Cultivate an Infinite World in Manifold Garden

Hello! William here. I’m an independent game developer based in Chicago.

You might be familiar with my game Relativity – it’s an exploration puzzle game where you can change gravity and walk within a world of impossible geometry. It was part of PlayStation Experience last year, and was also shown during the PlayStation livestream at E3 earlier this year.

I have some big news today. The game now has a new name: Manifold Garden.
The original prototype was based on the M.C. Escher print Relativity and just involved changing gravity to walk on walls. The game is so much more than that now. We’ve added a ton of new mechanics, and the game is now really about exploring architecture and consequences in a world where physics is turned upside down.

Geometry

In Manifold Garden, the world wraps back on itself in 3D. You can travel in any direction, and you end up back where you started. Going down actually leads you back up.

A lot of the puzzles in the game involve exploring how physics behave in such geometry. What happens when you drop a cube off the edge? You’ll see it come back down from above, and you’ll also see it falling beneath you, at the same time.

In the later levels, we even start to change how the world wraps around. What happens if you staggered each repetition? Or rotated every other instance?

Water

One of the new mechanics we’ve introduced is water. How does water behave in a world that wraps around on itself? Like the cube, when water falls of the edge, it’ll come back down from above, except since it’s a continuous stream, you actually get a waterloop!

In my previous post, I showed the cubes being used to trigger switches and hold up other blocks. The cubes now can be used to “bend” or redirect streams of water.

Not only that, the cubes are actually fruit that grow on trees, and you can even “plant” a cube to turn it into a tree. As you progress throughout the game, you’re cultivating a garden and harvesting cubes.

Photography Mode

A major theme of the game is architecture, and I really want you to be able to experience it and express your creativity with the space.

Once you finish all the puzzles in an area, you’ll unlock photography mode, which will give you access to a variety of cameras and effects, such as axonometric, or “glitch” to play with:

Conclusion

I’m super excited about the new direction that the game is taking. It’s opening a lot more room for player expression, both in puzzle solving and in the visuals.

As part of the name change, here is a collection of 100 beautiful high resolution wallpapers to celebrate.

If you want to stay up to date, check out the website. I also post regularly on Twitter, as well as the game’s devlog. And if you’re interested in game development, I actually stream development every weekday over on my Twitch channel. Drop by and say hi sometime!

Finally, if you have any questions, I’ll be answering them in the comments section.

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