Manifold Garden: Level Design in Impossible Geometry

This 2016 GDC session from independent developer William Chyr focuses on the challenge of designing levels with impossible geometry for his game Manifold Garden.
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[@Thecrazymerio]

"But first, we need to talk about parallel universes!" Good Presentation.

[@lineriderrulz]

*Super Mario 64 File Select music starts playing*

[@nintendomite]

That window trick is brilliant. While changing nothing, it makes going the wrong way boring.

[@infinitesimotel]

And boredom is the worst of punishments.

[@The-cyber-imbiber]

This should have won the 2019 Indie Games Festival award for visuals/art. Instead, it wasn't even nominated. I'm so pissed off about that.

[@iamsampeters]

Big agree, a lot of the core criticisms the game has received are the reasons it's so good imo.

[@SectionF4]

Can't help but think this would be amazing in VR.

[@DJ_POOP_IT_OUT_FEAT_LIL_WiiWii]

Last VR demos I've seen had you sitting in a *vitual* room or teleporting around the environment. Seems like VR hasn't solved the problem of moving and being in a disorienting virtual environment causing motion sickness.

[@kn00tcn]

while skydiving

[@NatilCort]

Let me explain: "Thats beautifu- *REEEEEEEE* Mom opens door: Son have you been- " *TIME IS GONE, SPACE IS INSANE, HERE IT COMES, HERE AGAIN, I FEEL MY MOUTH CLOSING DOWN AS IF I NEVER HAD ONE* "

[@debmalyamitra353]

I get it. You want a trip

[@ylloboy]

must be a nightmare, i get vertigo from the game being displayed on a screen, let alone a VR headset

[@shieldgenerator7]

18:47 i was not expecting Skyrim to be one of the inspirations for Manifold Garden

[@HeathBlythe]

This channel... I was in regular level design conferences, and now I'm in a physics/multidimensional class. Love it, keep up the good work.

[@Lionkingview]

I've been playing manifold garden for about 2 hours and am thus far just amazed.

[@doomcookies]

Playing this game right now and loving it. Sometimes I just stop and marvel at the beauty of the endless world. Highly recommended.

[@erikchumbley3014]

Thumbs up for someone who actually knows wtf he's talking about.

[@abomala1607]

I waited for this kind of level design since 15 years. Finally someone working on it

[@CryptLordGame]

So i've seen this game alot, and I never really understood if it was more than an architectural showcase. Now that I see it in action, I get it with the box dropping example. I think William should showcase this more.

[@Mikefiser]

A very good example of a clear well put presentation about quite a complex problem :) very good job there!

[@daxterquiny]

+

[@andrewsparkes6115]

Mikoláš Fišer started off thinking he was one of those hipster intellectuals who was a bit smarmy, and liked the sound of his own voice, from the first minute...turns out don't judge a book by it's cover; I guess the talk must've been held up or at risk of it and he was just acting rightfully a bit annoyed. Maybe more arty scientists should make games, or at least do talks about games, because this was amazing!

[@ianboswell]

I love using impossible geometry in level design because of all the new challenges and solutions it presents. My new favorite thing, though, is to loop it with a twist. Instead of top-to-bottom, side-to-side, I connect top-to-side, side-to-bottom etc... So as you pass through the loop your gravity shifts. You can create fun illusions like a hallway which suddenly becomes a drop seemingly for no reason :P

[@gozinta82]

It would be cool to see that featured in a level. Have a way of switching between loops so that in one level, Left would be left, then another left would be up and so on. or something the along the lines of only certain sides doing that. Wonder if it could be done.

[@mnmlst1]

I know your comment is four years old but I only watched this video today. Did you make any game that is available for us to play, on itch or something? Would love to check that out.

[@xdevantx5870]

Excellent talk. I feel smarter having listened to this. Even though it was not a subject I'm specifically interested in, he captured my attention and held it until the end.

[@Lunareon]

Great talk with plenty of useful tips! Besides Escher, the game's visuals also remind me of Blame!, whose author is an architect. It turns out that architecture is a very good match with other creative fields.

[@Shepardus]

I like how the video stuttered for a bit right as he said "seamless" at 7:56.

[@EmperorsNewWardrobe]

He’s clearly a robot whose programming has learned irony

[@K4zuo3]

I feel this game will be great.

[@NicolasPL_]

It is!

[@maxkore278]

this is beautiful, not only does it cover so much about unique world design, but even contemporary world design, these are the sort of basic lessons that most game designers still don't understand to this day, and need to know now

[@Talon3000]

The start reminds me a lot of Prey. The one from 2006 that is. Then it got weird. But very intriguing. Reminds me of some of the geometrically weird SCPs

[@connorcriss]

I just sat and watched this for 30 minutes and didn't even realize how long it was until the end.

[@xthebumpx]

This setting goes into a lot of questions I went through to create a DnD campaign that took place inside a tesseract. Very cool.

[@Eclipsed_Archon]

This man is a genius. I share a lot of similar ideas with him too... My favorite part of the talk was the phrase "water loops"

[@CraigNicoll]

This guy is crazy clever! Wow.

[@jackawaka]

I feel some if this is interesting, but another part of it is this developer's journey of learning the standards of level design, Landmarks, logic to layout and forcing them to see the objective etc

[@alxan3942]

Is that not exactly why people would watch this video? So they can learn them too

[@zetetick395]

Really enjoyable talk! Nice!

[@reinier660]

One of the best gaming experiences ever. It actually changed the way I think. Time for a MG2.

[@mcwurzn8194]

just bought da game on steam, its awesome! thank you for making this!

[@supernewuser]

You can modulus the player position by your level bounds to get cheap world wrapping, you just need to figure out how you display what happens at the point of wrapping. You can solve this with another camera or add some kind of billboards etc off in the distance so the player doesn't notice when they teleport back to the other side.

[@jmicycle]

It's turtles all the way down.

[@Brunoenribeiro]

Just finished the game. It's brilliant, everyone needs to check it out

[@benjaminphilippe2810]

I was hoping a game like this would come!

[@noejacques]

Amazing talk !

[@nicholashull7867]

So glad to know this guy, he's insanely smart and crazy good.

[@GarySinghgsin3725]

Excellent talk

[@LordXelous]

I love Manifold Garden.... Shout out to William!

[@franzpattison]

This is the most beautiful game I have ever played ❤

[@bigmadty5005]

One of the best games in terms of game design ever!

[@ChenHuang]

quite insightful

[@rico4974]

This game is extraordinary !

[@livingingodsworddaily]

Very cool as a game developer myself I created the game raptor survival crysis 2 on dreams using a complex algorithm with visual coding. I really enjoyed programming I have a long list of projects I want to do I recently heard that algorand has integrated unity sdk on its Blockchain. I do not know how to do most of unity yet. Last programming language I learned was solidity. I really want to get more into game design not sure where to start

[@ksong5589]

awesome

[@HellWarders]

this game seems amazing

[@allclay1993]

It is! you should play it if you haven't since posting this!

[@seanmimder1830]

Nice

[@DustinBramhill]

I just started making a game that uses this I'm so happy this came out

[@jervistetch5012]

Cool

[@aloluk]

How long does that optimise when pressing play in Unity take each time? 1 sec, 5 secs 30 secs? Generating/merging meshes etc can add up to a lot of time.

[@alleggsmpgmhl]

12:55 this guy is loving elden ring rn

[@blake8894]

nice glasses.

[@nasirsharaf6299]

This dude and the miegakure guy should hangout some time

[@MertSu66]

This looks like it's the best game you ever play for about 30 minutes, within the threshold of it's novelty

[@gozinta82]

There is a good number of stuff he could do with interiors that loops. Just because it's the same geometry looped, doesn't mean by going through a loop based on it's geometry/modelling that you could easily solve it. A perfect example would be a 3D labyrinth. You would then go through the loop as long as the designer wanted before you reached the goal, whether it be a few times, or hundreds or thousands of times, and you wouldn't necessarily know it either.

[@gamongames]

anyone has links to the two level design talks he mentioned?

[@nexioseptimus5099]

The talk he mentions ~21:20 (the one from which he got the word 'parti') is GDC 2015: Robert Yang, "Level Design in a Day: Level Design Histories and Futures". The one mentioned at ~27:40 is GDC 2015: Brendon Chung, "Level Design in a Day: Wayfinding & Storytelling Techniques". (google them, KZbin kills comments that have links in them.)

[@gamongames]

thank you very much

[@BatteryExhausted]

✅ Something makes me think that gaming development will eventually dovetail with quantum mechanics to answer many questions about the universe.

[@adelarscheidt]

✅

[@hasamidschwartz8725]

🍆

[@lightspeedlife8299]

there's some good reasons to believe that that is exactly what we are experiencing right now irl.

[@NicolasPL_]

⛔NO AUTORISO❌ ⛔NO AUTORISO❌ ⛔NO AUTORISO❌ ⛔NO AUTORISO❌ ⛔NO AUTORISO❌ ⛔NO AUTORISO❌ ⛔NO AUTORISO❌ ⛔NO AUTORISO❌ ⛔NO AUTORISO❌ ⛔NO AUTORISO❌ ⛔NO AUTORISO❌ ⛔NO AUTORISO❌ ⛔NO AUTORISO❌ ⛔NO AUTORISO❌ ⛔NO AUTORISO❌ ⛔NO AUTORISO❌ ⛔NO AUTORISO❌ ⛔NO AUTORISO❌ ⛔NO AUTORISO❌ ⛔NO AUTORISO❌

[@giga.s.o.p]

his skyrim joke went unnoticed

[@ErrorNamenotfound-so2gt]

I feel like I could use the 3D world mapping mechanic beautifully but I just don't think I could wrap my mind about considering the weird gravity in the puzzles.

[@ErrorNamenotfound-so2gt]

At least when building levels.

[@thecookies6109]

Torque (the poincure conjecture) -- Doesn't this mean that All objects have to be a donut shape? as every shape in the universe is A compact 3-dimensional surface without boundary is topologically homeomorphic to a 3-sphere if every loop can be continuously tightened to a point.

[@baronvonbeandip]

I kinda wish this had elements of non-euclidian geometry. I'd prefer an adventure to a puzzle.

[@ProxyDoug]

30:43 Is that the Japanese translator that usually works in GDC talks?

[@lightspeedlife8299]

you know you're really immersed in GDC when you start to recognize people by their voices in other videos

[@MagicPyramid]

Anyone waiting for this, check out Antichamber

[@allclay1993]

It's on Steam now if you haven't played it yet

[@nunobartolo2908]

i feel like this game should have explored the ability of using the repetitions to navigate through moments in time ( which is what 4d wrapping actually means) it would make very interesting puzzles

[@WnIyLkLvIiAsMt97]

In this game's case, you're just moving along the surface of a four dimensional object. Which is very similar to what he said in the video, so currently I sound stupid. So, I'll say something else too. In the space-time we live in, our space is 3 dimensional, with time creating a 4th dimension. What he's talking about is 4 dimensional space, and in context, wrapping in 4 dimensions of space. In a Space-time, where the space has 4 dimensions of space, time would be the 5th dimension.

[@Suky]

Imagine if you could see your own body.

[@rarebeeph1783]

What would I do if I wanted to intentionally and heavily confuse the player, for example near the end of a game? Would I want to make the goals and layouts make sense, or completely baffle them? In one, the design misses the point. In the other, the player would rage quit from confusion.

[@ChassCreatz]

I suppose you're talking about the story of the game, if that's the case, you have to make the twist to make sense with everything else that has happened and/or create the subtle idea of the twist to make the player expect "something" but not exactly make him know what is it. In the end, though, the most important thing is to execute it correctly.

[@kn00tcn]

playtest

[@repogamesstudio2366]

show me teh code

[@n37z]

Game is still not release, right?

[@allclay1993]

It is on Steam as of October 20, 2020. I definitely recommend playing it!

[@statusx4629]

Try visiting the moons in skyrim...

[@RegahP]

3:41 wha

[@peremoyaserra2749]

7:21

[@hasoevo]

7:56 - 👀

[@coentertainer]

32:27 what games is he talking about?

[@simonweber3729]

Miegakure.

[@TurtleKnite]

Anti-Chamber comes to mind

[@MikeKing710]

In this moment he knew when he infinitely want hit a little a button.........

[@Ludifant]

It's nice to see that even with this gamedesign behind him, he still can't wrap his head around the fact that if you draw a triangle on the floor, it wouldn't have it's angles add up to 180. The effect may be too small to measure, but to rule it out is a mistake. The floor is "leveled" using gravity, which means it follows the surface of a huge sphere. We are living very much in a non-euclidean reality, because our brain keeps insisting the world is flat.

[@aloluk]

Mmmm Escher :)

[@qe2eqe]

I really hope this guy made AntiChamber too or else someone really took his ideas to market first

[@kn00tcn]

antichamber is different, it was also done years before manifold even started

[@NicolasPL_]

This game is destroying my mind.

[@insanbiasa8780]

Really want to play this game.. But watching this vid mkes me dizzy.. Help me!!

[@Jagd204]

16:53 Really?? [Me immediately starts walking] :P

[@rahmanr112]

Reality is an illusion

[@habitable4116]

...witchcraft.

[@animowany111]

Oh, unfortunate. I thought he meant non-euclidean/hyperbolic/some other geometry (or one with portals/wormholes) by impossible geometry. Unfortunately it seems he just means pure toroidal geometry, which imo isn't very interesting.

[@animowany111]

Antichamber, to some degree. It involves one-way and two-way "portals" that form non-euclidean spaces (where movement is non-symmetric). It's also a fun puzzle game.

[@theespatier4456]

animowany111 Yeah, Euclidean geometry, toroidal topology. The game looks amazing, but he will have to work really hard to make it play amazing if he’s going to stick with block puzzles that have been done thousand times already.

[@allclay1993]

@@theespatier4456 @animowany111 I hope you've played it since this. I found the game very enjoyable to play! While the geometry is Euclidean, the 4d space (which he didn't really show much of in this talk) adds enough complexity to make it interesting; but somehow it's done in a way that's intuitive when playing through the "levels".

[@Lucas_RiedlShah]

32:13 Vsauce ?

[@P4INKillers]

Sound nothing like him.

[@durrr123]

am i the only one that finds all the 720p videos from gdc ironic?

[@mastermill79]

Escher much?

[@voiceoftreason1760]

too bad epic games store ruined this

[@mapu1]

This is pretty bad example, that does not do any space warping, or stretching, just multiple instances of basic gravity, and basic screen looping. Like it's legit as creative as 3d pacman game. This is using hella wrong physic engine for this. This talk is more about being able to "fly (well free fall)" and about people being stupid, and holding their hands with tutorials. Not really what I was looking for.

[@WnIyLkLvIiAsMt97]

Not what I was looking for either, but I still found the talk pretty interesting.

[@suicidalbanananana]

So he has 0 experience with playing or making games, sees something in a movie and suddenly he's fit to tell me how to build complex levels that defy the laws of physics? im sorry but just no. first GDC vid i disliked. also note how he says 'we' a lot but never mentions who these 'we' people are, that prolly actually make the game hes standing here taking credit for? and how he doesn't understand basic math yet he's gonna explain us how advanced math works? Sorry but just go back to being the balloon guy, this is all sorts of terrible....

[@QuinnArgo]

He started with zero experiences and honestly the start of the development looked like that

[@WilliamChyr]

At the time of the video, it was me and one part time programmer. I had worked on the game for 4 years at this point, and the part time programmer had joined a few months prior. Manifold Garden is out now: manifold.garden/ You are welcome to experience it for yourself.

[@JMastura]

@@WilliamChyr I like your game, I will buy it soon 👍 I just saw a video where someone was playing it, first time seeing it.

[@TheSuperman9340]

very intresting. wouldn't mind having a chat someday. not good with school type activities, but do have gifts in gaming. i already have a ideas for worlds planned in my head. will look for your game. nice presentation. thank you for sharing

[@SirNightmareFuel]

That was a really cool talk. Now I can't wait to use 3D world wrapping in my own games.

[@daxterquiny]

+