Game

The Gardens Between

2018 · Google Stadia · PlayStation 4 · Linux · Android · PC (Microsoft Windows) · iOS · Puzzle · Adventure · Indie

78IGDB player score
103 ratings

Previously Take

A respectable 78 average that never found its audience. More story than an adventure game — fantasy, mystery first, and the adventure game parts serve the narrative. A single-player game with no interest in being anything else. Respect.

About this game

The Gardens Between is a surreal puzzle adventure through memory, moments and time that follows best friends, Arina and Frendt, as they fall into a mysterious world of beautiful garden islands. The player can traverse back and forwards in time to discover each garden's secrets and, along the way, reveal a story about friendship, childhood and growing up.

Arina and Frendt are two childhood friends who live next door to one another and share a treehouse built on a small garden square between their homes. On a rainy night, the pair sneak away to their hideout, and a glowing sphere of light appears before them, sweeping the treehouse into a vast, dreamlike ocean scattered with small islands. Each island is a garden that represents a cherished moment from their friendship, from the day one of them first moved in to the afternoon they built the treehouse together. Wordlessly, the two make their way through these surreal gardens, carrying a lantern and coaxing light toward glowing portals at the summit of each one. Rather than a straightforward journey, their passage bends time itself forward and backward, letting them relive and reshape their shared memories. Told entirely without dialogue, it is a tender meditation on friendship, nostalgia, and the moments that bind two people together.