I played Monument Valley III for this week’s critical play, a beautiful and simple puzzle game where the player guides a small figure, Princess Noor, through a series of adventures in a digital, adaptive environment to complete chapters of a story. Monument Valley is a game by Ustwo Games that leverages optical illusion, mazes, and evolving architecture. It was initially released in 2014, and since then, Monument Valley II and III have been released. The intended audience is 10+ years old, given the complexity of some of the puzzles. I played the iOS app version of Monument Valley III. In this critical play recap, I will argue that Monument Valley uses surreal puzzle mechanics to create a meditative, dream-like gameplay experience despite the game’s challenge level.
What I found most impressive about Monument Valley was the game’s ability to create a calming, gentle experience, even though the game itself is built on unintuitive environmental puzzle-solving. Most puzzle games I have played create fun through challenge, achievement, and perseverance, but Monument Valley’s visual design and game mechanics infuse the gameplay with serenity. Although Monument Valley is not effortless, it is still peaceful. Fun, in this case, arose from sensation, exploration, and fantasy.
I will begin with the puzzle mechanics that led to sensation pleasure. Monument Valley is just undeniably the most beautiful game I have played. The calming music, soft colors, peaceful movement, and general simplicity of design create an unparalleled atmosphere for escape and tranquility. The game’s secondary effect is to act as a meditation app. The rippling water behind each new challenge reminded me to breathe, and the scaffolded interactions with the puzzles balanced the gameplay. The three images below illustrate the gentle guidance of the puzzle mechanics that add to the game’s meditative elements. The first shows an example of a direct instruction to help the player engage with a novel mechanism for the first time, alleviating the confusion of trial and error. The second shows the crank retracting as Noor crosses the bridge, indicating that it cannot be spun when she is on the surface. The last shows a circle and dot model that the player can use to navigate the boat. All three mechanics gently nudge the player toward puzzle solutions and enforce the constraints of the puzzle. With only a couple of direct commands, players learn the affordances and constraints of each puzzle mechanic through visual cues that remain constant throughout the entire gameplay (cranks can turn unless they retract, three dots mean drag up or down, etc.). These intuitive rules add to the meditative quality of the game because they fade to the background, allowing the player to focus their attention on the puzzle.
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Second, I will discuss the game’s exploration. Monument Valley uses incredibly designed balancing mechanics to ensure that discoveries of new monuments, as well as progression to future chapters, feel like accomplishments for the player. The puzzles are accessible and fair, allowing players to struggle slightly. The amazing balancing act means that achievements feel earned but not unattainable. As a “reward” for understanding the puzzle, the player encounters more beauty. I found the balance so impressive, especially in contrast to my walking simulator critical play experience, Paperbark, which fluctuated between boredom and frustration. The “puzzle” of determining where to walk felt simultaneously not challenging enough and (in some moments) nearly impossible. Monument Valley brilliantly avoids both extremes (boredom and frustration) through repetition of simple mechanics and attainable challenges.
Lastly, I will end my argument by discussing the fantasy embedded in the mechanics of the game that led to its surrealism. Monument Valley’s use of deceptive optical illusions and warped reality creates magic. Players interact with the game by manipulating monuments in ways that defy physics and space, challenging them to break out of lived perceptions of gravity, depth, and alignment. These fantastical moments create a sense of power, intrigue, and discovery, even within each game. Players are not only using the mechanics to solve the puzzle, they are also using the mechanics to discover new truths and rules about this fantasy world.
The embedded narrative of Monument Valley also constructs its surrealism. However, despite adding a mystic quality to each chapter, I think this is an area for improvement. The story does not feel critical to the gameplay at all in its current iteration. I often felt throughout the game experience that the elements of environmental storytelling did not match up with the written narrative. The two images below illustrate this dichotomy: the written narrative describes a teacher leaving her apprentice, the main narrative line that recurs throughout the game as Noor tries to find the sacred light. However, the frozen moments and landmarks in the actual gameplay are not clearly related to this story. The second image includes a few frozen moments – a figure painting, another figure stretching – but it is not clear what they mean for the overall narrative. Connecting these more cleanly would improve the experience.
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I will end with a brief discussion of the game’s ethics. Monument Valley requires players to enter the experience with very little prior knowledge, though spatial intuition and familiarity with logic problems may be a plus. The game is fairly accessible for colorblind players because of its use of geometry, though some screens with pastels may pose difficulty. One consideration I had while playing was how the story and design elements honor the cultural traditions that they draw inspiration from. “Noor” is a common Arabic name, and elements of the structural and character design seem to take inspiration from Middle Eastern art and fashion. I wonder if the narrative was constructed in collaboration with Middle Eastern designers, or how the game might work to acknowledge the creative elements that it draws from these traditions to uplift the histories here.
