I just played the most AMAZING mobile game I've played to this date. it was pretty short; just a a little over 2 hours at best but I completely loved it. I've played much better games in my life. Deus Ex was much better for an example. I've seen far better narratives told in video games. I've even seen much more radical and innovative video game designs. But none were designed and released for the mobile first. Last year I reviewed LIMBO as a perfect game for non-gamers. After playing Monument Valley, I think it is perfect for both casual gamers and those who think of mobile games as lesser games and look down on them from an artistic point of view.

What is it about?

My personal description would be to call it an atmospheric puzzle game with innovative mechanics/gimmicks and a simple but intimate narrative. It reminded me of LIMBO and Portal a lot. LIMBO has some simple and heavily atmospheric gameplay while portal ask you to come up with some ingenious solutions with the elements/mechanics introduced in the game. When it comes to the narrative it reminded me of the short but powerful narrative driven games I see available for free on Kongregate, Armor Games and other similar websites. Let's see how Ustwo Games see themselves as:

"We’re a mobile games studio that loves to make interactive entertainment which challenges the medium, with a strong focus on user experience and elegance in presentation. From our BAFTA award-winning hit Monument Valley, to innovative virtual reality experience Land’s End, we hope our dedication to craft and platform specific design shows in every product we create."

I'd say these guys deliver what they claim to deliver. The original Monument Valley was developed in 10 months using Unity Game Engine based on concept drawings by company artist Ken Wong and the game was released for iOS on April 3rd, 2014 and received an Apple Design Award which the game totally deserve. Here are few sketches from the design phase:

We didn’t experience a classic ‘eureka’ moment that signified the birth of Monument Valley, but it was close. Ken Wong, the team’s lead designer, created a piece of artwork, an image of a building in isometric view with a single figure, staring at its strange but completely possible architecture. The image came with no suggestion of a game design, but it was instantly arresting and it dared us to come up with something that would be as powerful as it was. The great thing about looking at the image now is just how close it looks to the finished game. It’s incredibly satisfying that we managed to realise the potential of that very pure idea.

Most atmospheric games whether they were ported from PC like LIMBO or originally built for mobile like The ROOM, they tend to have a dark and brooding touch. Monument Valley manages to convey tradgedy and atmosphre while being visually gorgeous. Unlike most games Monument Valley is a game of heartfelt redemption. I want you to experience everything as fresh as possible. So I'll just quote what the Playstore description read to me.

An illusory adventure of impossible architecture and forgiveness.

One of the best things about the game is that it is a very condensed experience that never overstays its welcome. By the end you are going to be asking for more. It's not even a that much of a hard game. The Room was genuinely challenging but Monument Valley was more of an interactive experience where you have to think smart and a mobile game were you don't have to grind at all.

"There seems to be so many ways to create a puzzle that doesn't quite work," Wong said. "We want players to figure things out themselves without instructions, so the puzzles have to sort of hint at what's possible. At the same time, we want the player to be surprised and delighted, so we also have to keep some things obfuscated."
Puzzles must work on three levels: gameplay, architecturally and graphically. Each level has a story to tell, though few words are present. Wong called the game's themes more impressionistic and symbolic than narrative.
"The storytelling in the game is more akin to a song than a book or movie," Wong said. "The player can enjoy the game on whatever level they choose, and come away with their own meaning."
Source

I can totally agree with the lead designer Ken Wong. The story and the tragedy and the eventual redemption is all conveyed and there is barely any text in it. level names + descriptions and few sentences here and there conveys everything and I personally thought of the kid's books with huge pictures with few words when I played the game.

A sad case of piracy

Only 5% of the Android users had paid for the game and only 40% of the iOS users paid for the game. Here is my source. At least after these years the game had sold over 26 million copies. I'm not sure if these "sales" included the pirated copies. I think the pirated copies were counted too or else the real number of people who have played the game would be unrealistically large. At the end of the day the studio did make some decent money. They added some extra content titled Ida's Dream for charity work and another Expansion pack (which i haven't purchased yet). Last year they had released Monument Valley 2 which I will get into after I finish the expansion pack for the original.

The sequel seems to be a lot similar to the original with little less subtlety and more attempt at relatively explicit storytelling. So I won't write a separate review on that.

Final Praise

The developers made a great visual style that is fit for mobile devices that looks a lot similar to the works of M. C. Escher who's work I've been a fan of. I'm always drawn to the philosophy and thought streams behind a piece of work and that is why Hideo Kojima is my favorite game designer of all time. I see lots of right kind of thinking from Ustwo Games.

One recurring theme was that of length. In general, on console or on a PC, gameplay is stretched over a dozen or more hours. Yet in mobile gaming the trend has been towards endless gaming, primarily as a side-effect of freemium titles looking to gain payment and hook a ‘whale’ — players who spend large amounts on freemium games, making them profitable even when over 90% of the games user-base spend nothing. However, we felt more and more drawn to games that made much less lavish demands on our finite and precious time.

Big thank you for that! I've always had a problem with games with no ending. I'm sort of a bottom line person. I need to see things going somewhere and the next weekend or month or year isn't really a somewhere. An experiece should be well defined and efficiently delivered. You'll see my love for efficiency in my post Hyper Efficient Content Consumption - The way I beat the 10,000 hour rule to become a polymath and why I don't read most of the books I recommend..

Our ambition for the game became to produce a piece of work that was ‘all killer and no filler’ — something that would excite the player, but never frustrate. We wanted the player to stick around just long enough to deliver only novelty and delight. It would be a game with no grind, but also no real failure: there were no stars to collect, no leaderboards. Players should experience a game that is more akin to a film in length.

If a game can stand its ground without those psychological tricks designed to keep players engaged, then we are witnessing a game that has immense value in its base content that can shine on its own. Only other made for mobile games that I've played with this level of awesomeness were République and The Room. So I hope you'd enjoy my recommendation and maybe suggest some great stuff in the comments.

Happy steeming!

Images: 1 2 3