Monument Valley 3 Maintains The Series’ Charm, But Could Use A New Perspective

By Elijah Gonzalez | July 21, 2025 | 7:01pm

Video Games Reviews monument valley 3

Monument Valley 3 Maintains The Series’ Charm, But Could Use A New Perspective

The original Monument Valley made quite a splash when it was released in 2014, one of a handful of mobile games that broke through to mainstream gaming discourse thanks to its striking visuals and puzzles that made it feel like a playable M. C. Escher illustration. It reached around 30 million downloads, prompting a sequel that upped its level design even further.

Unfortunately, the third game, Monument Valley 3, didn’t quite have the same cultural impact. However, this muted response had less to do with the game itself than with where it was released: it was only available through Netflix Games, a section of the streaming service that’s apparently engaged with by less than 1% of subscribers. You couldn’t buy it directly from digital storefronts and had to access it through the Netflix app.

Thankfully, that Netflix Games exclusivity is coming to an end, as Monument Valley 3 is releasing on consoles and PC this week. Its arrival is welcome news because while this follow-up can’t quite conjure the same magic that the original game did more than a decade ago, it still delivers clever optical illusions that will have you looking at problems from different angles.

Taking place in a similarly abstract world to its predecessors, we follow a young girl named Noor. She is an apprentice at the Lighthouse, a beacon that ensures travelers don’t get lost in a sea of impossible-to-navigate illusions. Her mentor is sure to regularly remind her of the gravity of this responsibility, until one day, the weight of this task becomes all too apparent. When Noor is forced to take up the mantle of her teacher earlier than expected, she embarks on a journey to repair the Lighthouse and reunite the sailors who have been scattered across the seas.

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These initial plot points are easier to lay out than ever because, unlike the cryptic storytelling of the first two games, this one is much more direct and explicit. It’s a change that has some occasional benefits, like when learn the backstory of a free spirit known as The Nomad, but mostly robs this backdrop of some of its ambiguity, leaving us with a relatively straightforward coming-of-age narrative.

Monument Valley 3 impossible object

Thankfully, this world itself and its challenges remain as odd and unexplainable as ever, a maze of impossible objects that balance a visual wow-factor with trials that force you to at least marginally process what you’re seeing. For those who haven’t played these games, the goal is to maneuver your character from a start point to the exit, manipulating strange architecture by shifting specific pieces and by spinning the camera to one of four isometric angles—changing these camera angles alters how you’re viewing these optical illusions, creating pathways that didn’t exist before in the process.

Manipulating these isometrically presented objects is akin to shifting around the pieces of a physical puzzle box as you slide parts and rotate handwheels, except if that puzzle box didn’t obey the laws of Euclidean space. There’s also very much a progression here, where the earlier levels mostly serve to showcase the mind-bending optical illusions on display before gradually becoming more challenging over time. At first, it’s like you’re manipulating the pieces of a clever sculpture that naturally reveals itself—basically, these first few levels don’t require a lot of brainpower, but mostly make up for it with presentation.

A calling card of the Monument Valley series is that almost every moment looks like it could be a stand-alone work of art, and between the tasteful color palettes and soft, picturesque unreality of these settings, the third game pulls this off once again. Even as the more explicit storytelling detracts from some of the enigmatic vibe, there is still an appropriate air of mystery thanks to strange sights and the ambient hum of the soundtrack. There are even quite a few aesthetic shake-ups, best defined by an area where it feels like you’ve stumbled into a different art style full of chromatic aberration and off-kilter rainbows, a pivot that’s also expressed in gameplay.

Because, as the experience goes on, there’s thankfully an escalation around these puzzles as well, even if they don’t go quite as far as they should until the very end. For instance, in the previously mentioned glitchy backdrop, it ditches the smooth curves of its impossible objects for something more jagged, pathways folding and unfolding like origami as you’re forced to work out new ways of getting from Point A to B. Another new addition is that from time to time, you’ll leave the isometric floating objects you’re used to navigating to sail on open water. With the help of your trusty, sentient boat, you’ll move between interconnected puzzles.

Still, while these elements distinguish this sequel from its predecessors, much of the novelty that came from moving through Penrose stairs and impossible cubes has worn off in the years since the first game. And while there are occasional subversions, like the previously mentioned polychromatic art style, this is more the exception than the norm.

If there’s another big gameplay-related flaw beyond overfamiliarity, it’s that playing on a controller for this console port made me miss the original control scheme. This series was designed with mobile in mind, as embodied by the gratifying, tactile feel of interacting with this world via a touchscreen. You would use your fingers to move pieces and twist objects, like messing with a physical, wooden puzzle box, something completely lost when manipulating these same doohickies with a joystick and buttons.

While the console port does about as good a job as it can adapting all this to a controller (you move a cursor around to represent where your finger would have been pointing on a touch screen), it’s a slower and less elegant approach. Yes, it’s nice to see the game’s beautiful visuals on a bigger screen with a wider aspect ratio, but the lack of touch controls, even on the Switch port, means that the original mobile version that’s trapped on Netflix Games still has its own significant upsides.

And if there’s another flaw here in this jump between platforms, it’s that the game remains as brief as its predecessors, while now coming with a larger $20 price point. While the App Store and its incredibly cheap prices have unfairly devalued games that don’t use microtransactions, it’s a little odd to think that the game’s predecessors were so much cheaper because they were available on a different platform, one that we can’t directly purchase this title on. Perhaps this wouldn’t feel like such a problem if the game’s short two-hour runtime ended on a more satisfying and conclusive note.

Instead of hitting credits after completing the main storyline, you immediately transition into the game’s DLC from the mobile version that are still in the process of being released. Currently, only the first of these four add-ons is available for the console/PC version, making the story feel incomplete and unsatisfying to complete. If there’s a silver lining here, the DLC has the best and most challenging puzzles in the entire game, meaning more of the good stuff may be on the way.

Overall, while Monument Valley may feel less novel now than it did in 2014, enough of its core appeal remains to make this sequel largely worthwhile. It combines a distinctive style of abstract art with puzzle sequences that are just engaging enough to draw us into these optical illusions. While it doesn’t land as resoundingly as the first game, Monument Valley 3 still cuts a pretty picture.

Monument Valley 3 was developed by ustwo games and published by Netflix. Our review is based on the Nintendo Switch version. It is also available for the PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, iOS, and Android.

Elijah Gonzalez is an associate editor for Endless Mode. In addition to playing the latest, he also loves anime, movies, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon games. You can follow him on Bluesky @elijahgonzalez.bsky.social.