For players interested in puzzle games, artful visuals, and feminist approaches to digital media, Monument Valley 2 offers a compelling example of Shira Chess’s argument that games can function as “agentic training tools,” teaching players to question systems that seem fixed and imagine alternative ways of navigating them. Developed by ustwo games and available in formats for iOS, Android, PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox, the game initially appears quite simple. There are no enemies to defeat, no resources to manage, and no final boss waiting at the end of the journey. Instead, the game asks players to guide a mother and daughter through a series of dreamlike monuments, rotating structures and shifting perspectives, revealing that the world is not always what it appears to be.
Chess argues that games can function as “agentic training tools,” spaces where players practice acting within systems and imagining alternatives to structures that initially seem fixed (Chess). Through its mechanics, aesthetics, and narrative, Monument Valley 2 exemplifies this idea and teaches players that obstacles are not always overcome through force. One of the most distinctive aspects of the game is how it tells its story. The game contains very little dialogue, yet it communicates an emotional story through space itself. The game’s level design mirrors the progression of the mother-daughter relationship. Early levels position the mother, Ro, and her daughter on interconnected pathways that require them to move together, emphasizing closeness, dependence, and guidance. As the game progresses, the monuments become more complex and begin separating the two characters onto different routes, asking the daughter to solve portions of the environment on her own. By the later levels, she navigates spaces independently, while Ro takes on a more distant role. The architecture itself tells the story of a child growing into her own person.
The game begins with Ro guiding her child through the mazes, but soon they are separated and forced to discover their own paths.
This environmental storytelling creates a narrative that feels distinctly different from many mainstream games. Even compared to other puzzle games that emphasize atmosphere and exploration, such as Journey or The Witness, Monument Valley 2 places emphasis on relationships and caregiving. Rather than centering conquest, competition, or heroism, it focuses on mentorship and eventual independence. This stands in contrast to what Chess describes as “orgasmic storytelling,” a common narrative structure that builds toward a single climactic moment of release, often represented through victory, conquest, or the defeat of a final obstacle (Chess). In orgasmic storytelling, the player’s journey is organized around escalating tension that culminates in a decisive payoff. Monument Valley 2 largely rejects this structure, for it unfolds through a series of quieter emotional transitions centered on care, growth, and separation rather than driving players toward one triumphant moment. The game’s conclusion feels less like a dramatic release and more like a natural progression in the relationship between mother and daughter. This aligns closely with Chess’s discussion of feminist storytelling. She argues that games possess feminist potential when they move beyond narratives organized around domination and singular heroic victories (Chess).
The game’s mechanics reinforce these themes. The primary mechanic throughout the levels is perspective manipulation. The player rotates structures, shifts viewpoints, and reconfigures architecture to reveal hidden pathways. Importantly, they never destroy obstacles, they simply reinterpret them. These mechanics generate dynamics centered on experimentation and reflection where progress rarely comes from acting more aggressively or more efficiently. Instead, success emerges from questioning assumptions. A staircase that appears disconnected suddenly connects when viewed from another angle, and the game rewards players for abandoning their initial understanding of a situation. These dynamics closely align with Chess’s concept of feminist play. Feminism often begins with questioning assumptions that have become invisible through familiarity. Social norms, institutions, and power structures frequently present themselves as natural and inevitable. Feminist critique asks us to recognize that these systems were constructed and therefore can be reconstructed. Monument Valley 2 embeds this idea into gameplay; every puzzle teaches the player that a system that appears fixed may contain possibilities that were hidden by perspective.
The puzzle mechanics force the players to reframe their understanding of the world around them.
The game’s aesthetics further support this interpretation. Monument Valley 2 emphasizes discovery, narrative, and fantasy rather than challenge or competition. The emotional experience is characterized by wonder and curiosity, and the monuments invite exploration rather than mastery. Even failure carries no punishment, which creates an atmosphere where learning and experimentation feel safe. Rather than proving superiority over the game, players are encouraged to engage in a process of continual reinterpretation.
Ethics Statement
While Monument Valley 2 successfully intertwines feminist ideas through its emphasis on care, mentorship, and perspective-shifting, its incorporation of feminism remains largely metaphorical. The game teaches players to question assumptions and recognize that seemingly fixed systems can be reimagined, but the game rarely engages with the concrete realities of power that feminist theory often seeks to address. Its abstract world avoids questions of race, class, sexuality, disability, and other intersecting forms of identity, presenting a universalized vision of agency that risks oversimplifying how social change occurs in the real world. In many ways, the game suggests that changing one’s perspective is enough to transform a system, when structural inequalities often require collective action, resistance, and material change in addition to personal insight. A more explicitly feminist version of Monument Valley 2 could retain its elegant mechanics while incorporating a wider range of experiences and perspectives into its narrative architecture. Doing so would strengthen the game’s central message by connecting its lessons about perspective and agency to the diverse realities that shape how different people navigate systems of power.
Nevertheless, Monument Valley 2 remains a compelling example of feminist game design. Its message is not delivered through dialogue or exposition but through action where players learn by doing. The game teaches that agency does not always emerge from overpowering a system, for sometimes it begins with the realization that the system was never as fixed as it seemed.
