Memories are a powerful thing. They bring us back to the past and reinvoke our feelings from old experiences. They help inform our relationships in the present and our reactions to events that are yet to happen.
The Gardens Between is a new puzzle game from developer The Voxel Agents and it deals expressly with remembering one’s memories of the past. It is a game reminiscing on friendship with two protagonists that are children revisiting their experiences they shared growing up. It is all very relatable and quite touching. It doesn’t hurt that the game has a nice art style to it, accentuating the whimsical nature of our childhood memories.
The game is presented as a series of rocky islands littered with physical touchstones of the two characters memories. For example, one of the levels features a television with a VCR and a NES style console that signifies times the two played games together. But the aesthetic of the environment is only one aspect of the game because each island also represents a puzzle that must be solved to progress.
These puzzles always have the same end goal, climb to the top of the island and light a light fixture up with a lamp. And as one would expect there will be obstacles in the way to prevent progress. Sometimes this will require a character to stand on one object to open a gateway or ramp to let the other progress on a different path for a moment. That all sounds pretty standard but The Gardens Between throws a wrench into the mix by not giving the player control over either of the characters directly. Instead the player can only interact with the timeline and have the characters interact with certain items along the way.
By moving the timeline forward or backwards and interacting with certain objects different paths open up and obstacles are cleared. It is a novel approach and while a bit disorienting at first, easy to catch on to and fun to play. The environmental puzzles get more and more complex as the game progresses but it almost always stays fair and logical provided you search the environment thoroughly. There was one or two that left me scratching my head for more than a few minutes and one towards the end was downright infuriating because it seemingly was playing by a new set of rules. But these are the exceptions and not the rule.
The Gardens Between isn’t a particularly long game and once you understand the puzzle solutions, I don’t think it offers a lot of replay value other than being able to explore the beautiful environments. Some may take that as a knock against it but they’ll be missing out. The game actually reminds me a lot of Monument Valley on mobile, where the joy is in the journey and figuring out the puzzles the first time around providing a memorable experience that sticks with you well after the game is over. If that is something you are looking for, then The Gardens Between is an easy recommend.
This review was written with material provided from the developer for the Nintendo Switch. For more on our review process, please read here.
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