Name: Monument Valley; Target Audience: Explicitly: anyone! they wanted to build something that could be played by “people who don’t usually play games” (link to interview); Creator: Ustwo Games; Platform: Mobile (iOS, Android)
I’ve been trying to play games I’ve never played before for my critical plays in this class, but this week I thought it would be interesting to go back to one of my favorites from my childhood — Monument Valley. Back when I was in middle school, the App Store would occasionally give out a paid app for free if you checked in, and one of those weeks the app they were giving out was Monument Valley. I downloaded it and immediately fell in love with its beautiful world and annoying crow people. Playing the game again this week from a designer’s perspective was certainly interesting, as I now have the tools to recognize the few shortcomings the game has, but I’ve also learned to appreciate the thought and care that went into designing each world and puzzle even more now.
Monument Valley‘s puzzles are incredibly intuitive and well-designed, encouraging players to engage with the game’s story through mystery and intrigue rather than forced dialogue or cutscenes.
When opening Monument Valley, the player realizes immediately that this game was designed specifically for mobile devices. The gestures required to interact with the game were created for touch controls — swiping in a circle to rotate a platform, swiping in a line to translate a platform. However, the player is only given two instructions at the beginning of the game — “Tap the path to move Ida” and “Hold and rotate” (Fig. 1). Although the game introduces new mechanics throughout the rest of the game, such as the aforementioned translating platforms that do not rotate, these are the only instructions given to the player. The player is encouraged to tap and swipe all over the screen until they find something that moves, then to learn how it moves, and finally somehow incorporate it into a solution to the puzzle all without a long and explicit tutorial from the game. This approach to puzzle design makes exploring each level feel incredibly organic, constantly rewarding the player with “V-8” moments through trial-and-error.
Additionally, new mechanics in Monument Valley are always introduced in a similar fashion — in the opening of the level, there may be one or a pair of elements incorporating the new mechanics, allowing the player to familiarize themselves with the new mechanic without feeling overwhelmed by a deluge of strange, new information without an in-game explanation (Fig. 2). Occasionally, new mechanics will be introduced in the middle of a level, but are still incorporated in a gradual way as to not confuse the player (Fig. 3). As the levels progress and the player explores deeper, the application of these new mechanics become more challenging and involved, but the player feels more than ready to approach these new challenges due to their comfort from the introduction. In this way, no puzzle feels like it’s unreasonably difficult for the player and the player can still feel that “A-HA” moment when completing the final puzzle of each section that typically acts as a sort of capstone.
From a designer’s standpoint, the way the mystery Monument Valley is given to the player is incredibly thoughtful and encourages even the most narrative-averse players to engage with the story the developers are trying to tell. The game opens without any sort of introduction as to where your character is or why, only giving the protagonist the name “Ida.” However, in one of the early levels, your character reaches an area in which you have no choice but to interact with a ghost that only gives two sentences on the location you’re exploring (Fig. 4). This dialogue is short yet intriguing — if this was a valley of men, where did they all go? What glories were stripped from the monuments? Interacting with this character again only returns the same dialogue, encouraging narratively-driven players to continue searching for clues as to what happened in the valley.
In future levels, this character appears again and again, strengthening the mystery by expositing more and more. However, as seen in Figure 5, these interactions are no longer required to continue with the game, and one could completely avoid this non-player character (NPC) by walking through the open door on the right. Despite the NPC being completely avoidable, players are still encouraged to go and speak with them to learn more about the world they’re exploring and why they’re exploring it, especially since an expectation of short yet mysterious dialogue was set in the previous interaction. In this way, the narrative of the game doesn’t impede gameplay-focused players enough to make them actively avoid interacting with this NPC, encouraging more of them to interact when they would otherwise walk immediately towards the door on the right.
Although the game my team is designing for P2 is much more of an enacting stories narrative than Monument Valley‘s embedded narrative, there are still lessons we can learn about the introduction of the story to the player that we can apply to our own game. As someone who has been involved in gaming spheres for quite some time, a common criticism of narrative games with strong gameplay loops (which we are planning on designing) is that the story often feels “forced” or “awkward” due to cutscenes or long expository sections that interrupt comparatively quick and engaging gameplay. Of course, we would like for players to engage with the story we’ve written, but if we want our project to have a broader appeal to the narrative-averse, we should learn from Monument Valley‘s introduction and continuation of their narrative and try to find ways to encourage players to engage with the narrative without making it feel forced.
I believe Monument Valley is one of the more visually accessible games I’ve played. Although each of the levels feels organic as the game’s artstyle is incredibly thought-out and cohesive, it is very clear when elements of the level are interactable and when they’re not. A section without any markings on it is likely meant to only be walked across. Meanwhile, a single interactable element could change the terrain in multiple different places, which is made clear in levels such as those in Figure 6 as the elements that are controlled by the same element are all the same color that stands out from the rest of the level. Even with my color deficiency, I have no issues with distinguishing interactable and non-interactable elements in the game due to its strong use of visual cues and cohesive design.
