Another game in the family of 'I wish Steam had a mixed option for reviews'. Manifold Garden initially appealed to me as it looked like it took huge inspiration from Antichamber, which is one of my favorite puzzle games (and in my top 10 overall). Once I stated playing, I definitely continued to feel those vibes, but I could also already see some level of a lack of the tight puzzle design I loved. This isn't to say that the puzzles in Manifold Garden were bad, I actually found them to be very simple, but there were mechanics that ended up feeling a little unpolished or awkward. The boxes moved weird, and the tetris pieces were so large that it was easier to just sort of randomly move them until they did what you wanted. Regardless of this, the environments were expansive and neat to look at; the developers did a very good job at with their aesthetic (the fractals were very nice). My only other complaint during my first playthrough was that some mechanics felt underused, particularly the looping reality when you jump off the side of stages. Overall, this ended up not being a big enough issue to make me feel particularly negative during my first playthrough.

Most of my issues with the game stemmed from my experiences with 100% the game. Because I feel that you are definitely capable of having a good experience with your first playthrough, I chose to make this a positive recommendation, but I would not recommend 100% the game. The first and most significant issue is with the environments; while the hub areas can be generally distinct, the nature of the 100% run relies on you jumping around to various sections of the game, while skipping others. This results in a huge number of times where I would complete a puzzle, go to the next room end up somewhere kinda familiar, then would need to navigate a very circuitous route to get a cube from one place to another. I spent 75% of my time during my second run randomly going through doors hooping it would take me were I wanted or a room with a cube I wanted. Alot of the doors needed for 100% are also one random spot in a giant open area, which just meant that I had to waste a ton of time combing through each room carefully to make sure I didn't miss a door, which was just really boring. The other biggest issue I had with the 100% was the requirement to 'walk' cubes all over the place. Walking cubes up walls (relative to the cube) was needed for several points of progression, but is just painfully boring. The base game felt like it wanted to show off the environments and have a little fun with portals and non-standard geometry, but the 100% felt like it was just out to waste my time as there weren't really any new or harder puzzles, I just had to spend a bunch of time moving cubes large distances.

Manifold Garden took me ~2.5 hours to finish my first playthrough, then an additional 5 hours to 100%.

im losing my ♥♥♥♥

Pretty good puzzle game, the visuals are amazing!