The announcement of the sequel to the masterpiece puzzle Monument Valley 2 came as a surprise to many attendees of the WWDC 2017 developer conference opening presentation. The original version of Monument Valley from Stow Games, which was released in 2014, has received many awards for its elegant gameplay and great design and unexpected the release of the second piece of the puzzle has truly become an event in the mobile gaming industry.
Unlike the original game, where the only heroine was Princess Ida, in MV2 two characters await us – a woman named Ro and her little daughter. And if at first the girl simply follows her mother, repeating her movements, then later she becomes more independent.
At first, the sequel repeats the ideas of the original Monument Valley – in order to bring the heroine to the end of the level, you had to move, rotate and turn parts of high-rise buildings, but as you progress, the game offers more complex ways of interaction, for example, trees that begin to grow when on they are exposed to sunlight, or the previously mentioned two characters, which must be controlled at the same time. As in the first game, the riddles in Monument Valley 2 are not particularly difficult, but they still evoke a sense of excitement.
As in the original, the soundtrack and visuals are up to par, creating a deep, logical and veiled world on the iPhone screen.
Perhaps one of the main differences between Monument Valley 2 is its pronounced emphasis on the plot and characters. The developers brought to the fore the relationship between Ro and her daughter and the story of the latter’s growing up.
Monument Valley 2 includes everything you would expect from a sequel to a great game. It expands on the ideas of its predecessor, adding an emotional dimension that was lacking in the original Monument Valley. Despite the relatively simple puzzles and short duration, fans of the original MV and those new to the game will surely appreciate it.
A small team of indie developers stow revolutionized the world of mobile games in 2013 with the release of a legendary hit called Monument Valley. This game became a kind of breakthrough: no one had imagined the gameplay like that, no one bothered so much with the appearance, no one had yet tore the templates. Everyone fell in love with Monument Valley,
including Apple – in 2014 they awarded the game the Apple Design Award, and then actively used its videos and screenshots at the presentation of their devices. For a year and a half, the game was downloaded 26 million times (and its cost is $ 3.99), which, in our subjective opinion, is a pretty good result.
What is the Monument Valley phenomenon? She is “different”, completely different from any other adventure games of that time. The most important thing in it is the incredible visual component, the developers were inspired by the work of Escher, and the concept art itself was developed by Ken Wong for almost a year. Perhaps the angular display of the game world is not a novelty, but no one has ever used impossible figures and optical illusions as a direct participant in the game process so elegantly.
We play as Princess Ida – the main protagonist, who travels through the country of the disappeared people who worshiped “sacred geometry”. The developers devoted too much time and effort to rendering and design, which probably did not have enough time for an understandable storyline. Otherwise,
it is impossible to explain why everything is so confusing here – who is Ida, why did she come here, where did this very civilization go, and what kind of ritual occurs at the end of each successful passage? Cryptic transitions and texts confuse rather than explain what is happening on the screen, and this is one of the big drawbacks in the game.
Each level represents one or more locations that can move in different directions, with some parts of the locations also active. Our task is to help Ida go through the maze, but the path will not be the most obvious, and just here you will have to use the “sacred geometry” – the angular view of the game allows you to look at the parallelepiped from the edge,
and thus different shapes can be created. For example, the Penrose triangle, mistakenly called the Escher triangle, in which all three sides are at right angles. We need to rotate the location or elements of the location so as to create a path for Ida, and sometimes we have to connect elements that are at different levels and distances from each other – thanks to the created “projections” and “optical illusion”, the most unobvious paths are laid.
The movement of the protagonist around the location is based on tapas, Ida also knows how to go up and down stairs. Actually, this is the whole gameplay – you need to complete the level with the help of optical illusions, which are quite obvious in order to linger somewhere. As practice shows (and gusto’s beta testing report), the game lasts only about 90 minutes, and this is the second disadvantage of Monument Valley – it seemed too short to many.
Naturally, the success of the first part inspired the developers to create a sequel – Monument Valley 2 was released in 2017. The gameplay has not changed much, it is still based on building impossible geometric shapes and using optical illusions. True, this time the plot did not become clearer either. In the second part we will play as Ro (note that this is not Ida) and her “child”,
who repeats all the actions after her, and only Ro will be controlled. Subsequently, there will be levels in which Ro and her daughter are on opposite sides of the location, which brings more variety to the game. So, they still travel through the ruins of a civilization that revered “sacred geometry”, and Ro sometimes (between levels) meets with spirits who give some hints and adjustments. Subsequently, the paths of Ro and her daughter diverge – the child grows up, independently explores the ancient world and then again meets his mother, as well as the spirits of other “explorers”, among whom Ida can be found.
