Target audience: Players interested in minimalist puzzle games
Game: Monument Valley 3
Creator: ustwo games
Platform played: iOS
ustwo games’ Monument Valley 3 begins with a path that only appears fixed. In the opening tutorial, I guide Noor forward until the route no longer connects. A conspicuous knob invites me to rotate part of the architecture, changing the apparent geometry and creating a new path. This interaction establishes the game’s central rule: physical space matters less than what space looks like from my current perspective. Across the first two chapters, rotating structures, aligning platforms, entering doorways, and activating beams of light turn Noor’s apprenticeship into something I perform. However, the puzzles communicate the atmosphere and structure of her journey more effectively than its emotional stakes. Their clear visual guidance produces wonder, discovery, and relaxation, but rarely the surprise or challenge I remember from playing the first Monument Valley.
The opening introduces Noor alongside her master, who carries a staff. After I reach her, the game takes us across an ocean toward a lighthouse, passing other sailors along the way. Three dots then appear above the master’s staff, prompting dialogue in which she tells Noor that her apprenticeship is almost over and instructs her to find her in town. The mechanics of tapping destinations, passing through doors, and navigating away from the master produce a dynamic of guided departure. The resulting aesthetic is anticipation: I understand that Noor is leaving one stage of her life and moving toward another.
When Noor enters the Lightwell, the structure rotates, shakes, and shifts into a different visual style before becoming the chapter-selection screen. Instead of separating the menu from the fictional world, the game makes progression feel like another place Noor physically enters. This is one of the game’s cleverest storytelling decisions. The interface does not simply organize the story; it becomes part of the world.
The game’s central mechanics are tapping paths, rotating gears, dragging platforms, aligning architecture, and holding glowing objects. These mechanics produce a dynamic of careful but safe experimentation. I move objects until paths connect, while the game continuously confirms whether I am getting closer. The resulting aesthetics are primarily sensation, discovery, fantasy, and relaxation rather than intense challenge.
The sliding structures in the town demonstrate this clearly. Draggable components are marked with orange surfaces, four-pronged gears, or groups of three holes. Glowing lines appear when sections are properly aligned. I solved one sequence by moving the sliders until different parts began glowing, gradually learning which arrangements the game accepted. A platform also retreats when Noor stands on it, communicating that I cannot turn it while she is there. These details prevent me from confusing decoration with interaction.
Scott Kim argues that puzzles are enjoyable when they are novel, neither discouragingly hard nor disappointingly easy, and capable of producing a shift in perception. The architecture is certainly novel. Doors transport Noor between locations that should not connect, the environment shifts from green oceanic hues into pink, purple, and orange spaces in the sky, and ladders introduce new forms of vertical movement. However, the solutions in these chapters rarely caused me to reinterpret the entire space.
My disappointment may partly come from nostalgia. I remember the first Monument Valley as mysterious and revelatory, although that memory has probably preserved its strongest moments while removing the easier or more guided sections. I was also encountering its visual language for the first time. By the third game, rotating impossible architecture is no longer inherently unexpected. This creates a difficult design problem: the game must remain approachable to new players while finding ways to surprise players who already understand the series’ central trick.
The repeated beacon ritual creates the strongest connection between puzzle completion and narrative. At the end of each chapter, I tap a source of light, arrive at a lighthouse or tower, and send a beam across the ocean to search for lost boats. This action marks completion while establishing Noor as someone learning to guide others. A stronger version of the opening could extend this idea by having the master demonstrate only part of a transformation and requiring Noor to finish it independently. Her growing autonomy would then be expressed through reduced guidance and increased mechanical responsibility rather than dialogue alone.
The game’s visual clarity also raises an ethical question: who is included in its apparently universal design? Its limited text reduces dependence on language, while its forgiving structure includes players who may be alienated by severe punishment or failure. However, it replaces linguistic assumptions with assumptions about visual, spatial, and technological literacy. It expects players to recognize differences in color as interactive, interpret holes as invitations to drag, understand touchscreen gestures, distinguish glowing alignments, and mentally reason about rotated structures.
These conventions may exclude players with low vision, color-vision differences, motor limitations, or difficulty processing spatial relationships. Color and glow could be reinforced through shape changes, sound, vibration, or stronger animation.
Monument Valley 3 succeeds at weaving narrative into movement, transition, and ritual. Its puzzles make Noor’s journey across an impossible world playable, while its art and feedback generate calm wonder. Yet these opening chapters also reveal the difficulty of continuing a series built around surprise. I enjoyed seeing the world transform, but I rarely experienced the deeper pleasure I nostalgically associate with the first game: realizing that I had to learn to see the world differently.
