For the first six or so levels, I did not get Miegakure at all. I was completing the early puzzles, but I had no idea how I was doing it. It was like finishing a trigonometry problem and coming up the the correct answer without knowing why. I couldn't show my work. I felt dumb. I hoped the massive crowd at the PAX Prime Indie Megabooth wasn't watching my screen. They probably were. And totally judging me.
Alright, so, we're in three-dimensional space. Length, width, height. But in Miegakure, there's a fourth dimension, and it's not time, as I heard several people ask at the booth. It's a spatial dimension. When you look at the fourth dimension, the 3D plane you're standing on is divided into slices, each another world. Step onto a different slice and turn back to 3D space, and you're in another world.
As seen in the video above, if a wall exists in one world but not another, you can pass through it—at least, that's what a three-dimensional viewer would see. You really just walked around it by going in a direction they don't know exists.
At first, I didn't understand that activating my fourth-dimensional sense was showing me slices to step onto—I read that as one of the other worlds itself, which made things very confusing. Maybe I was distracted by the brilliant fourth-dimension visual transition. I want to see the code that makes everything stretch and collide like it does, because it's a work of art alone.
When I did finally get it, I realized how fantastic Miegakure could be. I got Fez immediately—a 2D being investigating 3D space—but I've never played with a 3D character investigating 4D space. Weird stuff happens in the fourth dimension, and it goes well beyond walking through walls.
Say, for instance, you need to get up to a high ledge, but don't have to block to push up to it. You can walk tetragonally over to a world with a block, then push it into the dimension you need it in. It took me a while to understand something very important: whatever section of the 3D plane you're standing on when you activate the 4D 'map' is the same section of the other worlds' planes you'll see. So if I want to push a block between dimensions, I have to look toward the fourth dimension while standing on the slice where the block exists.
The next introduction threw me for a bigger loop. I tried to push a block, and it stopped moving even though nothing was blocking it. It turned out it wasn't a square cube at all, but a 4D rectangular box—the other half of it was in another world. Ahh!
I played Miegakure for nearly an hour, and it kept surprising me with all the weird and fantastic stuff that can be done with the fourth dimension. I accidentally killed someone—well, maybe not 'killed,' but his speech bubble expressed a lot of unhappiness—by rudely invading his 3D space with my 4D block pushing. I felt bad, but it was pretty funny. There is a sweet, simple sense of humor in Miegakure, with characters and a story you witness passively. I imagine a fourth-dimensional being would view the lives of three-dimensional beings that way—he literally has perspective they don't.
Miegakure has been in development for a while, and it's coming out "when its done"—possibly before the end of next year. After I was done playing, there were still a ton of stages ahead, with what I expect will be a variety of weird solutions I couldn't possibly think of yet. If you liked Fez or Portal—or any puzzle game, really—look forward to it.
