We spoke to Lea Schönfelder, a game designer on Monument Valley 2, about the differences between games and experiences, the difficulty of designing something easy, and how limits foster elegant design.
Lea Schönfelder, game designer for Monument Valley 2, discusses her transition from independent projects to ustwo games and shares insights on creating elegant, accessible mobile experiences that prioritize 'wow' moments over traditional gaming challenges.
Ken Wong, lead designer and illusory art wizard of Monument Valley (2014), is creating a brand new world: not fantastic architecture this time, but three desks in Melbourne, Australia. He’s starting an independent studio called Mountains along with producer Kamina Vincent and programmer Sam Crisp, a
Monument Valley (2014) and Lego. It just feels right, doesn’t it? Maybe it’s that the puzzle game’s isometric perspective gives us the privileged view of god games, in which we build and destroy. Or perhaps more simply it’s the attention the game draws towards it brightly colored geometric mazes, ea
Living in the Bay Area, Land’s End for me is the overly windy cliffside overlooking the chilly, probably densely-polluted San Francisco bay. For critically acclaimed Monument Valley creator Ustwo Games, Land’s End is something else entirely—a quiet, meditative VR game that was released today. In its
Pavilion doesn’t explain itself. The kind souls at Visiontrick Media have left that to scribes and, as was announced today, owners of PC, Mac, and Linux computers by the end of the year. Let’s give it a try, shall we? (The new trailer below should help.) Pavilion is a puzzle. What isn’t? As was prev
What’s the difference between art and architecture? Here’s Archdaily’s Vanessa Quirk with a run of the mill definition: Art is a form of self-expression with absolutely no responsibility to anyone or anything. Architecture can be a piece of art, but it must be responsible to people and its context.
Ghosts of Memories is an upcoming iOS and Android game set in a mystical, isometric world of impossible architecture. While the game it resembles most, Monument Valley, presented its puzzles as compact structures to be rotated, explored, and manipulated, Ghost of Memories spreads its puzzles out acr
Anyone who played Monument Valley remembers the feeling of wellbeing that washed over them as they discovered the solution to each puzzle. It’s that sense that everything had its proper place; that things fit together and work in harmony. The world, when you manage to see it from the right perspecti
Gravity is the biggest downer in architecture and urban planning, so why not just do away with it? This, admittedly, is not advice that professionals should heed. But what if you just want to have a little bit of fun designing a structure that has no practical use? For moments like that, there’s Osk
If you thought Monument Valley was a little too not-first-person, have I got a game for you. The utterly batshit Tri takes that game’s perspective-exploding non-reality and lets you run through it, creating triangles (get it) to move from platform to dreamlike platform. If you want to see it in acti
Navigating the impossibly constructed catwalks and minarets in Monument Valley worked so seamlessly that I never stopped to ask, “How did they do this?” This despite the fact the Escher-esque game broke the rules of geometry and rational thought and space. However, pulling off a Penrose triangle tha
We don’t normally post about fan art, but when that fan art is for the quaint and lovely M.C. Escher-esque Monument Valley, we’ll make an exception, because beauty yields beauty, it appears. That such a small and unpublicized game has inspired a group of dedicated artists on Tumblr is pretty amazing
