Manifold Garden

Manifold Garden had the potential to be one of the best puzzle games I've ever seen and instead is mostly one of the most impressive tech demos. The actual game is nominally a puzzle game with exploring vast empty tesseracts and trying to figure out what the goal supplants a structured puzzle experience. Which isn't to say that there aren't actual puzzles. Half solve themselves and the other half are really really fun and force you think in new ways. The game breaks down into 3 mechanics. 1. Navigating these looping tesseracts. Which let's you say, fall down and end up on top of the building. 2. Changing your own orientation. There are six orientation corresponding to a cube so you can functionally climb walls or redefine what the wall is. This lets you fall left and end right on the above, for example. 3. Finally the cubes. There are cubes that are aligned with one or two vectors and color coded. You need to get the cube to it's hole to finish the puzzle or generally interact with the level when they're just hanging out there. There's also two minor mechanics (water and blocks), but eh, you get it. It's a 6/10 game that could have been 10/10. In the middle when there was structure, puzzles rooms, I felt like I was learning. I was changing how I interacted with the mechanics and it was phenomenal. But for the most part I was just lost and most of the rooms that you have to trigger something to advance just require you to experience them more than put 2 and 2 together.

Amazing art with laid back gameplay I wish I could live in the world this game takes place in cause it's gorgeous and so calming.