Monument Valley

I wonder if I’ll review a game here that will score higher than Monument Valley. It’s truly amazing. The graphics are amazing. The colors are amazing. The motion is amazing. The story is amazing. The sound is amazing. But, those things are but a tiny part of why this game is so incredible.

I love even more how it suits my son’s brain at this point as a six year old. None of the motion is excessively rapid, so it does not make him overly excited, yet the pacing of the motion is sublime. The audio is lovely and complementary, sophisticated and subtle, but not disturbing. Most games seem like they attempt to amplify your moods and energy, but this game almost seems to make him more calm and reflective.

This game works by asking you to guide a small person through a series of Escher-like 3D mazes. That description really can’t capture all that this game does but it will have to suffice. Each maze has pieces which move in clever ways, and when objects in the maze move, they reveal new pathways.

One of the ratings above is “teamwork.” I want to cultivate this in my son, but asking a game to do it is almost unreasonable. The medium of technology is disgustingly best at isolating people. Monument Valley breaks this paradigm; my son loves to play this game, but when he gets stuck, he asks for my help. We work on the game together to find the next path and I suggest a new way for him to go. It’s brilliant how this game can invite people to play with him, but still permit him the space to try most of it on his own. I doubt there will be another game that encourages teamwork in the way this one does.

There is so much that could be said about Monument Valley but nothing would really do it justice. It’s something that, if I were someone who played games, I would probaby invest time into it, as an exploration of art and 3 dimensionality. And, I’m happy that my son found it and enjoys it as well.