Marsh/Upper Shed

The Upper Shed (name from the game's asset files) is a structure in the Marsh that hosts its third row of puzzles and its first shortcut door.

Overview On the Marsh
It notably provides an overview of the marsh. In this mostly flat area (on surface), the Upper Shed is one of the three structures that stand high above water level, along with the Main Shed and the Laser Stairs. The role of the structure in providing an overview of the Marsh is made clear by the inclusion of a overhanging platform with a guard rail (despite the fact that the shed itself has no such security features). In addition to understand the layout of the marsh and appreciate its colorful beauty, the overview allows to look at the fifth row of puzzles from above, which might be relevant considering that this rows introduces rotatable polyominoes. It can be seen for instance that the vegetation behind this row is made of similar plant configurations that are only rotated.

Usage
It is not clear how the island inhabitants would use this structure, although for players it provides a convenient shortcut to the boat shed. It also allows a permanent access to the underwater rooms in the cyan and red pools without using the moving platforms.

Theme
A possible theme embodied in this structure is the idea of occupying space. Indeed, the puzzles in row 3 introduce a new way to use the polyominoes, consisting in moving the polyominoes far from their respective symbols to connect them with other symbols. In an analogy between the puzzle grids and the environment, this usage of polyominoes is like laying out platforms on the surface of the marsh to reach various areas. The shed's overview allows to observe how it is actually done in the marsh. So, unlike the previous puzzles of the marsh that were concerned with fitting polyominoes in a limited space, row 3 is concerned with occupying a big area with a limited set of unfitting polyominoes. The puzzles on the shortcut door embody the idea that if you shrink the space by reducing the size of the grid, polyominoes that would fit nicely on their respective symbols now need to be moved around in order to better occupy the space. This shrinking of space can also be related to the flying elevator sequence, where the latest part of the elevator structure and our own body disapear just before flying through the shed, passing between elements of the structure in a way that would not be possible if we still had a space-occupying body. (Note that the elevator flies though the shortcut door, which opens if the player did not open it before entering the elevator).