Ustwo | Netflix subscription required
- Beautiful Escher painting-like puzzles
- Free on a Netflix subscription
- Slightly shallow and basic
It’s been a long seven year wait for the sequel to two of the biggest mainstream crossovers in App Store history. If you needed a sign of how things have changed since 2017, consider the fact that Monument Valley 3 has had to launch as a ‘free’ perk for Netflix subscribers rather than a standalone premium experience.
New streaming world order aside, this is deeply familiar stuff. You tap to guide a little bobble-headed person through a series of confounding isometric mazes, directly twisting, raising, and otherwise manipulating the levels around them.
More perspective-warping shenanigans
The solutions meld a 3D world with a 2D perspective, resulting in physics-defying traversals to the ceiling or walls. All of this is rendered in beautiful swathes of bold colour.
The trouble is, we’ve played this all before – not just in the preceding games, but in all the brilliant (and not so brilliant) artsy puzzlers that cropped up in their wake.
There’s a new sailing feature, but it’s pretty basic
Developer Ustwo has attempted to mix the formula up somewhat with new themes – an origami section particularly stood out – and new traversal sections involving a boat, following the dramatic climate event at the centre of this drowned world.
But none of these new elements seem to go all that deep or stick around for very long. The game barely starts to explore a new look, hook or mechanic before embarking on the next mini-episode. It feels like you’re barely skimming across this pristine lake of a game.
The best new ideas are underexploited
There’s no faulting the developer’s ability to render a stunning world, with an accompanying atmospheric soundtrack that begs you to put your AirPods on and zone out. But the puzzles themselves feel simpler and downright easier than ever, leaving the experience feeling strangely hollow.
Perhaps that’s just us. Perhaps there are only so many playable Escher drawings a person can take in a decade. All we know is that playing Monument Valley 3 left us feeling somewhat cold and unmoved, its deeply beautiful but only lightly interactive gameplay vignettes amounting to a weirdly inert experience.
The games is as strikingly beautiful as ever
It seems Ustwo will be adding to the game with future updates, so there’s every chance it’ll flourish into something more fulfilling. As first impressions go, though, it feels more than a little lightweight.
Of course, if this is your first experience with Monument Valley, and you’re already a Netflix subscriber, by all means give it a try. You’ll find much more where that came from, so long as you’re willing to pay up front in order to play the old hits.