For this week’s critical play, I played Monument Valley NETFLX on the Apple iPhone. It was developed by Ustwo, and has a target audience of people who enjoy puzzle games and possess basic logical reasoning skills. The gameplay involves solving puzzles by manipulating various platforms and elements of the character’s environment. These changes enable the player character to navigate through the level and advance the story. The plot is mainly conveyed through level titles, architecture, and brief interactions with nameless characters.
The mechanics of the puzzles significantly enhance the game’s immersive experience. Throughout my time with Monument Valley, I was given only two instructions: “Tap the path to move Ida [the protagonist]” and “Hold and Rotate.”
From here, it is up to the player to intuit how to use the rest of the game’s mechanics. While there are some indicators, they are often very subtle and only reveal themselves as interactable once the player engages with them.
Most components of Monument Valley’s world are defined by their texture or color. Often, it’s just a subtle difference: a circle set against a square block that otherwise appears fitting for the environment, or a lever that has a slightly different hue of gray. Soon, however, the player gains a solid grasp of the mechanics and begins to leverage them to their advantage.
Monument Valley sets it’s challenges on two axes. The first is manipulating platforms to move Ida.
As seen in the example above, Ida’s only ability is to walk. Therefore, it’s up to the player to provide a path for her to traverse.
The second axis of challenge is player perspective. For some of Monument Valley’s puzzles, the solution is to look at the scene from a different angle.
As we see from this example, the player must literally move the level to complete the puzzle. This shift in expectations not only encourages outside-the-box thinking but also forces the player to reconsider what their eyes perceive. This is no more apparent than in one example from level four, where a platform does not connect unless the level is rotated a certain way.
Monument Valley is full of these subtle visual tricks. The puzzles exist as much in the player’s mind as they do physically in the game. While interacting with the puzzles is simple, the solutions are not. Players are challenged but never stuck, which keeps them engaged for extended periods. Monument Valley’s genius lies in its simplicity, and other games in the genre could learn a lot from its construction.
Ethics
An ethical implication of many puzzle games is how reasonable (or unreasonable) it is to assume that players will be able to intuit the mechanics of a puzzle. As we covered in the reading for this week’s sketchnote, if a puzzle is too easy, the player will not find it engaging. Conversely, if a puzzle is too difficult, the player will grow frustrated and may even quit. Thus, to phrase it more directly, our question is “who determines if a puzzle is too difficult.”
Monument Valley takes a somewhat unorthodox approach to addressing difficulty. Rather than providing players with hints if they get stuck, the game keeps its puzzle mechanics limited and straightforward. By reducing the scope of possibilities, players theoretically have the option of brute-forcing combinations until something works. However, they are encouraged to familiarize themselves with the game’s systems. While this approach may discourage some players, it also has the benefit of building skills that will be helpful in future puzzles and puzzle games.
