M.C. Escher would have played this...

A white, fragile little form is gingerly stepping through another door and I'm not sure where it's going to emerge... another long staircase? Perhaps I'll need to press a button, or find a cube to press a button... Maybe I'll be able to get my hat back from one of these accursed black crows... or... I may even have reached one of the big-hatted mystics at the end of a puzzle, who give me a sense that I'm achieving something as I progress through all these confining yet physics-bending buildings...

Check out the artist M.C. Escher here (wikipedia) because he would have loved playing Monument Valley, a neat, atmospheric puzzler in the vein of Journey and Flower etc... 

You've got to 'take your hat off' though to Ustwo Games. It must have been tricky to create, that's for sure, because it's tricky to play. But tricky is the name of the game and fortunately you'll never find yourself getting stuck for too long. The puzzles have been - thankfully - designed with great care and mastery to keep the balance and your humble figure never too far away from the next 'pat on the back' for progressing. Only in a few places did I have to return afresh to 'confront' a level, and if this game had been too confrontational, it would have failed.

The levels open up in inventive and unexpected ways that pay great homage to Escher and the beauty of design itself. They also reminded me a little of that menacing cube from the Hellraiser films from Clive Barker. An absorbing atmosphere is maintained through an eerie, mysterious backtrack and the light, magical sound effects.

The words 'beautiful', 'tidy' or 'neat': they don't sound that unique or alluring but here they all work consistently - and spookily - in tandem through the just-adequate quantity of intriguing puzzles. The easy playability also recalls top, classic platform games such as Prince of Persia (the original first and second 2D games) and the illusion of complexity is traversed with such simplicity on a touch device. Yes... it's all very neat. Another refreshing thing is that you don't keep dying and re-starting like so many games. You either progress, or you give up, and no-one likes a quitter, especially not inside such a beautiful, puzzling puzzle-land.

The spirituality of the storyline doesn't amount to a whole lot, but it adds a bit of mystery and enables us to feel the progression and the fact that our minds are becoming accustomed to the inherent trickery of it all by our very solving of it. The odd nature-touches are very effective though after so many blocks and squares.

And... don't forget the add-on pack of further 8 puzzles called 'Forgotten Shores' which does a good job of extending the dynamics, adding water, cliffs, flying etc... It ends up making us feel the potential of this type of game and that many more intricate puzzles could be made, enticing us with new mixes of graphical elements and physics-defying mental chocolate. 

A Virtual Reality version I'm sure would add a whole new perspective... and realism! You'd feel like you were certainly as trapped as this little figure, and the pressure to think and escape would be very real...