Developer: The Voxel Agents
Publisher: The Voxel Agents
Reviewed on: Switch
Code Received.
The Garden’s Between is all about simplicity. The interactions, the presentation, and the story are all distilled down to their most raw form. This approach leads to a game in which every part compliments each other, and a story that is relatable despite feeling personal.
We follow two young friends as they relive the most important moments of their time together. Stargazing, playing video games, and drawing are pretty mundane activities, but here they’re brought to life through surreal imagery. Satirical versions of retro games play on CRT TVs that float through the air as you walk. You’ll tune a giant Walkman as glowing orbs jump from platform to platform in rhythm with the music. Getting these orbs in the right spot or acquiring an object in the video game is often key to solving the puzzle at hand. So you’ll spend just as much time admiring an object in a level as you do trying to find the solution to the puzzle surrounding it, and oftentimes one will lead to the other.
It’s truly a testament to the game’s design how well each level’s aesthetic blends with its challenge. Having knowledge about how a typewriter works will actually help you solve some of the game’s puzzles, however, not knowing won’t make it impossible. Simplicity really does flow through every aspect of The Gardens Between and because of that even its most complex puzzles should only take a few minutes to solve.
This simplicity extends to the gameplay as well. You control the flow of time by moving it either forwards or backwards, and this causes not only the characters to move on set paths, but also objects in the world. By taking advantage of “events” that occur and activating chimes along your path, you can solve puzzles and clear the way for our heroes. Some later levels require you to use perspective to line up objects, often defying the natural laws of physics. But because there are so few ways to actually interact with the world the solution to every puzzle is never more than a keen eye away. Ultimately, the goal is to get a glowing orb all the way to the top of each level to unlock the next memory.
The Gardens Between successfully tells a very personal, relatable, and touching story. It accomplishes this by using all of it’s elements to achieve this goal. It’s rare for gameplay, art, and story to all come together in such a cohesive way, and even more rare for a game to so deftly accomplish what it sets out to do. The Gardens Between does all of this and as a result is a must play game and something that everyone should experience.
