Bilingual Review (EN/CN) | 中英双语评测
The world's first game that uses a "3D screen to display 4D projections" to visualize four‑dimensional space. It presents the structure of 4D space in the most intuitive and comprehensive way – an essential experience for any 4D game enthusiast.
From the interaction‑mapping methods, to the level design, to the hint texts and tutorial demonstrations – every aspect shows the author's relentless polishing of every detail. Watching the devlog videos the author has posted on Bilibili, even that tiny glimpse of the development process is enough to imagine the enormous and tedious workload behind it.
Through carefully designed level guidance, the author conveys his deep understanding of 4D space in an accessible way to every player who first touches the game, guiding them step by step to get familiar with the controls, interpret the information on screen, perceive the properties of each object, and appreciate the charm of four dimensions.
When I first played this game, I was utterly confused by the on‑screen information. The first time I saw the projection of a cross‑road, as a 3D creature I thought it looked like a pointed tower – the "ahead" on screen seemed like "up". But the author cleverly uses an analogy of "3D → 2D projection" to help you understand why the "up" on screen is actually "forward", and how size conveys positional information.
The rendering engine's algorithm also lets you rotate the viewport to face you directly. At that angle, information from one dimension is almost completely folded in; the picture looks almost no different from the 2D projections of 3D space we are used to, and everything changes exactly as common sense would expect.
On that basis, you can slightly rotate the viewport sideways to see how the direction of another dimension manifests on the screen, how rotating the viewport changes what you observe, and what happens when you turn your perspective…
Through small attempts and gradual comprehension, your brain begins to adapt to this information and starts to grasp the connections.
During the first two days after I started playing, whenever I lay in bed and closed my eyes, I would see the world of "4D Intuition" – watching myself move back and forth, repeatedly rotating the viewport to locate my position.
Neurons kept forming new connections; massive electrical signals flowed between different areas; my brain felt like it was heating up. The first night I was too excited to sleep – at one point, I visualized something, sat straight up, went to the computer, opened the game, and verified whether my mental image was accurate, until I finally fell asleep at 4 a.m.
After two days of adaptation, I no longer needed to force my brain to see "up" as "forward" – it looked completely forward to me. Conversely, I now find it hard to see the forward direction in the cross‑road as "up"; no matter how I rotate, it always feels like it's straight ahead. Trying to forcibly see the "forward" shown in the projection as "up" feels as cognitively uncomfortable as drawing a cube on paper using oblique projection and insisting that it be seen as a purely two‑dimensional flat shape.
When I later looked back at the author's earlier 4D visualization videos, or other people's gameplay recordings, I could understand what the operator did – which direction they rotated the view, which way they were moving. I could complete the p=0.5 level in the author's "Count Hypercubes" demo with over 90% accuracy: (<https://crispher.github.io/demo2?p=0.5>). I could follow the rotation of a 4D Rubik's cube, knowing where each cell lies on the screen and why the shape deforms that way during rotation.
Sometimes I would visualize basic geometric objects like hypercubes and hyperspheres in my mind, comparing them with 3D objects like cubes and spheres – even mentally playing with a hypercube and a cube to feel their different textures (the hypercube feels very thick and full, while the cube is like a thin slice). When I revisited these concepts, they no longer just amazed me – they gradually became analyzable, interpretable, and tangible. That was a completely new experience for me.
After that, I started to imagine: if some 3D object I see in daily life were actually the projection of a 4D object, what might the structure of that 4D object be? When carrying a shopping bag, I thought – if a fourth dimension were added, the bag hanging on my hand would simply fall off sideways, unless my hand had width in that fourth dimension. I imagined rotating my viewport to observe the projection of the real world from another angle, and found that the world is just a thin slice – trying to move along the z‑axis felt like being stuck, unable to budge. Reality felt as if it had lost a dimension, and it took me another day or two to readapt to the real world.
By the time I wrote this review, I had already completed all the levels. But when I revisited earlier levels with different viewpoints and different controls, I deepened my understanding from various angles. First‑person, third‑person, top‑down, hyperplane‑illusion, view‑turn plus forward movement – each perspective offers a distinct experience. When I tried speedrunning the early levels, I found that "hyperplane illusion + view‑turning" is practically a "wheelchair" (in Chinese gaming slang, "wheelchair" jokingly refers to a strategy that is so powerful and easy to use that it feels almost like cheating – in a fun, playful way) – it gives the best field of view on most maps, allows quick reorientation toward the target, and lets you reach the goal via the shortest path. However, I strongly advise beginners not to play that way, because it looks too much like moving through ordinary 3D space; 3D intuition suffices for most levels, which hinders building a proper understanding of 4D space.
I sincerely thank the author for pouring so much effort into developing such an outstanding game, giving me the opportunity to engage with the concept of four‑dimensional space in a brand‑new way.
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The following is the Chinese version, consistent in meaning with the above.
以下是中文版本，含义与上文一致。
全球第一款使用“3D屏幕显示4D投影”的可视化方法展示四维空间的游戏，以最直观、最全面的方式展示四维空间的构造，四维游戏爱好者必吃精品。
从交互映射方式到关卡设计，再到提示文本与教学演示，从每一方面都能看出作者对每一个细节精益求精的打磨。观看作者以往在b站发布的devlog视频，仅从这些开发细节的冰山一角便足以想象出开发任务巨大且繁琐的工作量。
通过精心设计的关卡引导，作者将自己对四维空间的深刻理解以浅显易懂的方式展示给每位第一次接触该游戏的玩家，带领玩家一步步熟悉游戏中的操作，读懂画面传递的信息，感受每一个物体的特性，领略四维空间的魅力。
在第一次游玩该游戏时，我对画面中的信息感到非常疑惑。第一次看到十字路口的投影时，作为一只三维生物，我觉得它看起来就是一座尖尖的塔，画面中的“前方”看起来就像是“上方”。但作者通过巧妙的“3D→2D投影”类比，让人理解为什么画面中的“上方”实际上是前方，大小如何传递位置信息。
游戏内渲染引擎的算法还允许玩家将视窗旋转到正对自己的角度，且在这个角度下，其中一个维度的信息几乎完全折叠，画面看起来与我们平时熟知的3D空间的2D投影几乎没有区别，画面中的一切变化都如此符合常识。
在这个基础上，把视窗往侧方稍微旋转一个小的角度，观察另一个维度的方向在画面上如何展现，旋转视窗如何改变自己所观察到的画面，旋转视角又会带来怎样的变化……
就这样，在一点点的尝试与理解中，大脑开始适应这些信息，开始理解其中的关联。
在刚游玩这个游戏的前两天，每天晚上躺在床上时，一闭上眼，我就会看到《四维直觉》中的世界，看着自己在其中前后移动，反复旋转视窗以确定位置。
神经元不断建立新的连接，大量电信号在各个区域间不断地流动，大脑的温度开始上升。第一天晚上我简直兴奋得睡不着，在自己想象到一些内容以后，直接坐起来，到电脑前打开游戏，验证我想象的画面是否准确，直到凌晨四点才能睡着。
经过两天的适应期以后，我已经不再需要说服自己的大脑努力将“上方”看成前方了，它在我眼前完全就是前方。相反，我已经很难把十字路口中的前方看作上方，无论怎么旋转我总是觉得它就在前面。把投影中展示的“前方”强行看作“上方”，就如同在纸上用斜二测画法画一个正方体，却非要人将它看作纯粹的二维平面图形一样令人感到认知不适。
当我回头去看作者曾经发布的四维可视化视频，或者其他人的游戏录像，我都能够理解操作者做了什么操作，向哪个方向旋转了视角，正在往哪个方向走；我能以90%以上的准确率完成本游戏作者开发的数超立方体游戏中p=0.5的关卡(<https://crispher.github.io/demo2?p=0.5>)；我可以看懂四维魔方的旋转，知道画面上魔方的每个胞体位于哪个方位，旋转时画面为什么会发生这样的形变。
有时我会在脑内想象超立方体、超球等基本几何体，对比它们和正方体、球体等三维几何体的区别，把超立方体和正方体拿到手上rua，感受它们不同的触感（超立方体非常厚实饱满，正方体则是一张薄片）
当我再次接触这些内容时，它们不再只是让我感到惊奇，它们逐渐变得可以被分析、被解读、被感受，这对我而言是全新的体验。
在此之后，我开始想象，如果日常生活中见到的某个三维物体实际上是四维物体的投影，那它所对应的四维物体的结构可能是什么样的；提着一个购物袋时，我想到如果拓展出第四维度，那么原本挂在我手上的购物袋会直接从旁边掉下去，除非我的手在第四维度有宽度；想象自己旋转视窗从另一个角度来观察现实世界的投影，发现世界就是一张薄片，想向z轴的方向移动，却只感觉动弹不得，寸步难行。感觉现实世界就像是少了一个维度，重新适应现实世界又花了我一两天的时间。
发布评论时，我已经完整通关了所有关卡。但当我重新游玩前面的关卡，用不同的视角、不同的操作方式重新体验，我都能从不同的角度加深对其的理解。第一人称、第三人称、俯视、超平面幻觉、视角转向+前进……每种视角都有不一样的体验。当我尝试前期关卡速通时，发现“超平面幻觉+视角转向”简直就是轮椅，可以在大部分地图中获得最佳的视野，迅速转向目标方向，以最短路径直达目标。但非常不建议初次上手的玩家这样玩，因为它看上去实在太像在三维空间中穿行，三维空间的直觉便足以应对绝大多数关卡，这不利于建立对四维空间的理解。
真心感谢作者倾注心力开发了这样一款优秀的游戏，让我有机会以全新的方式与四维空间的概念接触。
