This charming video game hides a secret: you can't solve its puzzles unless you are willing to let go of your preconceptions.
In multiple levels and three different titles (Monument Valley, Forgotten Shores, and Ida's Dream), you guide the silent princess on her path through the various mazes and walkways. Mystical music and airy scenarios surround her quest for the right spot to return her stolen loot. Yes, the silent princess in her conical white hat is trying to return lost "sacred geometries" to their monuments.
Princess Ida is not the only one who treads these convoluted passages. A turbaned mystic waits to chide her for her theft, and warn her that other thieves will cross her road ahead. And flocks of bullying crows block her way; it will take a clever path-finder to outwit them and reach her goal.
To my delight, the eye rules in this interesting puzzle game. You can create a new way ahead simply by changing your perspective. Music and occasional sound effects are pleasant, but you don't miss any clues by playing the game on mute. And the princess is so obedient! I sent her walking back and forth for 10 minutes at a stretch, climbing ladders and stairs, as I tried to spot the next legitimate move for the Nocturne maze. She wasn't even breathing hard!
The folks at USTWO have done an amazing job of creating multiple mobile puzzles that are difficult, but not ultimately unsolvable. Each time I thought I had walked Ida and her buddies into a permanent dead-end, the way opened up at last for her to move onward.
And the final wonderful thing about the three Monument Valley games? All of them were free—really truly free—for my Kindle Fire tablet.
Second Review: Obduction by Cyan: 5 Stars Despite Glitches and Slow Loads
After some years away, returning to your parents' home as an adult, you may find the home folks frustrating, sometimes infuriating, yet still endearing. For those of us who fell into the worlds of Myst and Riven—and never quite returned—Obduction's single-player theme of landing alone in a world filled with puzzles to solve before you can proceed feels like that.
I learned, playing Myst, to question everything, take notes, draw and revise maps, write down my questions—and any answers that I uncovered. That experience served me well in Obduction. The artwork for all these worlds is stunning, even dialed back to allow for speedier play, so it isn't hard to keep looking around as I proceed. New for this interface, though, is an optional clue that makes items I can interact with gleam slightly as I pass them. Otherwise, my only clue is an altered cursor (and that only appears if the cursor is unlocked.)
Music and other sounds also supply sensory clues. The well-managed paths through the scenery twist and turn confusingly; you must pay attention to your shadow (if you have it turned on; this is also optional) and the shadows cast by other objects to keep yourself oriented in the landscape. Few straight lines exist, but plenty of outlooks and views provide a way to acquire a broader picture of the environment.
I started with a small window to reduce image load times, but had to abandon that for a full screen because many of the clues to solve the mystery arrive as notes or diagrams that were simply unreadable in my reduced window size. Hopping out of the game window by calling Task Manager to adjust the window size frequently left parts of the "text" images unrenderable, black. (Though this may have been due to proportion changes; the proportional sizing tool doesn't work1 to resize the window while the game is loading or running.)
And load times are ridiculously long. Several glittery "dissolve" effects take five to ten minutes to compete2 on my system. There are distracting "drops" as I move through the world of Hunrath, as bits of the "scenery" are not rendered at the same time. Riding the mine car makes these appear more frequently, even though the car's speed seems unrelated to the controls—it rather seems to be throttled down by the loading time for scenery you are passing.
Riding the car is still simpler than progressing through the landscape using point-and-click. You can lock and unlock the cursor at will with a right-click, but every few moves, the unlocked cursor will suddenly convert from a straight-on cursor to a turn, or lock on its own to match mouse movements to the center of the screen. Lag times between command and response can make it hard to guide things with the mouse.3 When all movement is slowed by image loading, that adds to player frustration.
Yet discovering anything still is thrilling: Wow! I can throw a track switch without getting out of the cart! Hey—I can step through this opening even though I see no will-o-the-wisp guide! You feel it the first time you step through a membrane or figure out a cryptic clue and get access to a heretofore locked room.
Complex, rich in detail, frustrating and rewarding by turns, the obsession it invokes makes it deserve every one of my five stars. I'll keep playing Obduction until I unlock the final achievement, connect the final dots (or cables), and solve the last puzzle. After all, I've only worked my way through the simplest layer of the game so far—and all it took was 72 hours of game play.
Liner Notes:
- I fell back on an old-school graphic-design trick to size my window proportionately: you lay a straight-edge diagonally from the lower-left to the upper-right corner of the window—on the monitor—then guide the resize tool from one of those corners along that "line."
- I learned to take my Kindle along to read while waiting for loads and dissolves to complete. I read 75% of one book just waiting for them to finish!
- Scenery and machinery are good matches to real-world equivalents, so some clues come from your own life experience with the world. (Priming a gas-fueled generator, for example, or maneuvering equipment with an industrial joystick.)
- My letter-sized notebook has 46 filled pages of notes and sketches so far. I may need two notebooks before I'm done.
Initial Review: OBDUCTION from Cyan
After a bit of frustration, I finally found settings that would let me play this new game from Cyan. The clue was opening the Task Manager to see why I kept "marching in place" as I went through the game intro: at the general, graphics and control settings I began with, CPU performance was hitting a wall.
So I dropped resolution, cranked down mouse sensitivity, turned off player shadow, cursor lock and V-sync, and set the game up to run in a window rather than full screen. It still took some adjustments to the size of the window, but eventually I found a combination that let me get past the intro and into the game proper.
Once there—oh, yes! This was the excellent mood-setting with graphics, music, and sense of drama that pulled me into the worlds of Myst so many years ago. You are exploring a broken world, one that seems composed of pieces dropped into a barren landscape. Each step brings questions: Why are there trees in a cavern, whose trunks end against a rocky roof? Why are there chunks of rock floating in the sky? What is the huge globe that hangs overhead—a moon? If so, it is too close. And why do some rocks seem to flicker with red energy, while others are dead stone?
You wander, gathering clues from the landscape, interacting where possible with the items you encounter, following the blue will-o'-wisps through sun-drenched sand and rocky canyons. Here's a path to follow; there's a train track that may lead somewhere. In the distance you see a neat house, a water tank, a metal tower.
That looks like a mine; yes, here is an adit choked with fallen rock. There is an open mine entrance, but it looks too dark to explore just yet. Doom-laden music sounds at some places; in others, you hear footsteps or clanks and thuds that seem human-caused. Yet these places are empty, except for you yourself.
And everywhere, rocks, strange arching upthrusts of blue and red against the sky, with the ominous floating islands above them. Doors that are locked. Mechanisms that don't respond. Perspectives that show paths and walkways you cannot reach—yet.
Play on, because exploration and the thrill of discovery are your reward. Take chances. Step where the wisp guides you, however frail the road appears, because there is a way to solve the puzzle.
Of course, if my memory of Myst is any guide, solving one puzzle will only confront you with the next.
