Monument Valley - An MC Escher twist on puzzle games

@russfrushtick Great questions! Back in early 2013 and being a newly assembled team we were throwing ideas around on what our next big thing should be. Out of nowhere Ken created a piece of concept art that we stuck up on the wall in the ground floor of the ustwo studio. Anybody who came in whether they were internal or external would ask what it was, it definitely piqued peoples attention. Without this piece of art having any impossibility at this point we dedicated three weeks worth of work on a prototype, at the end of this we just knew it was something we had to make. Will come back for the other questions :)

@russfrushtick Question number 2! After Monument Valley we sat down as a team and attempted to work out exactly what made the game a huge success, after this we also creating a list of values that we believe our titles should be hitting in the future. Off the top of my head here's a few: Everything ustwo game must have or be: Artistic integrity Lasting impact Platform perfect Personal pride for the creators Elevate games as an art form Risky to make A game you can fall in love with Quality on all fronts, at no expense

@dan_gray @russfrushtick I just began playing this game and IMO this is how games should be done. You've certainly achieved all of your core values. In this post-Lean Method world, it's truly inspirational to see people betting on their vision, holding the initial excitement, pushing through the difficulties, and carrying out the vision into perfection.

@jtzou Hey Jonathan! For most of the public this is definitely "The Box" from the original Monument Valley. There's just something so charming and toy like about it. For me personally though it's definitely "The Oubliette" in Forgotten Shores, or "N-Sided" as we called it internally. I've said it in other interviews before, but I genuinely think it might be THE most expensive single level in mobile game history, we put that many hours into getting it right. Originally it was intended to be part of the main MV release, but we just couldn't get it right. Poor Manesh spent weeks and weeks getting a puzzle that fit with the core idea of a room with unlimited sides and nothing was sticking. Eventually we put it to bed but vowed to return to it, we weren't going to be defeated. Eventually with another couple of months worth of development time post release it came together at last into something quite a lot of players believe to be the best level in Forgotten Shores. Sometimes the most arduous tasks are those that are the most fruitful.

@rrhoover This is something I usually leave to Ken to answer, as that first spark of an idea is so close to his heart. But on this occasion i'll take the reigns as we've worked with each other for so many hours by this point that I can invade his mind and steal the answers. The most obvious inspiration is that of M.C. Escher, that's undeniable and runs through everything we did, but we often site a wide range of things from Japanese woodblock prints to architecture from around the world. From a games point of view an experience such as Windowsill from Vectorpark was a great example of creating an experience as opposed to a game.

@la_tama A focus of ours was to ensure that every level started with a hook, is it "the one that takes place inside a single box" or maybe "the one where you can rotate the device upside down and it still works". That ensures that every chapter we make brings new surprises. It also massively helps when you're fortunate enough to have a Cambridge physics genius and an art legend looking after game design. We're lucky indeed :)

@dan_gray i'm sure i've never rotated my device upside down but i completed 100% of the game so i guess i figured it out anyway :) I'd very mich like to meet this cambridge physics genius of yours, it'd be an interesting conversation. Anyway, keep up the amazing work you're doing and bring us more chapters (i need them!) :) thank you for answering my question

@eriktorenberg The repository for the game is still just called TOWER and for the majority of the project it was actually referred to as "Tower of Illusion" which is terrible, just terrible enough for you to not get comfortable with it. At one point it also had the name of Zenith as well. You can thank Wired for forcing us into a name as only two hours before a piece was due to go live we still hadn't settled on anything. So we just picked and stuck with it.

@valdean Just before I arrived and we started on Monument Valley a decision was made to have no crossover in expertise between the core business of design and implementation for clients and our games work. Right now the games team involves a team of just ten with the London studio being around 120. Consider them two different bands on the same indie record label, we've got the same feel and sound but produce different things. All parts of ustwo will continue to kick ass in whatever it is they focus on, and products such as DICE are a massive example of that: http://www.theguardian.com/techn...

@valdean we just posted this also ~ gives some insight into @ustwogames vs @ustwo http://ustwo.com/blog/ustwo-game...

@prattarazzi Thanks Eddie!

@kristofertm About six unfortunately, but then again I did only have about six attempts.