jvet
2019
Manifold Gardens is a conundrum. I enjoy the puzzles and the visuals, but I don’t love the process of finding the puzzles. Exploration is a good opportunity to see the stunning worlds, but their mind-warping architecture isn’t easy to navigate and it makes simply locating what you’re “supposed” to do frustrating. It’s an unavoidable byproduct of the Escherian worlds and perhaps the problem is in my drive to solve the next puzzle instead of merely sightseeing.
2012
A quaint little fairy tale with some clever ideas.
2016
I’m not much for an on-rail shooter, but this one has the pedigree that made it worth a try. It wasn’t enough to change my taste, though I had fun for its brief runtime.
2023
A visual novel with the stylings of a nature documentary set on a foreign planet, player interaction is limited to advancing the story from page to page and occasionally investigating a highlighted word. The story is engaging, though I’m predisposed to this sort of story as a nature doc fan, so your mileage may vary. It’s largest detraction is that there’s nothing that would keep this from being a graphic novel—it doesn’t harness the media of video gaming in any novel ways.
I’m officially abandoning this one. I loved the original and even played through the DLC, but this one seemed to lack a certain “je ne sais quoi”. Was it that the levels lacked the Mario-flair of the original? That certainly didn’t help this outing, the the level design is much more engaging this time around. I think my biggest detraction is the difficulty: it’s just too easy. I don’t think I played the original on hard, and I’m not tactical genius, but this was kinda boring on even the hardest difficulty. I also think there were too many battles—cut it in half and ratchet up the intensity of each one and I’d be curious to see if I would enjoy it more.
The worse of the DLC, it leans into my least favorite aspect of the original game—the combat. It throws interminable waves of obnoxious enemies in areas that are largely retreads.
The better of the DLC episodes, this one focuses more on puzzle solving and leans into surrealist interpretations of the environnements to good effect. It’s interesting and surprising, though neither DLCs advance the story significantly.
Playing this took me back to the age of average games—when 7 out of 10s were prevalent and I was happy to simply see another entry of a favorite franchise. I didn’t understand the criticism of this game until I played it and realized how hollow it is—three maps with repetitive gameplay and a nonsense story. The fun variety is fun and feels better than the original, but it’s still uninspired.
2023
Novel, fun movement is one of my favorite things about a game, and this experiment is almost completely built around a unique moveset. There are just hints of a wider story, but the draw here is fluid grappling and jumping, and it mostly works. The combat, on the other hand, will need some retooling in a full release, but as a proof of concept, this has some real promise!
2024
Cute little game about wrecking house. It’s fun, low stakes, and doesn’t overstay its welcome—one of my favorite kinds of games.
More fun and interesting than Dream Land, but it was only after beating 75% of it that I heard this version is considered inferior to the original.
In any case, this didn’t leave the best first impression, but it did get more fun as it went.
In any case, this didn’t leave the best first impression, but it did get more fun as it went.
About fifteen minutes worth of content that is essentially a single boss fight. The sub mechanics are interesting but underused.
Cute and fun to start, but progression felt to slow to really hook me.
2020
An early Apple Arcade game and feels like it was tailor made for mobile as it’s slight and immaterial.
2020
Tried on two separate occasions to get into this after reading a glowing review and enjoying similar cinematic platformers, and I’m giving up on it. Puzzles are obvious and sparse, and the story wasn’t interesting, which is necessary for a strong cinematic platformer. Often those games tell their stories wordlessly through mysterious environments and expressive animation, and this game dictates it to you through an annoying narrator.