Moncage – Spotlight

Puzzle game Moncage leaves a lasting impression on the player. Gorogoa, a modern classic, uses a touch and swipe-based interface to play with perspective and create some mind-boggling challenges. Sadly, Moncage becomes far too intelligent for its own good. As a result of the game’s excellent hint system, I’m not sure if I would have been able to complete the game without it.

As a player in Moncage, you’re privy to a wide range of scenes projected onto the cube’s sides. There is a degree of control over each of these scenes in that you can use your finger to zoom in on specific objects, open doors, or turn levers. However, the most intriguing aspect of this feature is the ability to combine scenes from different sides by rotating and lining up your point of view.

An example is the best way to convey this. A green table and a ball on top of a cube wall would be an example of a scene. I imagine a green slide like the one on the table as part of the background, perhaps even on a playground. The ball may roll down the slide into the playground scene if you can rotate the cube in such a way that a piece of the table lines up with the slide, causing a scene change and allowing you to continue through Moncage.

In Moncage, everything revolves around these perspective puzzles, and it’s truly impressive how many different kinds of challenges or scenarios the developers came up with to keep the mechanics and gameplay fresh throughout. It’s not just for the sake of the game’s gameplay that Moncage’s landscapes are constantly changing. To get a better sense of what the game is all about, you’ll need to collect collectible images that are stashed away alongside the objects you’re manipulating.

Thanks to a slew of brilliant design decisions, solving all of this puzzles is a blast. Swipe and tap controls are intuitive, and there are some useful multi-touch controls that highlight interactive objects in case you have missed them. Moncage’s hint system, on the other hand, is a standout feature. Hints are available in the pause menu if you’ve spent a lot of time in a section of the game and haven’t progressed, and you can access them by tapping and holding the pause button. Moncage can provide a video of the solution if three or so hints revealed this way fail you, so you don’t have to leave the app to consult a guide or walkthrough to get through.

I’d prefer not to be so dependent on Moncage’s hint system, despite how sleek it is. Things get a little too complicated or caught up in logical procedures that don’t make sense at times, and I often found myself correctly identifying solutions while being unsure of how to get there. A strange resemblance to classic point and click adventure games like the Monkey Island series was apparent.

Considering how frequently I encountered this issue, I wonder if Moncage’s developers knew that its peculiar puzzle solution would be a common problem for players. Even if that’s the case, I’d have preferred a few more straightforward puzzles to match the game’s otherwise elegant and effortless aesthetic; on the other hand, the hint system ensures that anyone can complete the game if they persist.

When it comes to perspective-based puzzling, Moncage has you covered. Consequently, numerous methods used to solve the game’s puzzles are clumsy and counterintuitive to the rest of the experience, which is sleek and refined throughout. Because of this, the game’s hint system is one of my favourites, and it works to ensure that the game is playable, even though you may be surprised and put off by how frequently you need to rely on its assistance.