You won’t be able to play Monument Valley 3 unless you have an active Netflix subscription. That means that if, at any time, your subscription drops, you will lose your access to the game. I know you know that – I know you’re more than aware of how subscription services work – but it’s a novel situation for Monument Valley nonetheless, a series that has never been hidden away behind a subscription before.
Monument Valley 1 and 2 were premium mobile games you paid five pounds for and then they sat on your mobile device forever. That was part of their charm: they were forever games you could install, play and forget about, then pull out again whenever you needed to – whenever you had a journey to fill or needed somewhere calm and relaxing to go to. They were games where you could twirl around worlds of impossible architecture until your mind spun away in them. But not so with Monument Valley 3, whose required Netflix subscription is a notable change in a game quietly full of notable changes, as I discovered when I visited Ustwo’s office in London.
It’s a chic office, a converted warehouse kind of space, all chonky slabbed walls with soft furnishings and lots of natural light pouring in. There are colourful accoutrements on the wall from the Ustwo Games journey so far – memorabilia gathered while making games such as Assemble with Care, Alba: A Wildlife Journey, Desta: The Memories Between and, of course, Monument Valley, the series that started it all. Released in 2014, Monument Valley put Ustwo Games – itself an offshoot of the larger digital production company Ustwo – on the map, earning the studio a BAFTA award (spotted on the shelf) and global recognition. The game was spotted in an episode of US political drama House of Cards, and had celebrities such as Ariana Grande, with her huge reach and influence, enthusing about it on social media. Monument Valley is unquestionably the lifeblood running through the studio, and this third iteration is now a week away from arriving, seven years after Monument Valley 2.
Immediately, what’s apparent is how much the Monument Valley team has changed. The faces we saw on the BAFTA stage 10 years ago, receiving the award still proudly displayed now, are now long gone. Game director Neil Macfarland left in 2018, more than half the series’ life ago, and originating lead designer Ken Wong left in 2016, to make Florence, which he would later face accusations of abusive workplace behaviour for. Today, the team I meet is new – relatively speaking – and the atmosphere is calm. There are around 28 people on the Monument Valley team currently, and around 40 at the studio more widely. The handful of senior leads I meet were in the core team which established Monument Valley 3 a few years ago.