#Manifold garden specs full#

My inspiration was this amazing video Watchtower of Turkey. Because the game world infinitely loops I thought it would be interesting if the trailer did the same thing by using seamless transitions.

The idea locations to capture in both illustrated a game mechanic, and had a lot of pretty architecture in the background.Īfter I had the basic trailer structure I wanted to find a way to stylistically take it to another level. So I focused the gameplay shots on a simple structure of 'If this, then this' and then escalated the scope of each thing until by the end there are giant shape blocks falling and connecting lasers. For me at least, the beautiful architecture of the game is what hooked me, and seeing the gameplay was enough to make me want to play it. I'm a really big fan of first person puzzle games, and I knew I'd understand the core gameplay after seeing the cubes being placed or inserted into things then seeing doors open and lasers activate.

#Manifold garden specs full#

I didn't think showing full puzzle solutions was important, and the execution of solving puzzles in the game isn't very trailer-friendly both because of how long they can take to solve, and because through a lot of it your camera is looking very closely at walls. I took a lot of inspiration from this trailer for The Witness which shows how pretty the game is, and slowly builds upon its gameplay ideas, while not really offering precise answers to what and why you're doing anything. Hopefully the audience would be able to extrapolate the potential of the game from this one shot. I chose this environment because it's an area where you can quickly see how buildings go in multiple directions. It was too late to significantly change the structure of the trailer, but to address that concern I added the shot which comes after the studio logo in which I look up at a building, then turned to the left to reveal another building which stands perpendicular and then fell off a platform to in effect get a wider angle of the entire structure. Puzzle games can feel like they have no purpose, especially if there’s no narrative through text or dialogue, so this shot was very important to me.Įarly on in production I was very focused on what you do with the cubes in the game, but we later realized one key thing missing was that a big part of the game is about understanding the space and where things are. The giant tree in the middle of the trailer from which entire buildings emerge is there for a big climax to show how your actions affect the world. I felt this showed the basic gameplay loop enough to help the audience understand the purpose behind what they do in the game. For example, showing a cube being inserted into a receptacle to open a door, then two cubes required to open another door, then planting a cube to grow a tree to grow more cubes, and so on. My initial edit simply cut back and forth between pretty shots and gameplay with ever increasing complexity. Hopefully after seeing this shot, the audience understands the gameplay basics enough to enjoy watching the rest of the trailer without confusion.

This quick cut is here simply because the staircase environment is more immediately striking than what you actually see when you open the door which connects to that particular receptacle.

The next two cuts are a closeup of the door opening, and another door opening to the infinite staircase environment (which is actually in a completely different level). I did A LOT of takes to get this precise timing and to position the cube nicely centered in frame the sound effects emphasize the cube's insertion. The camera then immediately tilts upward in order to show how the world infinitely repeats above you, and then the camera tilts back down to show the same down below before the cube SLAMS into a receptacle. This seems like an insignificant and obvious thing, but it was essential to show player agency. It was important to pick up the cube and hear the corresponding sound effect because otherwise it might not be clear the cubes are objects you find and manipulate. The opening shot was very important because I wanted it to answer the question: 'What do you DO in Manifold Garden?' I started off by picking up a blue cube, and then diving off a platform. My top priority was to show how the player interacts with the game, but I also wanted to retain a sense of awe from the infinite architecture. When I received a build of the game I played it from beginning to end to take an inventory of the puzzle varieties and environments.

As beautiful as the announcement trailer is, there's no gameplay, so that was the goal for this release trailer.