Well, this is it - this might be the peak of smartphone gaming. Monument Valley is an absolutely beautiful mobile game that focuses on challenging the player through mazes and optical illusions to learn more of their own story and purpose. The use of storytelling as well as the phone’s touch screen and general formatting results in Monument Valley being one of the best in the smartphone gaming library. The player works with the puzzles they’re given through taps and contorting the map to their advantage, all to get from point A to point B. The story is simple but still emotional enough to create a reaction.

It’s hard to critique the game, as the flaws it has don’t really rely on the game itself, rather the limitations that being on mobile hinders a game, even though this is the format they chose when designing it. The issues Monument Valley runs into are its short playtime and lack of replayability, with me finishing the game in about 1-2 hours. Since it is a phone game, I imagine you’re supposed to only play it in short bursts, but in my case, I played it in its entirety while on a long plane ride - so that’s more on me than the game itself, honestly.

Monument Valley is an absolute must-play for those looking for the “best of the best” in phone games, and is a gorgeous trip from start to finish. It feels a little odd rating it so high for being so short and putting it at the same score as some pretty large epics in gaming, but when rating I like to compare games to their peers which in this case falls into mobile gaming. The real question now is will I find a phone game worthy of being 5/5… or more so am I ready to admit that the original Plants vs Zombies might be exactly that lol. Well, we’ll see - in the mean time, why not entertain yourself with one of the prettiest games to ever grace the App Store.

4.5/5