Puzzle game fans with Netflix subscriptions are in for a good time later this year. Sure, that’s a pretty strange Venn diagram, but if it works, it works. At this year’s Gamescom Opening Night Live, developer Ustwo Games announced Monument Valley 3 will be released at the end of 2024 — only on Netflix Games. Before it arrives, Netflix will also get the first two games in the exceptional puzzle series over the next two months.
On September 19, Monument Valley will hit Netflix Games, followed by Monument Valley 2. Both games have been available on Android and iOS for years now, but this marks the first time they’ll both be included with a Netflix subscription. Monument Valley 3 joins them on December 10. While it will be playable on both iOS and Android, it will be exclusive to Netflix Games, and there’s no word on whether it’s coming to other storefronts later. That’s a big change from the first two games, which started as standalone mobile titles before being ported to Apple Arcade, and soon, Netflix.
We’ve technically known that Monument Valley 3 is on the way for quite some time, but Gamescom offered the first real look at the upcoming game. Ustwo first announced that it was working on another title in the series back in 2019, but the developer has hardly made a peep about it in the years since. Its world premiere trailer is no less exciting for showing players exactly what they could have expected — a series of gorgeous, intricately crafted dioramas to fiddle with to form a path forward for your tiny avatar. The Monument Valley games have always been noted for their beautiful worlds, and part three is no exception. Its stark colors and surreal environments look better than ever in this new installment, and there seems to be far more variety in its levels than ever before in the series.
Beyond just its looks, Monument Valley 3 could be a major evolution for the series. The second game added the twist of having to guide a second character through levels along with your own, and at the same time, played with the structure of its environments in some mind-bending ways. Both of those elements are being amplified in the third game. The player character is sometimes seen alone in the new trailer, and sometimes guiding a variety of different characters. The levels themselves look spectacularly inventive, leaning even harder into the M.C. Escher twists of the first two games. At some points, it even breaks the usual structure of levels playing out on a series of interlocking walkways. We see the player navigating a vast wheat field and piloting a boat through rivers and oceans along the way.
At the core, though, Monument Valley 3 seems to retain everything that made the series a hit in the first place. First launched in 2014, the original Monument Valley was widely praised for its beautiful art, clever puzzles, and absorbing minimalist vibe. Fans may not have been clamoring for the third chapter — possibly because of Ustwo’s silence on the matter — but it’s nonetheless one of the most exciting reveals to come out of Gamescom.
That’s exactly what makes it a bit of a bummer that it’s launching exclusively on Netflix Games. Netflix is of course pervasive enough across households that bringing it to the platform gives the game a huge built-in audience, which should be a boon for Ustwo. That is, if Netflix can finally get the message across that games are already included in your subscription, something it’s failed to do since it started offering them.
Regardless of its convenience, it’s never a good thing to have games tied to a single subscription. As Xbox Game Pass demonstrated recently, the companies running those services can change their terms for the worse whenever they feel like it — and Netflix itself has reportedly been mulling over the idea of shoving ads into its games lately. Tying the game to a subscription also means players need to shell out a fee every month to maintain access to the game, rather than make a one-time payment like they could with the previous Monument Valley titles. And if Netflix decides to remove it from the service or shelve its games entirely at some point, it could be gone for good. That’s highly unlikely for a game as big as Monument Valley 3, of course, but just the fact that it’s being tucked away in a walled garden means some potential players will be left on the outside.
Still, it’s hard to get too upset about a new Monument Valley game. The series still represents some of the best that mobile gaming has to offer a decade after it began, and Monument Valley 3 looks ready to follow in its predecessors’ footsteps.
