Although they were a huge hit well over a decade ago, it’s been a long time since Monument Valley 1 and 2 impressed the masses with their gorgeous visuals and brain teasing environments. Well last year the unimaginable happened, and Monument Valley 3 released – albeit with a twist. While the first two games cost a small amount to own and keep forever on smartphones, the only way to play Monument Valley 3 was with a Netflix subscription. Now though you can officially own and keep this lovely sequel, and I decided to finish my collection on the Switch 2.
As with the first two games, Monument Valley 3 features a pretty minimalist narrative that still manages to be moving. This time the game follows Noor, a young apprentice lighthouse keeper who keeps the world safe by ensuring the guiding light is always shining brightly. When the light starts to fade a quest for a new source of power begins, as the charming cast you’ve just met begin to struggle on the waves. While maybe not quite as powerful as the parental message of Monument Valley 2, it’s an engaging thread that keeps you motivated to keep solving those puzzles.
Just in case this is your first time playing a Monument Valley game, let’s talk about how playing it actually works. Each stage is essentially a screen of various paths that you’ll need to walk across to reach a particular door or goal, but you’ll need to use perspective to ensure you can make that journey. Each stage of Monument Valley 3 is basically an M.C. Escher painting, with paths that curve so you’re walking on ceilings and all sorts of other mind bending elements. Because getting around is as easy as moving your pointer to a reachable surface and pressing B it doesn’t take long to get your head around where you can and can’t walk, but that’s only the tip of the Escher.
After a couple of simple stages that set the stage, all the trickier elements like levers that’ll flip parts of the stage around will start to make an appearance. These movable elements function exactly the same way they did in the first two games, and require you to think about how the changes in perspective they bring will enable you to proceed on your oh so important journey.
I must admit after playing the first two games in this series earlier this year, I was a little disappointed with the earlier stages of this threequel and how basic they were. The later stages do manage to make up for that though, with that exceptional creativity Monument Valley is known for. One stage blends free flowing climbable plants with the more rigid man-made structures in a really clever way, another features two towers that are the inverse of each other that really blew my mind. It’s a shame it takes a while to hit these heights, but once you reach that summit it’s hard to be too upset.
There is one other completely new mechanic in Monument Valley 3, and that’s the boat you can sail around in. For the first time in series history this allows you to move in any direction and control your motion directly with the analogue stick, and allows you to experience the gorgeous world from a whole new perspective. I wish that the boat had been used a little more in the more puzzling side of the game though, just because it’s so different to anything else the series has to offer.
I had a great time playing through Monument Valley 3, but I must admit I do think it’s the weakest entry in the trilogy of games. A lot of this is down to the pacing, which feels slower than ever. Now obviously I don’t expect explosions and chase scenes in my puzzle games, but I don’t want to have to slowly watch a flower bloom for thirty seconds for a third time. You also constantly go back to a sort of hub island, each time with lengthy animations proceeding and more characters to chat to. I enjoy looking at this game’s gorgeous world, but more than ever Monument Valley 3 seems to demand it whether you want to or not.
I also think the puzzles themselves are way easier this time around, with no single screen of the game taking me more than a minute or two to work out the solution for. Now it’s really been a series about nightmarishly hard problem solving, but the severe lack of difficulty made the game much less compelling. Hopefully the extra free levels that release later on will help with this somewhat though, alongside giving everyone a reason to keep the game installed.
When playing on Switch it’s worth bearing in mind that you’ll have to deal with the control issues that the bundle of 1 and 2 also had earlier this year. With no touch support you’ll have to move a cursor around to navigate the stages, and it’s a much less elegant way to get around. It’s not a game ruining issue or anything, but it’s an annoyance that unfortunately continues in this new entry.
Monument Valley 3 is a gorgeous puzzle game with some seriously clever ideas, but I couldn’t help but keep comparing it to its more impressive predecessors. In its own right though it’s still well worth playing, and with more levels coming soon it’ll only get better.
