[Critical Play] Monument Valley

For this critical play on puzzles, I decided to try out Monument Valley. Like all of its other players, I was immediately drawn to the visual aesthetics of the game. The color palette along with the game’s visual cleanliness (clean lines and minimal design) was calming and made me feel relaxed and entranced — two common feelings I assume puzzles strive to induce.

What I find Monument Valley does really well is combining basic motions and actions with surprising results (impossible geometry) to encourage exploration. I noticed that most of the game revolves simply around either sliding or rotating an object. However, such basic actions can lead to platforms defying what we understand to be Gestalt Laws. Not all puzzles are able to bring novel imagery and surely not as well as Monument Valley does.

Despite this game following the classic puzzle structure of sequential stages, Monument Valley adds the tiniest bit of narrative; just enough to provide motive and move the game along without distracting from enjoying the fundamental aspects of the puzzle.

I appreciate how each stage has an underlying theme, involves similar actions, and is aesthetically similar. However, each stage is also different enough to increase in difficulty and introduce new elements to the game. These are aspects that I hope to tie into the puzzles that I create as well.