Monument Valley has surpassed one million sales

Going against the freemium gaming grain, Monument Valley, the sumptuously designed, premium priced iPad game which launched back in April and snagged its makers an Apple Design Award at this year’s WWDC, has now passed one million downloads, TechCrunch can reveal. The title is normally priced at $3.99/£2.49 — although it’s currently half that on the iOS App Store in a promotional discount. Although London-based designers’ ustwo’s initial idea was to make a game that made the most of the iPad’s larger screen, Monument Valley launched for the iPhone too. It was then expanded to Android back in May – after racking up 500,000 iOS downloads. Although launching onto Android has clearly expanded the game’s reach, producer Dan Gray told TechCrunch it’s had a much higher percentage of downloads on iOS. “But that’s kind of indicative of the two marketplaces,” he says. “We knew that creating a game for $4 is a big ask in comparison to the competition on Google Play.” Interestingly the Amazon app store Android version of the game has done pretty well — accounting for around a third of the overall Android downloads. The game has just 10 levels in total, which has led some to complain of its brevity. However ustwo’s intention for Monument Valley was always to create a highly curated experience, with a focus on design aesthetic, first and foremost.