Monument Valley
"How far have you wandered, silent princess?"
Monument Valley is an independent smartphone game that takes you through multiple different layers of stunning puzzles, all the while telling the story of “a silent princess,” of whom is the character you are playing as.
I think you can tell from the several images I’ve no doubt already put on display: this game is gorgeous. Drop. Dead. Gorgeous. I’ve always preferred the PC/computer to other consoles (including the smartphone), mainly due to graphics, controls, and anything else I could have nitpicked in the past, but, now, I’m beginning to see that even independent cellphone games can rival graphics previously made by top-tier experts. The color palette, animations, fluidity: it’s all absolutely beautiful, and I, overall, was just thinking of how much I wanted to play this on a bigger screen whilst traveling the expansive game world the whole time through.
Monument Valley isn’t all graphics, though: it has surprisingly brilliant (and stunningly effective) game-play mechanics as well, specifically in the form of rotating platforms, opening boxes, and, honestly, just anything this game throws your way. Sure, sometimes you may find yourself craning your neck to see what is truly going on in your screen, but I think a sore neck is worth witnessing this game’s mechanics tenfold.
Ah, but you see, there are a handful (a small, baby-sized handful) of flaws that come along with Monument Valley: the amount of content might just seem a bit too small for the price. Now, I really, really, really do not like talking about anything’s cost as a positive nor a negative, but for this smartphone game, I found myself at a playing time of less than an hour for $4; I wasn’t angry with how my money was spent, but just… surprised. Even now as I’m typing this, I’m beginning to realize how the problem is within not the price tag, but, rather, within how short this game really is.
However, even that can be put aside, simply because there is an extra, multi-stage level to add to this (and that’s not even counting the DLC), making it so where Monument Valley truly seems to be a perfect game. Ah, yes, a perfect game, if it weren’t for one small thing: the story.
You see, Monument Valley succeeds in not only gameplay, but in introducing an interesting story as well; however, just as with my previous argument, I feel as if this intriguing story was, simply, not explored nearly as much as I would have liked, especially since it really seemed to get more interesting than ever before just before the (main) story abruptly ended. Overall, Monument Valley suffers from one small problem: time; now, if only this one small problem didn’t create a small domino effect in its path, but, alas, not all smartphone games can be perfect… or can they?
8/10- Although I had never seen myself making a smartphone game review, here I am, showing that not only am I succumbing to good graphics (I’m kidding, of course), but that Monument Valley is something truly special as well.