With Apple Arcade increasingly focused on licensed family games, Netflix has emerged as the last tech giant funding the type of premium indie mobile releases Ustwo makes.
And so by the end of 2024 the Monument Valley series will effectively have a new home. All three games will be live on Netflix, with Monument Valley 3 exclusive to the service.
With the third game, the London studio’s flagship franchise is set to be grander in scale in lots of ways – Ustwo says the game would not exist in its current form without the support of Netflix.
MV3 has a more open-ended feel compared to its predecessors, thanks to new free-roaming sailing sections which link together the series’ trademark perspective puzzles. And once the game is out the door on December 10, game director Jennifer Estaris and lead producer John Lau tell us that Ustwo Games will start thinking about how it can expand the world of Monument Valley further.
Firstly, that might mean more expansions and level drops to keep players engaged over the long term. “If you look at Monument Valley one, they had slow drip DLCs, right?” Estaris tells us. “There was Forgotten Shores, Ida’s Dream, and The Lost Forest which came out, I think, two, three years after the launch – so it’s not unprecedented.”
Then there are other media types to explore. Once upon a time, Paramount had talked with Ustwo about doing a Monument Valley movie. It didn’t work out, but now Ustwo has ties with Netflix it seems thoughts are turning to linear media once again.
“I’m personally also excited by testing the elasticity of the brand and seeing what else could it do,” says Estaris. “Who else could it reach? That’s what Monument Valley is about, approachability.”
Lau adds: “The opportunities are there, yeah…we want to focus on finishing this game but the outlook does look quite like interesting.”
And yet with its silent protagonists and fixed perspective puzzles, the world of Monument Valley is perhaps not the cleanest material for adaptation. Lau agrees, but is up for the challenge.
“Monument Valley is predicated on optical illusions that come from an isometric perspective…no-one wants to watch an entire movie like that,” he says. “How do we get that magic? How do we get things lining up in that wondrous way?”
Lau is also cautious not to force the issue and ‘do a Borderlands’. “We’re in a situation where consumers’ media literacy means that they are going to smell when a studio is trying to push a commercial opportunity….like how every single Marvel movie is an advert for the next one. People start to get wise to it.”
First of all, though, Estaris and Lau have to get MV3 out the door. The game’s been in development for around two and a half years, and started with a handful of staff.
The dev team is now at around 25, they say, and as the team closed in on the third game’s core, there was plenty left on the cutting room floor, including some UGC elements.
“We were exploring customisation, but I think for what we want to make at this time, it didn’t fit the overall themes that we’re aiming for…it could fit later,” says Estaris.
“We also wanted to have players build levels but again, it didn’t fit the themes of the game that we’re making right now. But I still see a world where that could come to fruition.”
Lau says when he joined the MV3 team it was exploring firstperson, VR-like play patterns. The team also played around with some multiplayer ideas.
“You go really big at the beginning and then you start whittling it all down,” says Lau. “You’re thinking: what’s the story you want to tell? What are the themes of the game? And then you find you’re kind of working against the grain if you follow a firstperson or a customisation thing.”
The third Monument Valley game will arrive on December 10, after the first two titles join Netflix in September and October respectively. MV3 may also be released on other formats too, though Ustwo was unable to talk about when and where.
In its new home on Netflix, the series will set sail again later this year with renewed vigour, and just as several other game series are successfully expanding beyond games. And all the while Apple will watching along from afar, wincing at the artsy, on-brand series that got away.
