Monument Valley is a puzzle game developed by Ustwo Games, available on Android, iOS, and Windows. The target audience of the game is anybody interested in playing a fun puzzle game – most ages, I think. I played the game on my iPad and iPhone, and quite enjoyed the beautiful, atmospheric graphics on both. (The iPad was definitely better though.)
In Monument Valley, objects are not spatially related in the way that they seem; totems are living; crow people, who are at first obstacles, become your helpers. The subversion of expectation is at the heart of Monument Valley. By learning to “read” these subversions, we are “giving back” in the same way that Ida is in her story, transforming hostile spaces into wonderful, reciprocal spaces. The narrative teaches us to think about the meaning of the puzzles; the puzzles teach us to learn to “read” the environment. Through the puzzles, Monument Valley teaches you that interacting with space is about seeing the impossible – which is a sacred thing to do.
Monument Valley frames itself as a story. Each level is a “chapter” and each level has a short description about what the puzzle is “about.” In one chapter, for example, “Ida learns new ways to walk”; in another, “Ida meets an old friend.” According to the Internet, these different chapters tell the story of Ida, a crow princess, who through these levels, is on a mission to “return” the sacred geometry that her people (the crows) stole from mankind. When you complete each level, Ida takes off her hat, and a shape floats out onto the platform. The point of each level is to get to that spot, so that you can return that geometry.
I don’t think this narrative is arbitrary: if we read this narrative in conjunction with the primary experience of the puzzle, then we see that learning to read sacred geometry as the player mirrors the process of returning that sacred geometry. What does this mean? By learning the world, reading the world, Ida successfully “redeems” herself. Similarly, by becoming fluent in the language of Ida’s world, we are also learning the language of reciprocity. We are healing the environment not by ironing out its impossibilities, but by learning to read them.
In one level, for example, we learn that the crow people are disruptive; they walk around, and if you walk in front of them, they squawk at you and you can’t move forward. But in subsequent levels, these crows become something more: in order to solve the puzzle, you must time your movement of the environment with their back-and-forth rhythm. If you time it well, the crow will press a button for you. We “befriend” crows whose only other purpose is aimlessly pacing around. We make purposeful the very landscape itself.
In some levels, Ida is not even there, and the puzzle is the landscape. Level 8, I think, is a box: you lift up certain pieces to reveal certain rooms, and none of it makes sense physically. Ida cannot access one room; you have to manipulate certain walls and crows and such to finish that room with in the level. The landscape is as much of a player as you are; the environment becomes friendly, helpful, revealing.
Monument Valley is about seeing the possibility of something that normally is impossible. It is also about seeing spaces not only as obstacle courses, but as possibilities. I found myself, when playing it, in a meditative, tender space — Monument Valley is not about domination, but about attunement. Anyway — it’s a wonderful game.
