With Monument Valley 3 just months away, Ustwo Games reminiscences on developing for and beyond mobile and nonviolent games

With the next Monument Valley game just months away, developer Ustwo Games has offered a peep at studio life as it gears up for lunch.

As part of a behind-the-scenes segment at the Mobile Games Show, the London-based studio shares that things have remained broadly consistent since its founding. The headcount has remained between 30 and 40 people, and the focus remains on games that are notably nonviolent.

“UsTwo Games is really focused on making games that don’t have violence as one of their key forms,” lead game designer Joel Beardshaw says. “Desta [The Memories Between] was the closest we got to a game with violence. There’s actually a win state and a lose state in that game, as opposed to everything else where you just kind of find your way through it. There are puzzles, there’s friction, but that friction doesn’t come from combat.”

While the developer’s roots are in mobile games, recent years have seen its games expand to Nintendo Switch, consoles, and PCs – such as 2020’s Alba: A Wildlife Adventure. For Ustwo Games, the leap has been facilitated by tech development.

“As everything has got more high-tech, as the phones in our pockets have got more high-tech, a Nintendo Switch and a mobile phone aren’t really that different,” Beardshaw says. “And that’s not totally different – it’s not like the days when the PlayStation 3 was an alien device and building for it was something completely different. It allows games to hop around and try to find their new home and find the audience where it is.”

Monument Valley 3 launches exclusively for Netflix games on December 10, 2024, where it’ll no doubt be vying for a slot on our best Netflix games list.