The Gardens Between is a surreal, time-traveling adventure about growing up

The Gardens Between is a puzzle-adventure game about two best friends exploring a world of "beautiful garden islands." While wandering these strange worlds, they can move back and forth through time, enabling them to "discover each garden's secrets and, along the way, reveal a story about friendship, childhood, and growing up." It was originally announced for the PC back in February, but it was re-announced, so to speak, for the PS4 today at the Paris Games Week—and that means we get to watch a new trailer. 

The time-manipulation angle evokes memories of the indie hit Braid, but where that game drove me around multiple kinds of bends with its convoluted, oft-infuriating gameplay, developer Voxel Agents says The Gardens Between will be a "restful, relaxing experience" that's "free from language [and] designed for accessibility."   

"Our goal is to encourage careful, mindful and stress free exploration throughout the game while providing in-depth puzzles and challenges," the developers said. "When making The Gardens Between we set out to build a world and tell a compelling story that players can connect to and understand, presenting a genuine and consistent universe that offers players of all age groups something to connect with on a personal level." 

Aside from the brief description above, neither the Steam page nor the site at thegardensbetween.com shed a lot of light on what The Gardens Between has in store. But it looks and sounds lovely, and the element of discovery is a big part of what makes games like this worth playing—and let's be honest, you already know whether or not this is something you're interested in.   

The Gardens Between is currently slated to come out in the third quarter (July 1-September 30) of 2018. And now, let us chill. 

Andy Chalk

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.