{"id":2973,"date":"2022-03-04T15:00:37","date_gmt":"2022-03-04T22:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=2973"},"modified":"2022-02-23T11:46:48","modified_gmt":"2022-02-23T18:46:48","slug":"video-game-manifold-garden-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2022\/03\/04\/video-game-manifold-garden-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"VIDEO GAME: Manifold Garden (2019)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ManifoldManifold Garden
<\/u><\/strong>Year: 2019
Rating: E
Time Played: 5+ hours<\/p>\n

I first saw the trailer for Manifold Garden<\/em> on a Nintendo Switch indie showcase. The visual style and gameplay mechanic were interesting enough for me to download this indie first-person puzzle game. I had seen nothing like it before and its infinitely repeating, fractal-like world appealed to the mathematician in me. Still, there’s only so much you can do with a concept like this, so it’s a good thing Manifold Garden<\/em> didn’t overstay its welcome.<\/p>\n

It’s difficult to avoid comparisons to other first-person physics puzzle games. You might have a hit like Portal 2<\/em> or a pastiche of Portal 2<\/em> like Q.U.B.E. 2<\/em><\/a>. Manifold Garden<\/em>, fortunately, doesn’t lean too heavily on Portal 2<\/em>‘s mechanics. Instead, it uses the “rotate” feature to modify gravity, thus manipulating the elements needed to solve each puzzle. Plus, the cel-shaded and monochromatic color-coded visual style (similar to Gris<\/em><\/a>) easily helps the player to know how the environment is currently oriented. I also appreciated how shortcuts opened up as I solved each puzzle, thus making traveling around this world simpler as the game progressed.<\/p>\n

While this game lived up to my expectations, there were a few points where I found the next step in the puzzle to be far from obvious. Normally, this wouldn’t bother me so much. However, with infinitely looping levels, I spent way more time fumbling around, trying to figure out what to do next. Not only did I have to try everything at my disposal in one gravity setting, but I had to do this for five other gravity settings as well. When I finally broke down and looked up a walkthrough, I felt stupid for how obvious the solution was in hindsight. I wish this only happened once in this game, but it happened at least two more times before I reached the end credits.<\/p>\n

A visually interesting take on the first-person gravity puzzler, I give Manifold Garden<\/em> 4.0 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Manifold GardenYear: 2019Rating: ETime Played: 5+ hours I first saw the trailer for Manifold Garden on a Nintendo Switch indie showcase. The visual style and gameplay mechanic were interesting enough for me to download this indie first-person puzzle game. I had seen nothing like it before and its infinitely repeating, fractal-like world appealed to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,1900],"tags":[1576,702,2977,1002,2976,1901,2158,8,906],"class_list":["post-2973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4-0-stars","category-video-game","tag-1576","tag-first-person","tag-fractal","tag-indie","tag-manifold-garden","tag-nintendo-switch","tag-puzzle","tag-review","tag-video-game"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2973"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2977,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2973\/revisions\/2977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}