FLIPPING OUT

William Chyr’s serene gravity-switching puzzler MANIFOLD GARDEN asks you to confront infinity.

- Rachel Watts

There have been quite a few games that play with the fun of gravity. Antichamber’s mind-bending puzzles, Dandara’s explosive wall-jumping and the upcoming Boundary’s zero-G shooting—all grant the player the ability to defy physics. William Chyr’s first-person physics-based puzzler, Manifold Garden, also lets you mess with the force of gravity, but in this game your playground is the never-ending, mind-bending realms of infinity.

Waltz up to any visible surface in Manifold Garden’s geometric world and you’ll automatically flip gravity so that the wall becomes the floor. Using this ability, players are tasked with solving a number of gravity manipulation puzzles and working out how to progress through Manifold’s many eternal spaces.

You’re forever confronted with colossal towers, cathedral-like edifices, massive windows, never-ending flights of stairs—it’s bonkers. There are giant cubic trees that grow blocks you can pluck from their branches like fruit. As you walk through geometric runes, your footsteps echo through the tower.