I recently saw a bit of gameplay for a mobile release called Monument Valley by ustwo studio and was instantly hooked by the visuals. The following day, with it fresh in my mind, I decided to purchase it and experience it for myself. What I found was a beautiful, perfectly balanced, relaxing and engaging experience. The look alone, the thing that initially grabbed me, is gorgeous; a 3D isometric view of your environment, mostly simple shapes and models, a soundless, almost featureless protagonist, solid, pastel colours and a slightly eastern architectural design. It's beautiful to just sit and watch for a while and reminded me of another amazing title, visually anyway, Journey from Thatgamecompany, an amazingly beautiful experience that I am not at all upset to be reminded of.
Simple, clean and a little bit gorgeous
Next, on to my favourite bit to talk about, the simplicity of its rules. Everything is so simple in this game one can learn to play simply by playing. There is little in the way of instructions except for a couple of prompts at the start, directing you to touch a point on screen to move your character. The character will then follow a path, if it is clear, to the point you have touched. Some aspects of the environment can also be manipulated, from dragging and rotating blocks, chunks, buildings and platforms to manipulating levers and handles in order to create a path to the goal. All of these things are clearly marked and introduced at a perfect pace, if I was ever a little stuck on a puzzle it was because of me, not the game. The more interesting and exciting aspect of the title though was the echocrome-like perspective puzzles. These can be difficult to explain, but essentially, as the perspective is changed parts of the environment will link up, move, connect or disconnect based on the viewing angle. This was a very exciting feature of echocrome and Fez, two titles that used their camera angles very effectively to produce some mind-bending platform puzzles.
If Escher made games... Dick...
The puzzles in Monument Valley are handled extremely well, and a couple had me really flexing my ability to visualize the spaces and consider the angles, but the wonderful thing about this game is that if you're not sure, try it out! The best way to figure out any of their puzzles is by twisting, turning, swiping, rotating and tapping until all becomes clear. As each chapter is split into a few separate puzzles most sections do not take very long to complete and aren't massively sprawling. This allows for experimentation, as a wrong step won't send you very far back or force you to complete a huge amount of steps for the puzzle again, only to fail at the same point. To use the phrase again this title is perfectly balanced; it feels like something that would be easy to pick up and play for most users, new or veteran, yet has enough to keep any fan of puzzles, whatever their status, happy and playing for a while. While not much of a gripe, the game is extremely short; my play-through lasted around an hour, give or take. It isn't much of a bad thing to say you want more of a game but perhaps a slightly more expanded experience would have been nice as the replay value is virtually nil. In saying all this, I think the price of £2.49 for the app was pretty fair but hope there is some sort of expansion or update that allows for further play.
More, more, more! (Source)
All in all this game follows the design principle I love so much, simplicity. With simple graphics, simple rules and a serene and relaxing soundtrack Monument Valley is a beautiful example of what can be done with touchscreen devices. These perspective and spacial puzzles I'm seeing is something really, frustratingly fun and difficult and stretches the mind, even in a simple form. Touchscreens are a perfect platform for games like this as they allow for a player to use their hands and physically manipulate objects in a far better way than any controller or mouse can offer and it was a delightful learning experience in the design of these puzzles to play Monument Valley. Thanks guys, keep up the good work!
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