The Gardens Between

Since this is a short game, I’ll try to be more concise with my thoughts. Since this is such a short game, there’s bound to be spoilers and I think this game is better played blind as you can then piece together what’s happening yourself as you go along.

The Gardens Between is a beautiful game about reliving and reframing your memories with a loved one that you’re going to miss due to some kind of life transition/change.

Gameplay
The gameplay is pretty simple. You solve puzzles to complete memory fragments that then combine to form a memory to add context to the relationship. Memory fragments are set up with a few different puzzle mechanics, and are set up as a hill to climb that has a shrine at the top. Lighting your lantern and moving the lantern to the shrine completes a fragment. Within these fragments, you can see glimpses of what the fragment might represent, some looser and easier to piece together than others. I enjoyed the simplicity of the mechanics, easy to get a grasp on but not so easy that you don’t need to pay attention. The mechanics are set up in a way that encourages players to assess their environment, leading to the player noticing more of the implicit storytelling than they would have otherwise. I tend to have trouble with environmental storytelling but this game’s gameplay loop made it so much easier to pay attention.

Although simple, the puzzles do still increase in difficulty over time. They add more mechanics that feel cohesive with prior ones the farther the game goes. I only had trouble with maybe 2 or 3 of the puzzles, the rest were smooth sailing. I found the puzzles to be sheer fun to get through.

The only criticism I’d have here is that I wish it was a little longer. The last section in particular felt like it could’ve been much more detailed with its puzzles.

Story
The story is relatively simple. Your best friend is moving away, and you’re reliving all of your best memories together. None of the memories were particularly unique, but I found the grandiosity of how they appeared in the garden memory fragments to really emphasize the imagination of kids. They’re able to see even these simple ideas as larger than life and can glamorize & romanticize them in ways adults fail to. There’s so much love in the small moments. In a picnic. Building a tree house. Playing in the playground. All of these moments felt heavily special due to the kids’ viewpoints.

It’s not even that adults fail to see the beauty within those moments, I just think we’re too distracted to do so. We’re too preoccupied. There’s so many excuses I can find, but I ultimately think it’s also because of how special, intimate and important this friendship is for kids. I think adults, jaded and chipped away at by the real world, sometimes struggle to have the kinds of emotional intimacy and depth that children can have. Before they think it’s “weird,” before they’re taught to be afraid. That kind of openness opens up not just the relationship but the whole world.

Yes, this game’s story itself is quite simple. I find it beautiful that the game concludes by the characters having a stargazing picnic in which they reminisce about the different memories by seeing them in the constellations. There’s a certain poetic beauty to that. But what I appreciate about this game’s story the most is the kind of thoughts it left me with when it comes to reassessing my own life. Remembering my childhood friendships and wondering if the importance I placed on them went both ways. Reminding myself as to how even though I’ve separated from some of those friends, some of those moments and memories are still special to me. I hope they feel the same way but unless we ever talk about it we’ll never know. Long distance friendships can be extremely hard to maintain but it doesn’t mean they don’t or didn’t matter. It just means they changed and that kind of change always comes with some sort of grief. I’m just lucky to be able to acknowledge that it doesn’t always have to mean the end.

Despite enjoying the game thematically, I still wish their relationship was explored a little further with more memories that felt unique to them. A stand out memory fragment was the one with the jacket because it felt like something that would really happen in real life. I wish we had more personal ones like that.

Visuals
The game is visually very simple and clean. I think it gets the job done. The simplicity adds to both the theme and to the purpose of the game. It helps you focus more on the messaging rather and the implications of the memories rather than the overall beauty of the visuals. It IS a pretty game though. I think the only thing I could complain about here is that I wish there were a few more hints in the environments about emotional queues. Yes I liked looking at it but a lot of the environments lacked emotion. The rain ones though were great at setting tone.

Soundtrack
Beautiful, stunning, gorgeous. Such an intimate and cozy soundtrack. It felt extremely inviting and allowed me to keep playing, hooked until
the end. I don’t know if this game would feel anywhere near as special without this OST. It has a an honest, indie sound to it.

Recommend on the basis of getting it on sale.
This is not a long game, and while I enjoyed the overall vibe, the levels didn't introduce enough difficulty to recommend the game at full price.
It is cute and novel though.

The core mechanic here is deceptively simple. Walk forward, walk backward, watch the world bend around your choices, and somehow that turns into some of the most satisfying puzzle solving I've done in ages. No combat, no fail state, no rat swarms trying to end my life for once. Just vibes, time manipulation, and a lantern that badly wants to go home. Every single island in this game looks like it was hand painted by someone who really understood that childhood memories are less about specific events and more about vague warm feelings and a slightly ominous soundtrack. The visual storytelling does so much heavy lifting that I don't think there's a single line of dialogue in the entire game, and somehow I still teared up more than once, which feels unfair and also deeply effective.
Underneath the puzzles is a genuinely tender story about growing up, friendship, and letting go, which I did not expect to feel this much about a game where my primary skill is walking in circles around a floating rock while spinning a music box.

Imaginative & fun with a charming story behind it. Very simple controls, with inventive mechanics.
Thoroughly enjoyed playing through this & may replay it to find more of the Easter eggs. It's not a particularly long game, but equally it doesn't outstay its welcome or start to feel grindy or repetitive. Recommended!

This kind of game is exactly why I keep trying out these smaller titles. Beauty.

A really inventive puzzle game - the mechanics are great, the music is lovely, and the story is really sweet.

Very cool little short game. got all of those indie vibes with intersting mechiancs and all achieved with just 3 buttons, left, right and space. I recommend to check out.