thoroughly unique concept, and is wonderfully challenging despite being frustrating at times. Unfortunately, it just makes me too ill to play in the type of bursts I’d like to. If you’re unaffected by motion sickness then there’s a real gem of a puzzler here, but I’d recommend watching some gameplay first to make sure that you’ll be ok – I’ve heard multiple counts of it negatively affecting people who normally have no issues.
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
Manifold Garden's unique aesthetic and creative puzzles result in a memorable journey that is well worth the price of admission.
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 is a lovely game, but sometimes the "game" bit gets a little in the way.
Manifold Garden proves that a game doesn’t need a narrative to be enjoyable!
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 achieves its goal of being a beautiful and unique experience, but at the cost of navigable environments and user experience.
Overall, Manifold Garden is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, it has mesmerizing visuals, good puzzles, and a calming atmosphere. But there are a few negatives, like headaches, and music which lulls you to sleep. Priced at $19.99, I would recommend picking it up only if it's interesting to you and on sale.
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.
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
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.
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.