Monument Valley: Inspiration

Through my previous explorative work I realised that the concept for my city itself needed to be stronger. What concept I previously had was more of a floating island than a city, so I decided to look into doing an early rework and develop it in a different direction. This was in order to maintain the feature of a city rather than what would essentially be an entire country. 

I was also struggling with the aesthetic and architecture of the city itself, unsure of what overall look I was going for at this point. I feel that in order to have well rounded and developed characters, they should be adapted to the world that surrounds them, which is why I'm looking into the environment in more detail before moving forward with any character designs. 

When searching through the internet for something entirely unrelated to the uni project, I came across the puzzle game 'Monument Valley'. The most striking thing about this mobile game is the continuous use of a pastel colour palette and the aesthetic style. There is a strong use of squares in the building designs, keeping the aesthetic consistent and also creating stable stages for the characters to run through, e.g. a level made entirely out of circles would have been a lot harder to design, especially in this puzzle/ map based game. Overall, rectangles and squares make for better maps and create a much more clarified image. 

Every level is based within a small environment, usually with a central focus piece; a windmill, towers, a water mill, a tree etc. These small, yet intricate environments also help me to focus on the idea of a city rather than an entire island, which is the issue I was having before. 

For levels that are so small, they have so much life to them and really appeal to me as the style is so strong yet so simple. I could recreate this using the lasso and brush technique that I've used most commonly throughout my work, as it would achieve the same straight lines and layered effect.