Publisher: Ustwo Developer: In-house Format: iPad Release: Out Now
Ustwo’s Escher-inspired monuments are impossible, the kind of architectural wonders that simply couldn’t be recreated outside a videogame. And yet they’re powered by such consistent ludic logic that the challenges they present are immediately easy to parse. The first single-screen puzzle tells you how to manoeuvre protagonist Ida – simply tap where you want her to go and she’ll advance, assuming it’s a position she can get to without assistance – but in truth no instructions are required. All you need is a natural curiosity and a degree of familiarity with how digital apparatus usually functions – in short, if it protrudes in any way, you can almost certainly move it.
It might be a singleplayer game, but solving these conundrums is a collaborative effort. Ida, upon your instruction, will step on floor switches to trigger shifts in the environment, while you trigger mechanisms elsewhere, dragging objects to turn staggered stairways into navigable routes, and rotating wheels to turn two entirely separate plinths into a single bridge. The pieces may not directly connect, but here, as in the likes of Echochrome and Fez, perception is reality: if it appears from your isometric perspective that a path is whole, then Ida will be able to cross it. Later, she’ll walk along walls, inside and outside, and avoid patrolling crows, whose loud caws are enough to cow Ida into halting. The ten worlds become steadily more elaborate and expansive, from single-screen riddles to stages that span multiple interconnected rooms, and yet refreshingly, you’re invited to figure this all out for yourself. Visual hints are subtle, and represent your only guidance.
Not that you’ll need any help. Monument Valley’s individual ideas are fine, but rarely combined or developed in ways that will genuinely challenge you. Its worlds are intricately disassembled and yet relatively straightforward to reconstruct, the equivalent of a single, sharp tug detangling apparently knotted wires. And though its puzzles are presented quite differently, from start to finish you’ll be tapping, sliding and spinning the same objects to find the exit route. It’s not until the later stages that Ustwo finds fresh ways to confound and delight, constructing a lovely, intricate music box contraption while taking the final stage further into the realms of the abstract.
Monument Valley is London studio Ustwo’s third iOS release, after side-scroller Whale Trail and puzzler Blip Blup.
Some players may wish for a sterner test, though many more will find pleasure enough in witnessing how all the disparate pieces slot together with a kind of amused wonderment. It’s like assembling flat-pack furniture: the process is simple enough, but the reward is in seeing it slowly become something tangible. The touch controls are part of the appeal – there’s an empowering, tactile joy in manipulating these stone switches and wheels that sticks and buttons could never quite capture – but the loudest plaudits should be reserved for the sound design team, tellingly credited separately here. Quite apart from the contemplative mood established by its ambient soundtrack and the plucked strings and delicate piano notes your interactions contribute, the deep rumbles and clicks of the game’s every environmental shift lend its monuments a palpable weight. There’s that same taboo thrill you get in the Tomb Raider games, that of disturbing a long-hidden secret protected by ancient mechanisms. There may be no traps to fall foul of here, but by the closing stretch, your innate inquisitiveness will have long since trumped your brain’s desire to be more aggressively stimulated.
As an enigmatic whisper of a narrative concludes in delightful, uplifting fashion, you’ll likely be left wanting more. A lack of variety and challenge arguably holds this slight but distinctive tale from reaching the very upper tier of iOS games, but Ustwo’s crisp, pastel-coloured worlds stand tall as monuments to the medium’s – and its players’ – rare ability to make the impossible possible.
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