The Gardens Between

£19.99/$19.99

A mesmerising single-player puzzle game,

The Gardens Between whisks you back to the innocence of youth, when your imagination stretched way beyond the confines that grownup life seems to place on you. The game focuses on best friends Arina and Frendt, who escape dreary suburbia, via their treehouse, to embark on fantastical, dreamlike adventures featuring oversized objects from their childhood that must be investigated within each scalable diorama setting in order to get to the peak. As the player, you are mostly an inactive observer to their exploits, dipping in at key points to flag up objects that need interacting with and manipulating time forwards and backwards to reveal the cause and effect of their actions, which ultimately solves puzzles. Controlling time and not the main protagonists directly takes a little getting used to, but the reward is a game that feels truly unlike anything you’ve played before.

The islands you explore are themed around youthful pursuits befitting of the child stars, such as video games, sports and pop music (each features a sound score that complements the scenery perfectly) and as the story unfolds you feel real pangs of sadness as you recall leaving your own childhood behind to face the real world. It is the emotions that the game stirs up, coupled with the hands-off approach to dictating the action (you don’t move the characters, just the objects around them), that allow you to connect and engage with it on a different level than other, similar ‘chill-out’ games. And it is an experience to be savoured.

“You feel real pangs of sadness as you recall leaving your own childhood behind”