Games For The Mac Like Monument Valley 2018

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Love stories have defined film, TV, poetry, novels. But games? Not so much.

'That's largely a blind spot for us,' says Ken Wong, who was previously the lead designer on the iOS art house hit Monument Valley that recently launched his own studio Mountains, alongside their first game.

'So we thought it would be an interesting challenge to tackle: How can we use game mechanics to tell a story about love?'

Released just in time for Valentine's Day, Florence is an iOS game best described as a wordless, interactive love story where you experience one woman's journey through the ups and downs of falling in love for the first time.

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Apr 14, 2020  Monument Valley 2. The sequel to the 2014 smash hit from Ustwo Games, Monument Valley 2 expanded on what made the first so great. The shifting puzzle maps. Jul 07, 2018  Here are 35 games that are similar or close to Monument Valley. All of the 35 games are not exact copy of Monument Valley, some may have graphical similarities but different game play. May 07, 2018 Testing game engine. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Monument Valley 2 is an illusory adventure of impossible architecture and forgiveness from ustwo games. Aug 22, 2018  Monument Valley, the award-winning and beautifully designed mobile puzzler from ustwo Games, is being turned into a movie, according to a report from Deadline. While the game involves a. Monument Valley articles on MacRumors.com. Ustwo Games' popular iOS and Android puzzle series 'Monument Valley' is being turned into a movie, as reported this week by Deadline.

And if you think you've already heard this story a thousand times before, you've never seen it done quite like Florence.

May 15, 2019 Machinarium offers a unique and addicting puzzle adventure game across a number of platforms. The game was originally released in 2009 for Windows and Mac with follow up releases for PlayStation 3, Android and iOS. Machinarium uses a point and click style of adventure along with a unique art style and no game dialogue. This no dialogue policy extends to spoken and written language so.

The story plays out through beautiful webcomic-like illustrations embedded with interactive vignettes or mechanics that, 'mimic or evoke all the different beats and emotions you go through in a relationship' per Wong. Others have labeled those vignettes as 'mini-games.' But they feel more like participatory poetry, as they zoom in on the small moments which make up the whole of a relationship.

In the chapter titled Moving In, for example, you go through the ritual of merging the lives of protagonists Florence and Krish, consolidating their personal belongings into one apartment. You decide which objects go into storage, replaced by the other person's stuff. The chapter ends with the image that encapsulates this stage commitment: a single yellow toothbrush, joined by second red one.

To be clear: relationships aren't necessarily new territory for games.

There's a whole genre of dating sims, ranging from small indies to larger role-playing action games like BioWare's Dragon Age and Mass Effect. There's also a growing spectrum of visual novels created by indie designs like Christine Love who give players dialogue choices and branching storylines, allowing them to choose and seduce a variety of potential lovers.

Yet these dating sims explicitly 'gamify' relationships, constraining explorations of love to the language of traditional game design.

Some have even criticized such games for perpetuating the toxic idea that dating is a game — contributing to the culture that characterizes sex through baseball terms like 'getting to second base' or 'hitting a homerun.'

'There's still always a goal in those games. And the goal is usually to start dating someone, or have sex with them — or everybody,' said Wong. The result is a bunch of dating sims that feel nothing like the experience of dating in the real world.

'That's fine. But we didn't want to make a game out of love. We didn't want to make it about 'winning' Florence. It was about bringing the players into her emotional journey through empathy.'

'We didn't want to make a game out of love.'

Florence is part of this small but growing approach to game design that throws out the typical conventions of what we think a game 'needs' to have. There are still recognizable game mechanics, but instead of being used to challenge a players skill level, they're used to communicate the protagonists' feelings.

So, for example, conversations are represented through speech bubbles that you must complete by fitting puzzle pieces together. But unlike most games, the puzzles don't get increasingly harder. Instead, the 'difficulty' of fitting these pieces together fluctuates depending on how the conversation between Florence and Krish is going.

At the beginning of their first date, there's a lot more pieces in the puzzles, making the flow of the conversation feel halted, awkward, slow, trepidatious. They're still working to establish a rhythm of rapport.

Then, quickly, they start hitting it off. The more comfortable they get with each other, the more the puzzle simplifies: five pieces are consolidated into just two, and the music soars as you quickly fit the two pieces together and the two get lost in conversation with one another.

Florence shows how interactive mediums can uniquely speak to the experience of love in ways that films and books can't. Because, 'what Florence can do that other mediums are less good at is establishing a strong emotional connection to their love story — because you're part of it,' says Wong.

Wong's also been interested in harnessing the power of wordless storytelling for the majority of his creative career, as proved through the poignancy of Monument Valley. Florence not only takes this design concept a step further, but introduces new layers of nuance in how we tell love stories.

As an exploration of one of the most universal experiences ever, the game's wordlessness avoids the trapping that mediums like film or prose are bound to. Artists have always struggled with capturing the indescribable sensation of falling in love through the limitations of language, for example.

But not Florence.

'The power of wordless storytelling is that it allows people to interpret the events in their own heads, so they can project their own experiences onto the characters.'

In one scene, Florence and Krish clearly get into a fight. The dialogue puzzles communicate this by becoming increasingly fast-paced and panicked. If you don't finish you dialogue as Florence fast enough, Krish will talk over you, and the screen tilts to his side — implying that he's 'winning' the argument.

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2018

You have no idea what the argument is about, but the situation is immediately recognizable and relatable. We've all felt overwhelmed as we frantically tried to string words together in a fight with a significant other, watching the conversation run away from you as emotions escalate.

While testing the game out, Wong also saw how, 'Couples who played together would have wildly different interpretations on the themes and what was happening in the scenes. That was really interesting.'

It could, perhaps, even spark some important conversations about our different understandings of what love means, and how relationships are supposed to work.

Particularly, Wong saw how male players often benefited the most from playing Florence. 'There's this immediate assumption that this game is for women,' he said. With a female protagonist and the focus on the romantic, it easy for male players to disregard it. But, Wong insists, Florence is for everyone.

Because, 'This is 2018. There are a lot of men out there who are interested in emotional experiences, and the experiences of people who are not like them. They are open to discussing relationships.'

Ultimately, Florence doesn't make some grand statement about love or dating. But Wong's depiction of love was inspired by another classic, alternative approach to romantic storytelling.

The film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was a major influence. Because from Wong's perspective, 'What makes that film resonates so much with so many people is that it doesn't try to glamorize or glorify love. It tries to depict love as it really is: which is pretty messy, and full of misunderstandings.'

Like Florence and Krish, Joel and Clementine are very flawed people. And, 'Try as they will — they can't help but bring their flaws into the relationship and affect each other with them.' Florence is equally as intimate and honest about the soaring moments of falling love, that are inevitably followed by the pain of falling in love.

'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind helped fill a niche of people who wanted to see themselves reflected in the stories we tell about love. It's that sense of, 'That could be me,' or 'I've been there.' And maybe that helps us feel less alone.'

It's that sense of, 'That could be me,' or 'I've been there.' And maybe that helps us feel less alone.'

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Florence is a feat of romantic storytelling that defies every reductive, mediated depiction of what love is or should look like. And through the uniquely involving language of game mechanics, it eradicates the emotional distance often embedded in the inherent voyeurism of love stories told through cinema.

As a mobile game, the story of Florence and Krish plays out through the most intimate screen we interact with on a day-to-day basis. Phones are now at the center of how we start and build relationships, whether through falling in love via hours of texting, or seeking love through dating apps.

The touch screen not only helps players establish a tactile relationship to Florence and Krish's story, but also opens the game to a wider audience. Like Monument Valley (which was famously featured on House of Cards), the simplicity and intuitiveness of touch screen controls means anyone can play Florence.

'And I love that,' said Wong. 'I love bringing people into gaming that don't consider themselves 'gamers.' Making accessible games is a great challenge as a designer. It brings more of the general public into the folds of gaming, and that benefits the overall health of the industry.'

And in that, Wong sees a new future for how we tell love stories, and a path forward to bringing more intimacy into games.

'As designers, we just have to start questioning the assumptions we make about what a game is, or requires,' he said. 'If you let go of the idea that a game is something that you need to be able to beat, or something you need to be able to get better at, or that needs to last many hours — that's when games can start accessing the power of intimacy.'

Florence is available to download on all iOS devices

At PAX East 2018, we went hands-on with the time-turning puzzle-adventure game The Gardens Between from developer The Voxel Agents.

Indie games that have interesting takes on puzzle-solving have been far from uncommon in the past decade. Thanks to the likes of games like Portal, Braid, The Talos Principle, The Witness, and more, the ways that we engage with solving puzzles in games have taken on increasingly complex and fascinating forms. With the upcoming The Gardens Between, the charming indie game looks like it is delivering a particularly unique angle when it comes to solving puzzles through the manipulation of time.

During PAX East 2018, we had the chance to check out a demo of The Gardens Between, which is the next project from the Melbourne, Australia-based studio The Voxel Agents, which previously worked on the Train Conductor series. The game itself is a puzzle-adventure title, where you guide a young boy and girl — a pair of best friends named Arina and Frendt — through a series of rotating puzzles and simply seek to work their way through the literal “gardens between” their ultimate destination.

“[The Gardens Between] is a puzzle-adventure title, where you guide a young boy and girl through a series of rotating puzzles.”

What’s most immediately noticeable about The GardensBetween are the lush visuals and art style. The game itself stretches over the course of numerous diorama-like islands, and having played through a few of the game’s levels, the game’s visual variety and art is striking and beautiful. As it calls to mind the elegance and minimalism of games like Journey and Monument Valley, The Gardens Between has a serene, relaxing quality to it. Even when some of the puzzles got a bit more intricate, I couldn’t help but admire the details and presentation that each level offered — with one of my favorites being a level where you had to go through a video game-inspired world where one of the environmental objects jumped into the screen emerged in 8-bit form.

Accompanying the visuals in The Gardens Between is also its synthesized, soothing soundtrack. Even though I only played about 20 minutes or so of the game, I could tell that the soundtrack is one that I’m likely to listen to repeat well after I (hopefully) get to play the game when it releases later this year. I’ll leave the video below to accent the way that the soundtrack envelops the player in its surreal tone and setting:

Gameplay-wise, the most exciting thing about how The Gardens Between plays though are the controls: you don’t directly control either of the game’s protagonists, and instead you use the left analog stick to control the flow of time. Instead, think of it like fast-forwarding and rewinding through a VHS or cassette tape: pushing right on the analog stick will advance the characters (and flow of time) forward, while moving it to the left rewinds what is happening in real-time.

Where the puzzle mechanics come into play is that while you are rewinding and fast-forwarding the action, each of the characters have their own unique interactions with the environment, and that is primarily where the puzzle-solving in each environment comes into play. Arina, for example, holds a lantern that has to be lit by the puzzle’s end, and is where (in most of the of the puzzles that I played) you will guide both characters to the end of the puzzle. Frendt, meanwhile, can interact with objects like levers and more to trip specific environmental objects and items, which will manipulate or alter how the flow of the puzzle will play out when you either fast-forward or rewind.

“[The Gardens Between] calls to mind the elegance and minimalism of games like Journey and Monument Valley.”

Even in the few levels that I played at PAX East (which seemed pretty early on in the game), I could already tell that The Gardens Between has an interesting time-bending mechanic at play that I’m sure gets progressively more complicated as the game goes on. Ftl game cheats mac money. However, what impressed me with its time-rewinding and forwarding mechanic where the numerous ways that I had to rethink not only where I was moving and positioning the characters to advance, but also the sequence and order of making the puzzle’s events happen to reach the end goal.

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For example, one of the levels featured a worn-down television screen at the top of the island, with a VHS tape player below it. One of the puzzles, naturally, involved not only the time mechanic, but with Frendt in the right position near it, I could have him push a button and fast-forward through the tape to eject it, creating a bridge that both characters could then work their way up through the island’s mountains and reach the final area.

“The Gardens Between has an interesting time-bending mechanic at play that I’m sure gets progressively more complex as the game goes on.”

Other puzzles also involved more precision and timing-based obstacles, and it was interesting to see the ways that The Gardens Between was mixing up the styles of puzzles it introduced throughout each level. Several levels, for instance, featured quirky jumping boxes that would often grab light (the fuel for Arina’s lantern), and many of the puzzles revolved around either trying to intercept the boxes to catch the light for Arina’s lantern, or figuring out ways to deter obstacles or barricades so you could grab the light from them on the other side of the map. Overall, The Gardens Between so far showed a lot of similar mechanics to solving its puzzles, but also showed variety in how players had to approach them and figure out new ways of solving simple puzzles and challenges.

While I hadn’t heard a lot about The Gardens Between before attending PAX East, my time demoing the game made it an indie title that I plan to keep my eye on when it releases later this year. There’s certainly a lot of DNA that players might find from some of the best indie games from the past few generations like The Witness, Braid, or Monument Valley in its combination of puzzle-solving and traversing through its levels. But more than that, The Gardens Between immediately grabbed me with its tone and striking visuals, and while it doesn’t seem like it may be an exceptional challenged compared to some of the earlier games that I mentioned…I think I’m okay with that.

“The Gardens Between immediately grabbed me with its tone and striking visuals.”

Honestly, I would love to spend more time in the serene, lovely world that The Voxel Agents seems to be crafting in The Gardens Between, and whether the game takes just a few hours or dozens of hours to complete, I’ll cherish the world and setting it is building regardless.

The Gardens Between will release for PS4, PC, and Mac later this year.