Monument Valley

Review Platform: Android

Also available on iOS and Windows Phone.

Monument Valley is a cross between a puzzle game and an art project. The game throws you into this wonderful and colourful world filled with large towers, weird geometric objects and crow people. In this game you are a princess called Ida and you have to traverse monumental structures to unravel the mystery and history of the place. The game is all about optical illusions, playing tricks with your vision. You'll walk upside-down, go into loop-de-loops, and make buildings behave in ways they shouldn't. While playing, you'll be fascinated by all the structures that are rotating and tumbling to form new paths. The minimalistic design using sharp geometric shapes and solid colours looks so good that they added their own in-game screenshot button.

The game has ten levels, each level harder than the last, but overall the game isn't that difficult and that's one of the criticisms it faced. Another criticism is the short playtime; all the levels can be finished in about ninety minutes, an hour if you're determined. In my opinion, this game has a simple goal, to engross you in the journey no matter how short it is and it does it successfully.

The gameplay mechanics are simple, it's just about interacting with switches and levers, so it's quite casual and anyone can play it. The soundtrack consists of ambient noises which goes nicely with the atmosphere. Apart from the ten levels, Ustwo, the developers, released an expansion which adds eight new levels. The game got multiple awards and critical acclaim for how visually stunning and captivating it is and once you start playing you'll understand why.