The Gardens Between Review

by Dylan Blight (PS4)

Some things in life we don’t have control over, like time for example, and as much as you may wish you could manipulate things and go back to relive moments of your childhood days spent with your best friend, you can’t. In The Gardens Between, however, you’re given the ability to relive memories of VHS players, late night gaming sessions on CRT TVs and adventures around town. You’re also given control of time, if only for a moment.

Arina and Frendt, best friends, are traversing a magical set of islands made up of their memories and treasured moments. You don’t control them though, apart from some interacting with objects on their predesignated paths; you are just in charge of time. Move it forward. Pause it. Move it backwards.

I was never pulling hairs reaching for an answer as I attempted to solve any of The Gardens Between’s puzzles. In my first night playing the game, I reached a stage where I was lost for the answer. I searched and tried many different things — even began to think I had encountered a game-breaking bug — however, I came back the next morning to solve it within a minute. I had been looking at the island all wrong, and the answer had me laughing at how smart it was and oblivious I was. The solutions are always clever, but not always easy to recognise.

The Gardens Between does some of the most interesting stuff with time-manipulation I’ve seen since Braid. Several times the solution to a puzzle and solving how to interact with the world brought a smile to my face. True ‘a-ha!’ moments filled me with joy as I not only was proud of myself for solving the puzzle but also admired the game design.

Each island is beautiful in its own right, from the more eye-popping colours of an island portraying autumn adventures in a treehouse, to the darker, sinister feeling of an island capturing the adventures in the rain and losing items down a sewer pipe. The Gardens Between is full of stunning art, vibrant colours and magical mini-worlds to explore and adore.

Accompanying the beautiful colour palette and design for The Gardens Between is a wonderfully peaceful soundtrack from Tim Shiel who had previously worked on the soundtrack for Duets. The game also has great sound mixing so I endorse wearing any headphones to get the best experience out of The Gardens Between.

Shiel also produces a song by Ben Abraham that closes out the game with the emotional kiss the story builds up across all the islands. I’m not sure if I was oblivious to the approaching story’s climax, but the ending with the help of Abraham did get me misty-eyed.

Even if the nostalgia of the objects littered throughout the islands is before your time, the emotional resonance of The Gardens Between should work for everyone in some regard. Memories from being younger, simpler times. The ending is bittersweet, but the journey there is every bit rewarding through interesting mechanics and subtle storytelling.

Developer: The Voxel Agents
Publisher: The Voxel Agents
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PS4 (reviewed), Windows

(The Gardens Between code provided by the developer)