Good Things, Small Packages

UPDATE: According to their Twitter, @ustwogames are currently working on new levels for Monument Valley, yaaaaaaaaay! :D

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!

Tap Tap Tap

UPDATE: I've had a little more time with both games and been able to form some more opinions on the features of each game. One thing I truly loathe about Tapped Out is how easy it is make a mistake. Countless times have I and others accidentally sped up a character's task with donuts, a mistake that must be rapidly rectified and is easily caused by a simple mis-tap. Family Guy solves this problem with a simple drag and drop system; players drag the task symbol onto the character's action slot, leaving little room for error. On the other hand, Family Guy lacks a  important feature that Tapped Out is great for, a small box that shows all characters available to be set a task. In Family Guy  you click on the actual character, a task made difficult when a character has decided to hang out in a corner of the town behind building where where they aren't visible. While characters can be picked up in Family Guy and moved, the Simpsons displays each available character in the corner of the screen and transports you to their menu and location when clicked. So TinyCo, maybe steal that feature for your game make it perfect? 

I came a little late to the party in terms of the whole 'Touchscreen Revolution' that's been occurring over the last decade or so. Only in the last six months have I acquired a tablet device and functional smartphone (I owned a smartphone for years but it was old and not fully functional when I received it). Though I missed out on many of the medium's formative years it is fair to say that touchscreen gaming is now pretty ubiquitous; it's hard to go anywhere without seeing someone playing a game on their phone. I've always been a fan of small games, when I was younger we couldn't afford to get every latest console and keep up-to-date on the newest releases. We often rented games for short periods, bought consoles years after release when the prices had dropped and borrowed games from friends with more extensive libraries, anything we could to play some of the amazing games we could only hear or read about.

If I'd known these words then I would have spoken them

But one thing we always had was a PC. The same rules apply, we still didn't have all the latest releases and most of our game library revolved around Golf simulators for my dad, a couple of old adventure games and some computerised board and card games. But we had the internet, and it was great! Flash games were always my favourite, they were absolutely free and there were thousands, millions of them! Miniclip, Newgrounds and dozens of other sites that have been erased from my memory by the fog of time provided small games, single and multiplayer, that could be played any time, could be stopped and started whenever you wanted, could provided hours of joy or a simple moment's distraction while waiting for something to load or download. Smart phones and tablets have now extended this further, one no longer needs to be at a PC at home or in the office but anywhere in the world. I feel like online, independent games were the setup and now we're seeing the real deal. Mobile gaming is getting more advanced, higher fidelity and much more viable as an option for game development than ever before.

Before smartphones, there was only one mobile game

The convenience, growing technology and wide availability of these devices and games is now virtually the same as it was on those websites of old but with the added advantage of being able to game everywhere. It has also given rise to new genres and ways of playing. A very notable example is the 'idle' game. These are games that don't require a players active involvement for long periods and basically run themselves. A Dark Room is entirely ASCII and button based, with no graphics that cant be created from text and is time based. The player is tasked with collecting resources and building a small settlement in the woods, expanding and exploring as you go. The game can be left for long periods as resources build up and then they can be collected with a button press. The game allows one to explore a map and fight enemies to collect more items and resources and comes with a great narrative that will keep you tapping away for days.

ASCII art can be beautiful, just beautiful...

Games like The Simpsons: Tapped Out and Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff are also similar in this regard; players build a town including buildings and characters from the respective shows and these earn money and experience on a regular basis. The player must then return, collect their earnings and continue to expand. Games like these are perfect for the busy lives we lead; I can often be seen calculating how long a shift at work is going to be and getting Homer to complete and 8 hour task so that he's ready when I get done. I can play, or not play, whenever I choose. The game is endless, has no real goals and no defined end-point or win condition but it allows me to choose when I want to play, doesn't require a large investment in time and is something I can get friends involved in. What more can you ask for from a game? Of course, there's nothing like sitting down with my laptop for a game of Left4Dead or firing up my Playstation to go through Metal Gear Solid 4 again but my phone and tablet are a great way to stay connected to games and gaming when I don't have time to sit down for a more involved experience due to a busy period in my schedule. Small games are the future as much as they have been the past and game designers would do well to remember this, especially those with little experience. While we often have grand ideas with big, open, sprawling, 3D worlds, branching narratives and expansive quest lines we can forget that smaller games can be just as powerful, if not more so. There is still lots of room for surprises and plenty of ways of screwing with the conventions that can really push the medium forward, as it is still very young and still evolving. So don't think little, think small!

On a side note, had an awesome day day yesterday eating bubble gum sundae and going to the funfair, it's all on my twitter feed. But the most awesomest part was the random find of a game design book in a charity shop. I was walking past with my buddy and we had time to kill so I suggested we go in. I sometimes look for old Terry Pratchett books as they can often be found in charity shops and I'm on a lifelong mission to get them all from charity shops for no good reason. I went straight over to the books and scanned the shelves and there it was! Inside Game Design by Iain Simmons. Just £2 and packed with great interviews and behind-the-scenes looks at the development of a few games. Follow your instincts, you never know where it might lead! Except don't always, but do when it's stuff like go into charity shops. I'm not responsible for the things that happen to you...

"My instinct says Superman will catch me if I fall!"