The Gardens Between
The Gardens Between is a single-player adventure-puzzle game about time, memory and friendship. Best friends Arina and Frendt fall into a series of vibrant, dreamlike island gardens peppered with everyday objects from their childhood. Together they embark on an emotional journey that examines the significance of their friendship. Manipulate time to solve puzzles and reach the apex of each isle. Follow the duo as they unpack and explore their precious moments spent together, lighting up constellations and illuminating threads of a bittersweet narrative. Features Vibrant, storybook-inspired art style Dreamy tale of adventure, friendship and growing-up Gorgeous single player experience with a meaningful personal story Bespoke ingenious puzzles require the manipulation of time to solve Accessible design; simple controls, and no text, speech, time pressure or complex UI Relaxing, ambient soundtrack by feature-artist Tim Shiel Play in full detail on your gorgeous 4k screen
Chief 0
Got it for Nintendo Switch. Enjoyed the level design and general atmosphere.
Gameplay itself is slow-paced, though puzzles are challenging enough and have some fresh ideas, so it doesn't feel like you were solving them already.
A great family-friendly game overall.
Steam User 5
This was an amazing game. Loved the art as well as the story. I was stuck on some of the puzzles for quite a while, so it does really deliver. Highly recommended to people who love cozy games.
Steam User 4
The Gardens Between is an interesting and cute-looking puzzle game, with a pretty neat time-loop mechanic! The developers is an Australian studio, who previously only has made mobile games.
Storywise there isn't much told, besides that you play as two kids who has been friends for a long time. One of them is moving away, so you get to play through their memories from the years of their friendship. What it does bring rather is your own feelings of nostalgia for perhaps a better and easier time, reminding you of how you as a kid played around and explored the world (well, your nearby neighborhood).
The gameplay is what is interesting in this game, it uses a time loop where if you move forward time moves forward and if you move backwards... yeah you get it. This makes it a bit tricky solving certain puzzles, but that's what I liked about this game. Sometimes you had to time specific things, sometimes you just had to figure out which steps to take. I haven't seen anything like it before, at least not in this context.
I can definitely recommend this game to any puzzle game fans! I do hope the developers release more games, as I would love to see what they will do next.
Steam User 3
beautiful puzzle game with touchable story
Steam User 5
"The Gardens Between" is an excellent puzzle game by an Australian studio.
I say, the best puzzle games must always offer fresh and unique perspectives to solving the puzzles.
(My favorite examples are games like: Hue, GOROGOA, Monument Valley, Framed and Old Man's Journey.)
The game is quite short and easy compared to my examples,
but I still like it because it offers a time manipulation mechanic that is fun and unique.
Cute story, neat puzzles, beautiful graphics.
Good game!
Steam User 3
sweet. relatable. not too easy, and just hard enough to be a fun challenge without being frustrating. highly recommend this lil gem.
Steam User 3
Gorgeous puzzle game where two friends navigate through shared memories and use time to manipulate the environment to progress. Each 'island' represents a unique memory which then forms a different puzzle. Memorable and heartfelt story. One of our favourite indie titles to come from an Australian developer.
Steam User 4
This is an on-rails puzzle platformer......and I know that sounds totally made up, so let me explain: You must progress through a variety of levels and remove obstacles that are in your way, as well as choose the proper path......but you don't actually control the characters, as they move along a certain path, whose forward or backward flow through the time stream you adjust. For example the protagonists will walk down a path that is blocked by a boulder. You must pause time, remove the boulder, and then unfreeze time so they can proceed along their programmed path to the exit. There may be multiple obstacles that require multiple steps that you might get wrong, so you'll have to rewind time and see if you can't solve the puzzles correctly.
It's a relatively simple approach, and certainly not one that's that common in the puzzle platformer world, but it certainly works!
Generally speaking, the game is colourfully imaginative, and a whole lot of fun to play through, but be aware that the story isn't really explored in any great detail, so don't be expecting epic narrative....it's pretty bare-bones, barely enough to create the framework for the puzzles.
Additionally, a few of the levels are a little janky and due to game camera placement, solving the puzzles isn't as straightforward as it should be (I don't mind being hampered in my puzzle solving by a super tricky conundrum....that's fair. What I don't like is being hampered by not being able to see all the aspects of the puzzle properly because of the game camera, or the obstacles not behaving entirely properly on a consistent basis).
All in all though, taken as a whole, this is a visually appealing, fun, thinly heart-felt (not enough explicit storytelling to feel the narrative chops deeply) puzzle game. Recommended!