5.1 MONUMENT VALLEY (2014

CHAPTER 5 – CASE STUDY: VIDEO GAME ANALYSES. REPRESENTATION, EXPERIENCE DESING AND INTERACTION TOOLS

5.1 MONUMENT VALLEY (2014)

Figure 103 Screenshots from Monument valley video game

Monument Valley (by USTWO and main game designer Ken Wong) is a virtual space adventure told

through the eyes of Princess Ida. The virtual realm is a surreal architecture space that relies on visual

deception with bizarre landscapes built of spiralling steps and mysterious thresholds and illusion inspired

by Escher’s artworks. While leading the avatar around the floating terrain and blocking platforms where

geometrical rules are absent, the avatar moves and interacts with items in space, encountering

challenges and obstacles in a completely immersive experience. Princess must create various building

configurations in front of fragmented ruins that obstruct her path to continue her journey. While walking

through the objects, the protagonist keeps gazing at doors, buttons, and handles that can be twisted to

flip and modify mechanisms that change the arrangement of the objects and open new passageways.

Monument Valley is a puzzle game in which you must navigate Ida around the virtual world in search of

her lost crown by twisting and pulling geometrically impossible things. Compared to other games where

architecture is in background, here architecture and space take the center of the game. The game is all

the experience of traveling through monuments.

The player's perspective can be rotated, moved in and out, and zoomed in, but the camera perspective

does not change. It was vital to offer a certain amount of illusion in this type of game, thus designers

employed isometric perspective representation. In addition, the game offers other presences in higher

levels, which the protagonist must avoid as they begin to weep as if insane.

Representation

The visual style of the game is minimalist abstract stylized. Objects are inspired in different architecture

styles, starting from Arabic, Moroccan architecture, Japanese prints, to Escher drawings, to Scottish

medieval fortresses, Indian temples, Islamic minarets, and domes, etc, and reflect some detail patterns.

Each level has its own theme, his storyline, and different artwork with a different colour palette, in order

to challenge the player to accomplish different levels.

Design experience

The game is about princess Ida moving swiftly from place to place, through mazes of optical illusions and

impossible objects while manipulating the world around her to find her lost crown. The narrative is

intricate, and categorized as an open-ended branching model. It suggests an enacted story and an

absolutely beautiful space exploration, urged by the challenge to find the way out. Ida’s character is memorable. In fact, since the beginning the designer used the world explore instead of Start to start the

adventure. The story is made up of challenges like swiping a finger to spin sidewalks or swiping a swipe

to lower and elevate structures. By flipping the earth upside down, we were able to quickly capture

enemies that were blocking our route. Because each level is developed in a completely different mood

and setting, they are all memorable.

Design interaction

The player in each level experiences have different types of interaction because the manipulative tools

change and he has always to try and figure out the way objects can be transformed, platforms can

rotate. As the game proceeds, the complexity rises, but with each new challenge comes a new and

equally speechless way in which the universe moves or can be altered by the player. Player starts to

reposition entire stairways and passageways, as well as spin entire buildings, for walkways to intersect

due to shifting viewpoints. Interactivity is based on exploration and manipulation of the environment as

part of the game challenge to proceed in the space exploration and save the princess. Player does not

have instruction, but learn to interact by himself progressing the game. In addition, other elements

which he discovers gradually are hidden in order to surprise and delight him. The virtual space is

visualized in a 30-degree isometric perspective because the optical illusion that the bridges or roads

create is better perceived by the player. Player navigates space in first-person.