Travel through the memories of two friends in a surreal, time manipulation puzzle game.
The Gardens Between
The Voxel Agents
Price: $19.99
Platforms: PC (reviewed), PS4, and Switch
MonsterVine was provided with a PC code for review.
The Gardens Between follows two friends, Arina and Frendt, as they’re tossed into a series of strange islands made from fragments of their memories. Your job is to guide them to the end of each island, piecing together their shared experiences as you go.
Unlike most games, however, you don’t control the characters directly. Instead, you manipulate the flow of time. Moving time forward causes them to walk ahead and interact with objects as they will, while moving time backward undoes everything. Since not everything changes based on the passage of time, you’ll need to figure out how each level works and manipulate time to get the two friends to the end.
For example, you’ll need to use orbs of light carried in Arina’s lantern for many purposes–creating bridges, clearing away patches of purple fog, etc. This light remains where it is even if you reverse time. Therefore, you can manipulate the passage of time to retrieve the orbs of light and get them to you when you need them. Frendt can also interact with devices on the islands to change the flow of time for specific objects or otherwise change the environment.
Finally, some aspects of the islands can be manipulated outside of time, such as stopping a water droplet between two wires to cause a surge of electricity. All of these elements come together to create some thought-provoking puzzles. Some are tricky, others are easy, but they’re all pretty interesting. There are a few optional secrets to discover as well, along with a “speed runner” option that lets you move much faster and a “big hair” option that gives the characters oversized heads just for fun.
The worlds and puzzles in The Gardens Between are often surreal. Each island is made up of fragmented memories, which means you’ll be traveling past massive TV screens, bowls of falling popcorn, giant calculators, and much more. It allows for puzzles that require you to send your lantern into a video game or print out a specific image on a giant sheet of paper, all within the context of the time manipulation. This level design is both beautiful and clever, and it not only makes the levels unique, but also emphasizes the fact that you’re traveling through these characters’ memories.
Every two or three islands are clustered together, and when you complete a cluster, you get to see the specific memory those fragments came from. They’re brief and contain no dialogue, but the text-free narrative in The Gardens Between does a good job of showing Arina and Frendt’s friendship. The memories chosen have a certain nostalgic nature to them that made me think back to similar memories with my own friends, which contributed to the overall bittersweet tone of the story. The Gardens Between is much shorter than I expected it to be, but I enjoyed the time I spent with it.
The Final Word
Although short, The Gardens Between is a relaxing puzzle game with unique ideas and a nostalgic, bittersweet snapshot of childhood friendship.
MonsterVine Rating: 3.5 out of 5 – Fair
