One of the best ways to feel better about the overindulgence and laziness of the holiday season is with mental exercise. Even if you don’t intend to be particularly physical, you can challenge your brain, and (hopefully) achieve a sense of accomplishment, with a taxing puzzle game.

If that’s your plan for the festive break, Moncage, from developer Optillusion and publisher XD, should definitely be on your shortlist. Playable on both PC and mobile devices, the game offers an approximately four-hour test of your problem-solving abilities as you explore a capsule of memory confined to a 3D cube.

Just don’t be lulled into a false sense of confidence by Moncage’s perspective-shifting gameplay mechanic. If you think Moncage is just going to be an optical illusion riff on the hidden object genre – where you typically scan and rotate environments until the shape you’re looking for appears – think again. The game is very good at making you feel stupid, but more about that in a moment.

Moncage is a multi-award winner for excellence in design – for good reason. At the most basic level, players hunt for similarities across the cube’s five sides, and then rotate the block so that items align, triggering an animation that bridges the sides. With success, you unlock the next step of that specific puzzle, or refresh one side of the cube with a new scene to explore.

Over even just a few hours, that mechanic would likely start to feel repetitive. However, there is much more to Moncage than a single gameplay requirement. Like literal depth. On each cube side you can zoom into glowing hot spots, which reveal whole other stages nested in the larger environments. Changes made at this micro level – sometimes as apparently inconsequential as updating a wall calendar, or switching TV channels – may affect the greater world, opening a new toolbox of solutions that wasn’t present before.

When playing Moncage, you’ll be continually rotating the cube, zooming in and out, and generally trying to find the “intersection” point between scenes so that key items can be moved from one cube side to another. Moncage is unquestionably a cerebral test, but it’s also a tactile pleasure. I can’t speak for the touchscreen experience, but on PC the game is comfortable and intuitive whether you’re manoeuvring the cube and its contents with keyboard and mouse, or controller.

With that said, controller use supports a physically more relaxing playthrough. This is appreciated given how mentally strenuous the puzzle solving can be. Moncage really isn’t easy.

A warning: Moncage is one of those puzzle games, seesawing between brilliantly clever and frustratingly obtuse. An example of the former? At one point, you can zoom in to your beer glass, which reveals a completely different take on reality. The more you drink, the more warped and war-torn this world within a world becomes. Perhaps a bit on the nose, it’s still visually striking and memorable.

As for an example of infuriating lack of logic, Moncage expects you to realise you can harness the moon for light, instead of fire and candles scattered across other sides of the cube. Lateral thinking underpins almost everything in this puzzle experience.

Fortunately, if you’re ever feeling blocked (so to speak), Moncage features an elegant hint system reminiscent of The Room. Take too long to progress, and you have the option to reveal a series of clues, one by one. If the bulleted list of tips doesn’t help, the final reveal is a step-by-step video clip showing exactly what to do.

Moncage may be structured as a string of puzzles across settings such as a lighthouse island, scientific laboratory, cemetery and child’s nursery, but there’s more to it as well. Linking the cube worlds is a silent narrative that players must piece together from photos concealed in the scenes (there’s your hidden object game). These snapshots capture a life, but they don’t appear in any obvious order.

That seems to be the point, though, as Moncage comments on the cyclical nature of human existence. Sons repeat the mistakes of their fathers, war scars the psyche no matter the battling generation and their weapons. And, as much as we make mistakes, redemption is possible. At least I think that is what’s going on. The titles for the game’s Achievements dispel some of the thematic and plot ambiguity, but even if you find all the photos, and unlock the game’s secret ending, that “conclusion” is even more cryptic than the standard one.

Moncage is likely going the arty, open-for-interpretation route on purpose. However, as you’re straining your brain enough with the gameplay, a clearer, chronological storyline would probably have worked better as a way to tie things together – and establish a more enticing sense of progression.

Then again, players probably aren’t coming to Moncage with the expectation of a strong story experience. The game’s biggest drawcard is its intricate and cleverly designed puzzles, and those will keep you occupied for some time – especially if you can resist the temptation of hints.

Moncage is available now for PC through Steam, and mobile via the Apple App Store, Google Play, and TapTap.


Moncage review

Moncage is a deceptively clever and challenging puzzle game. At first glance it appears to be a simple, cosy distraction for a few hours. Look closer, though, and you’ll uncover multi-layered complexity that will just as often leave you with a sense of accomplishment as frustration stemming from its cryptic puzzles and deliberately disjointed story.

 7.5
Moncage was reviewed on PC