I wanted to play something similar to Antichamber (puzzle game), so I went to its Steam page and looked for related games and found two games, Manifold Garden and Superliminal.
Before going into those two I'm just going to do a quick overview of Antichamber; I haven't played it recently but I will compare both of them to it. Antichamber is a puzzle game with a fairly minimalist art style (simple graphics, textureless white walls, etc) where you have a gun that can place and manipulate small coloured blocks in order to get around obstacles. Most puzzles were based around use of this gun but some were based around interacting with the environment, such as being able to break out of an infinitely looping corridor by walking backwards, or where a walkway over a gap will only support you across it if you walk slowly enough, etc. Every puzzle would have a short cartoon or message appear on the wall near it after completing it, often with some comment or observation about life. It had a lot of content and variety and some legitimately challenging puzzles and I consider it a 10/10. Sadly it doesn't have very much replayability but there's a lot of content in it.
Manifold Garden felt a lot like Antichamber and I suspect a fair amount of inspiration came from it, although the nature of the puzzles is different. Manifold Garden has a similar art style with lots of flat, textureless white walls, but differs in that it also has a lot of windows, mostly outdoor areas or very large rooms, and has infinitely repeating geometry. There's a section at the end of Antichamber where you end up on a series of walkways in a vast empty void and if you jump off, you fall back to the same ones. Manifold Garden feels like it took that idea and ran with it; most areas have some large structure which repeats off into the distance in all directions. Manifold Garden's two main gimmicks are this infinitely repeating geometry, and gravity mechanics. Facing any surface you can interact with it to make it "down" and there are a total of six directions that you can orient yourself to; a fair amount of navigation in the open areas is jumping off the building you're on while you have gravity set to take you where you want to go, and landing on the same building from the other direction. Coloured blocks can be interacted with and carried when you're oriented towards the gravity that they are, and this forms the basis of the puzzles. Speaking of the puzzles, for the most part I found Manifold Garden's puzzles pretty easy. I don't know if this is a common experience but personally I felt the game was far too easy and most of the experience was looking at the neat levels.
The levels certainly do look nice, though. Where Antichamber (made by a couple people) had pretty minimalist design, Manifold Garden (made by many people), despite the lack of textures, has very detailed levels, with all sorts of architectural details like columns and detailed archways, pagoda roofs, etc. It's a bit like playing inside Google Sketchup. Most interior levels will have windows to the exterior, and sometimes these are exterior areas you can't normally get to. However, in parallel to the main campaign, there's actually a series of back ways you can take, with hidden doors and entire levels, basically, that you'd see in the main campaign but not realize you can get to without poking around very carefully for the secret entrances. It's a pretty nice addition, especially since most of it wasn't in the game at launch and was added for free later. It also has an actual soundtrack, although it only kicks in periodically and isn't all that good. I'd give Manifold Garden an 8/10; it looks nice and has a sort of dream-like feeling to it (much like Antichamber) and the gameplay is engaging enough, but it loses a couple points for being too easy. I'd dock more points, but the back route is hard enough that it adds a respectable challenge layer, albeit an optional one.
Last of all is Superliminal. I'd describe Superliminal as a cross between Portal and Korsakovia. Superliminal's main gimmick is that you can take an object's perceived size and make it into its real size. Take a chess piece, hold it up close to you so it's large on the screen, then hold it up facing the ceiling but still close to you, release it - it will now be further away from you but occupy the same percentage of the screen, thus larger. There's a few other gimmicks here and there for certain puzzles, but they don't come up often and the size changing thing is the main one. The art style is like Portal or TF2, very Source feeling, but environments tend more towards hotel rooms and the like. Like Portal, it's split into distinct levels, has an announcer talking shit to the player, etc. Like Korsakovia, it's set in a dream and has themes of the dream breaking down. Despite being sort of billed as requiring you to change the way you think or whatever, Superliminal's puzzles were really easy. As soon as you get a feel for the size changing mechanic - and it doesn't take long - the vast majority of puzzles become extremely straightforward and easy to complete. The other gimmick mechanics are obvious when they appear and really shoved in the player's face; there are no cases where you have to stop and come up with something substantially unorthodox like you might in Antichamber. I suspect Superliminal fell victim to playtesting. It felt a bit too walking simulator-ish, a product of the puzzles being too straightforward and easy, and unlike Manifold Garden (which also had generally easy puzzles, though they were nowhere near as easy as Superliminal's) didn't have the great architectural spectacles to make up for it. 5/10 - I don't think it's worth the money, but if you were pirating it or whatever it's an ok time filler.
