Early on in the exploration game Gardenarium, a green-haired woman informs you that “you are on a quest to win.” This is a lie.
You aren’t on a quest to do anything except wander through a world of pastel clouds, rippling flowers and vivid psychedelic imagery. The challenge isn’t doing anything, per se, just trying to take it all in. This game is an eyeful, a beautiful, interactive hallucination that shifts around you like a kaleidoscope. At times, it responds to your touch; pick up the occasional soda can strewn across the world, and the color of the clouds you’re traversing instantly changes, as the flowers that sprout at your feet shift from pulsating starflowers to long spiral stalks that furl and unfurl.
The mellow friends lounging around the Gardenarium offer a very loose objective, however: find your way to the top of the spiraling clouds. While it certainly isn’t mandatory, it’s worth reaching the top, if only because the moon guru waiting there might elevate your perspective in an unexpected way. You’ll have to do a bit of jumping between cloud platforms, but don’t worry about falling. It’s almost worth stepping off the edge just to experience the strange, disoriented gravity reversal that happens after you fall.
Created by Paloma Dawkins and Kyler Kelly, Gardenarium is one of the trippiest and gentlest video game experiences I’ve ever had, and a world I wouldn’t mind returning to the next time my brain needs an interactive pastel massage. You can buy it now on PC, Mac and Linux for $4.99.
