I fell in love with Monument Valley back when I first reviewed it for Android Police in 2014, and while it’s not the kind of title I’ve spent a lot of time with since, it has spawned a love for similar types of games.
I’ve personally played each of these games on my Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6. They’re all also available for Apple devices, and you can grab all but one on PCs through Steam.
1
Timelie
Timelie is a time-traveling puzzle game centered around a girl and a cat. You control time like a media player, adjusting the scrubber at the bottom or hitting the rewind and fast-forward buttons.
Each stage of Timelie involves trying to sneak by patrolling robots through maze-like levels. You speed time ahead to see where the robots go and study their movements. Then you rewind to find the right way to proceed, at the right pace, and which order to press buttons and open doors, without getting spotted. The cat can help serve as a distraction, luring robots away from your presence, or it can press buttons to open doors as well.
I can’t say I know exactly what’s going on plot-wise, but that’s the nature of the beast with speechless titles like this. Monument Valley itself feels a bit of a mystery until its closing moments, and even then, it remains an art canvas open to interpretation.
2
Path of Giants
In Path of Giants, you control not one or two characters, but three. Each stage involves solving puzzles using this team of explorers who all work together to climb a mountain and collect treasure.
The explorers are of different colors: one blue, one yellow, and one green. Puzzles often consist of placing each explorer on a button that activates part of a stage or using one explorer to help others reach high ledges. The challenge comes in figuring out the right order of events to make sure each explorer makes it to the end. No one can be left behind.
I love the vibe of this game, though I hope you’re happy with cold and snowy, since that’s the atmosphere for all ten of the game’s stages.
While Path of Giants is cross-platform, the game is also one of many you can play with a Google Play Pass subscription on your phone.
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3
Assemble With Care
Assemble With Care comes from ustwo, the same team behind Monument Valley. Like that earlier title, solving puzzles in Assemble With Care relies on looking at things from the right perspective.
In this case, you play a character who is handy with repairs. In each puzzle, you rotate objects around, trying to figure out how each is broken and in which order to insert parts in hopes of fixing things.
This game is narration heavy, and some of the puzzles are easy enough that you spend more time following the story than playing the game. But it’s a cozy good time, and I’m here for it.
4
The Enchanted World
In The Enchanted World, you’re again tasked with putting things back together, but this time it’s not people’s cherished possessions—it’s the very world itself.
You play a fairy who restores life to wilted nature and brings order to the world by shifting pieces of the environment around until they line up in just the right way. It’s like playing with a Rubik’s cube that’s flat and made up of landscapes. I personally find this to be the most challenging game I’m recommending, but I’ve never been a particular fan of Rubik’s cubes. I just really dig this game’s charm.
The Enchanted World is unique on this list as the sole entry that is only on mobile platforms. Yet if you prefer a larger screen, there’s still the option to play it on a tablet.
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5
Umiro
Umiro puts you in control of two characters, Huey and Satura, who you must safely navigate to the end of a puzzle without touching the moving obstructions along the way. The puzzle element, this time, is your inability to move either character directly. Instead, you must draw a path showing how you want them to move. If your timing is right, the character is able to execute the path safely.
Despite the visual similarity to Monument Valley, this game will give your brain a fundamentally different type of workout.
6
Aarik and the Ruined Kingdom
If you want a game whose perspective-based puzzles closely resemble Monument Valley, consider Aarik and the Ruined Kingdom.
Monument Valley, at its core, is an adventure, and part of the beauty is seeing what new setting you’ll enter next. Aarik and the Ruined Kingdom expands on that feeling of adventure. Here is a world you are navigating at a much slower pace and with far more dialogue. It skews younger, but if you really dig the puzzles in Monument Valley, this will offer you more in a simultaneously adorable and grandiose package.
Monument Valley has inspired a genre of isometric puzzle games, and I’m happy to see their numbers grow. While some action-oriented mobile games pull off touch controls, puzzle games don’t have to try that hard. They just work. I also think these are some of the prettiest games I’ve played, even though they don’t push you to buy a gaming phone in the slightest.
As short as Monument Valley is, it retains a special place in my heart and remains a masterwork of what a game can be. Some newer games that have taken inspiration manage to be just as endearing.
