- Subtle story to follow, full of hope
- Levels that challenge the way you think
- You can drive a boat
Monument Valley has been a big hit, with the first two really disrupting the puzzle space (in a positive way). There are a lot of high expectations when it comes to a third in a series, and Monument Valley 3 does meet all of mine.
Monument Valley 3 takes you through a new story – one of hope, loss, and struggling to do stuff on your own. It’s not necessarily a story-based game, as there is only a small amount of text between each level, but through subtle animations and the movements of characters, there is a lot of story that you can get.
This story shows you that the world is crumbling, the water is rising, and the person who previously helped you so much when it came to bringing light to your lighthouse has gone. You must now venture on your own, help other people, and bring light back to the world.
The puzzles in Monument Valley 3 are very well-paced, with the first few chapters being on the easy side, slowly introducing your mind to seeing things from a new perspective. This then gets more and more complex, the levels looking less straightforward and often requiring you to look deeply into your screen, finding little hints that could help you better understand what you are doing. While most levels are on ridged beams through structures, suddenly there are freeing levels where you can run along the wheat fields. It changes the way you think.
In some of the chapters, after solving the various levels, you can actually drive a boat around the world. The water can be choppy at places, but there are moments when you need to work between two smaller puzzles or go into new structures to get to new areas of the map. This gives more depth to the game and adds to the story itself. 
Monument Valley 3 is full of hope, as the story goes along, and the puzzles themselves feel very distinct in the later levels. Achieving a fresh feeling on the third title of the franchise is an accomplishment in itself!
This releases with ten chapters to start with but has a roadmap plan on the chapter select menu where you can see roughly when each of the new chapters is released, all over 2025. I do want to see what Noor, my character, ends up getting up to and how much she rebuilds the world that has collapsed.
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