Unfurling the creative details hidden within Monument Valley 3

The south London-based team set about exploring how Monument Valley 3 (MV3) could set itself apart from its predecessors and peers, across everything from art and puzzle design to narrative and soundtrack. Lead artist Lili Ibrahim began by digging through the previous games’ archives, and found that one statement kept coming up: “In Monument Valley, every screen is a piece of art.” At first, that legacy of visual excellence freaked her out, she tells It’s Nice That. But then, “it was actually incredibly liberating and powerful for me to be able to wield that sword, as one of the pillars of the IP.” A graduate of illustration and animation at Kingston University, with an established career working across the spectrum of gaming, Lili now found herself in the ideal scenario – a game project where art was as important as mechanics, and never compromised. “If [a puzzle] wasn’t a beautiful work of art, I could push it back and say, it’s not ready.”

Armed with this confidence and agency, Lili started researching and concepting the visual world of MV3. She drew inspiration from contemporary editorial and poster design, where she found a lot of visual “conflict and contrast” in the popularity of mixed media approaches. “I really love it, this trend of a slight ugliness and juxtaposition, cut-out shapes against 3D objects, and destructive treatment of imagery.” Even at this very early stage in development, her research formed the basis of the final game’s landscape: to explore city versus nature. Whereas the previous games are known for their urban architectural environments, Lili considered “what could it mean to bring nature into that world?” She found further inspiration in Matisse’s cut-outs, and started experimenting by literally drawing, painting and pasting 2D plant shapes over the top of existing Monument Valley screenshots. “I was really entertained by that visual conflict, and felt there was a dynamic that could feel exciting, in-game.” As the game developed, when others felt those natural forms should become 3D to fit more neatly into the design, Lili stuck to her idea. “It’s city versus nature. They need to be like different worlds. We need to collide them in a way that feels uncomfortable.” So in the final game, the familiar axonometric architecture of MV has been infiltrated by 2D plant shapes: flower stems twist through structures, plant silhouettes frame scenery, and water laps against flat, cut-outs of lilypads and trees – all giving the game a compelling new feel.

“We were trying to see how much we could stretch what’s expected from the visuals,” explains game director Jennifer Estaris. “In MV1 and 2, architecture was one of the main characters, so in MV3, we wanted to make nature one of the main characters.” The boat allows for open area sailing, so in some parts of the game you’re no longer restrained to the linear paths, you can hop on a boat and explore the water. This was partly inspired by both Lili and Jennifer’s backgrounds living in Scandinavian cities built on and around water – one of many instances where the people behind this game have infused it with their life experiences and passions.

Jennifer recalls how the team was constantly thinking “where can we break free?” Another instance is the wheat field level, where players can run around in an open environment, “carefree and not stuck to the geometry”, she adds. Lili remembers artworking the wheat field level as a visual respite from the more complex structures in the game. “I wanted to have that flat, plain colour feel across the whole screen, as freedom from the rigid architectural stuff.”

However, for the game’s designers, going ‘off-grid’ presented plenty of challenges. Monument Valley’s USP is ‘impossible’ puzzles, designed through the connection of straight lines, explains lead designer Emily Brown – which natural forms simply don’t have. “As soon as you introduce twists and curves, new things are possible, but others are limited.”

Another of the most experimental and striking stages in the game is the origami level. Here, everything on screen suddenly transforms into a flat artboard with sumptuous Risograph textures, and players navigate the puzzle by exploding and constructing architectural drawings that move seamlessly between 2D and 3D. It’s an uncanny experience, not to mention a mind-bending puzzle to decipher, and the way colour is used in the changing forms is hypnotic. The idea came from a programmer (apparently ideas for all the levels and puzzles came from across the departments, with UsTwo wanting to represent all the diverse voices on its team), and Lili was daunted by the idea at first. “I was like, how am I going to make this look beautiful? It’s so intricate, there’s no real silhouette to this language.” In the end, she tasked senior artist Holly Pickering to take on the challenge, and the result is truly mesmerising.

As for the all-important architecture itself, Lili looked to her own heritage for inspiration to give MV3’s urban landscape a new aesthetic. The first two games, Lili says, had building designs with influences in South Asian, Arabic and some European architecture, but it was important to her that South East Asia was represented in MV3. “When I interviewed here, I made a whole moodboard of South East Asian architecture, object design, trinkets, candles, boxes, that had recognisable silhouettes for that part of the world, which I wanted to bring to Monument Valley. It was a challenge, because it’s quite detailed, and the MV world is minimalist, but I was keen to pull it off.” Emily describes the overall aesthetic as “softer” and says that where MV 1 and 2 were all “straight lines, angles and towers, somewhat masculine… with Lili, Jennifer and myself, we brought a more feminine feel, curves in the geometry, plant shapes, that break the rules of what the game was before.”

Lili also found inspiration in art for some of the puzzle mechanics. She refers to one particularly resonant moment, seeing Cornelia Parker’s exploded shed, Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View in an exhibition during the game’s development stages, and thinking “this is what I want to do right now. I just want to pull apart these tall, solid structures. If we’re going to talk about city versus nature, let’s deconstruct the city, find a way to break it all apart.” She went to work the next day and drew a temple structure inspired by the Temple of Literature in Hanoi, then slowly took it apart. “I went to Emily and was like, ‘we need to make puzzles like this”.