E41 Manifold Garden

Pixel Vision

Ben and Tao get jiggy with gravity in colour coded cubic confounder, Manifold Garden. As they get lost explaining its abstract infinity and implausible geometry, they find a lack of boundaries just as thorny in the manifold garden as in Tao’s vegetable patch, they weed out bugs (and I’m not talking ladybirds), deconstruct the ratio of time played to problems solved, and ponder how the sandbox has revolutionised creativity: specifically, whether computational technology has suppressed as much cultural innovation as it may have spawned. No spoilers (for once!)

Content Warning: PEGI 13.

Clarifications:

* The original music for Manifold Garden is composed by Laryssa Okada

* Here’s the explainer Ben watched on Non-Euclidean Geometry by YouTuber, CodeParade:

* Christopher Nolan’s short early film was called ‘Doodlebug’ not just ‘Bug’. You can watch it here:

* Incidentally, if you’re an affectionate critic of Nolan (which is to say, you like his films but think they all suffer from expositional incontinence), you might enjoy comedian Michael Spicer’s take:

* Here’s the Reddit thread where they confirm the yellow tree cube bug Ben laments: https://www.reddit.com/r/ManifoldGarden/comments/ifydmf/missing_cube_on_a_yellow_tree_bug/ (note the thread is 2 years old!!)

* Here’s the developer explaining how to load older save versions of the same save file:

* Game Maker’s Toolkit is presented by Mark Brown on YouTube. Coincidentally, the magnet concept Tao mentions is actually implemented in Qube, the 2011 puzzler from Toxic Games.

* Antichamber - a hugely similar game to this one - is a first-person puzzle-platform game created by Australian developer Alexander "Demruth" Bruce and released in 2013.

Audio extracts:

* The Shining (1980)

* The Mighty Boosh

* Jesus Walks by Kanye West

* The Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers (2002)

* The Other Guys (2010)

* The Witness challenge music

* Return of the Obra Dinn OST by Lukas Pope

* Urban Species - I Wonder

* Coherence (2013)

* Qube

* Antichamber

* Doodlebug by Christopher Nolan (1997)

* BBC Sherlock feat. Benedict Cumberbatch (2010)

* Austin Powers (1997) feat. Mike Myers

* Portal 2 feat. Stephen Merchant as Wheatley

* Blade Runner (1982) - Vangelis - Tears in Rain

* Halt and Catch Fire theme by Trentemøller

* The Rite of Spring - Ballet by Igor Stravinsky

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