I played monument valley on iOS. Monument valley is a singleplayer puzzle game by UsTwo Games designed for players of all ages. The game follows the character Ida who adventures through various monuments placing down geometry down at these monuments.The goal of the game is to solve puzzles in the monuments to create the correct path for Ida to explore the monument and place back the sacred geometry. The game mechanics to solve the path puzzles include rotating and translating terrain, tapping on the screen to move Ida, and an additional pillar character which can be moved. The narrative of Monument Valley is told through the solving of puzzles which allow Ida to continue her journey through the monuments. The terrain and NPCs crows in the story act both as puzzles and narrative.
Monument Valley acts as an embedded narrative. The players actions of solving puzzles only aid in Ida’s pre determined story of placing back the geometry which she had previously stolen. The first level was a simple path that I solved by rotating an L – shaped path to connect allowing Ida to move forward. The game starts simple with only the mechanic of rotating certain parts of the terrain. Along the way in levels, I met a ghost like character, who would re appear many times throughout the game. From the ghost we learn Ida was a princess who had stolen sacred pieces of geometry and now is on a mission to place them back. Soon after in the next level the player encounters crows. Some can be seen sitting on the side of the path while others act as obstacles that must be avoided or manipulated to allow Ida to pass through. The crows feel like people who were wronged by Ida’s theft of the sacred geometry, every time they face Ida they caw repeatedly and in some cases prevent her from moving forward. The narrative is mixed with the puzzles as the characters are woven into the puzzles as obstacles.
The ghost like NPC Ida encounters throughout the monuments.
The crows act as obstacles in the path.
The mechanics of rotating, translating, dragging objects, and tapping to move create the dynamic of solving puzzles and exploration. These dynamics create the aesthetic of discovery and challenge. There is also an element of sensation from the visual design of the levels and especially from the optical illusions created in the levels. Each level also introduced new mechanics and more difficult puzzles keeping added more to the challenge aesthetic. What I liked about the puzzle designs was that most of the time they didn’t require super intense thought or memorization to figure things out, but instead forced the user to visualize the path and change perspective in order to find the correct path. The player’s ability to interact with the level which is the journey Ida takes makes it where the puzzle is the story and by solving the puzzles the player can progress the story.
The different moods and settings throughout the the levels
Overall I liked the visual and audio design of the game. The setting changes with the level from tall mountains to deep caves and deep ocean areas. Each level also brings a different mood whether it be the melancholy mood when Ida enters into the grave room or the calming mood in the observatory. The sound design also fits the game very well with calming ambient sound and sharp sound effects when objects are translated or rotated by the player. These sound effects make it feel like each step the player does to solve the puzzle is a part of the narrative.
One ethical issue with monument valley is that it assumes all players have spatial reasoning skills. While playing the game I felt that it was inclusive since people do not need to understand any human culture or history and the character design is pretty ambiguous without a clear race or age and in the end turns into a crow, but the game does require the player to be able to view and imagine the game as 3D and many of the puzzles require perspective in order to solve them.
