It feels like ever since Portal the stream of first person puzzle games with new inventive mechanics and ideas has never slowed down. Yet, not every game that gets released turns out to be good, let alone amazing, no matter how cool its mechanics are. Manifold Garden lands on the good side, even if it might never become a classic.
The main gimmick of the game is in its impossible infinite architecture that plays into the puzzles. Every map/level is a structure with defined architecture for you to explore, except it’s stacked in an infinite looping pattern, so you often see all the other instances of the same location you are in around you. To make it all work, you have the ability to change the gravity when looking at any surface that’s perpendicular to you at close range. When switched, what was a “wall” becomes the floor and all objects that depended on the previous rules of gravity become suspended in space and time and cannot be manipulated, while all objects that are “native” to the new gravity direction become active.
It’s a pretty simple concept and it’s mostly used to solve simple puzzles with coloured boxes. Figure out how to put boxes in the correct spots, while they are of different gravity pulls and things like that. It’s usually not difficult – the game teaches you all the basics at the start and the main hurdle is just clicking with the whole gravity thing and the looping world structure or impossible geometry. And while there are additional elements that eventually expand the way the puzzles work, there aren’t that many of those so most of the time it’s about figuring out how to put boxes where you need them to be and how to make sense of the level layout.
Which could be interesting – not ever game needs to be as inventive and playful as Antichamber, – but where Manifold Garden excels at its base concept, it fails at being above average with its puzzle design. None of the puzzles in the game feel truly exciting and closer to the end they become outright tedious to go through. The pace of each “level” is also inconsistent, with some levels having complex puzzle structure, while others being solved in just a few minutes. And I’ve completely given up on trying to do the secret doors, because all of them seemed to involve really boring slow backtracking and more unfun box stacking. Making a good puzzle game is ridiculously hard, so I can understand why the game rarely succeeds at being fun in terms of gameplay. But in a title where your desire to actually play it is solely based on the puzzles, they sure are disappointing.
Luckily, they rarely outright suck and the game’s visual design and nice soundtrack provide enough entertainment to keep you from getting bored. I did enjoy my time with Manifold Garden and based just on its design alone I think it’s worth checking out. Just don’t expect it to wow you as much as some of the best examples of the genre.