Sure, at the highest level it offers the same experience: as diminutive princess Ida you explore seemingly impossible architectural spaces by tapping, poking, and sliding the screen.
The only way to reach the goal is to toy with the world, solve environmental puzzles, and sometimes twist the architecture in such a way that a new pathway appears - if only from your towering isometric perspective.
Crow bar
But this DLC regularly introduces new, daring, and ingenious concepts, so much so that it feels like a whole new experience.
Take the pathways that curl up into twisted spiral staircases and waterfalls that raise the sea level. And then there are the truly mind-bending stages that take the game's MC Escher inspiration to the next level and work even when viewed upside down.
I don't want to spoil some of the expansion pack's better surprises but I'll just say this game has a better "gasps per minute" record than pretty much anything else on mobile.
There are also some nice moments of storytelling involving Ida, those nuisance crows, and her Totem pal. It's nothing that changes the original (barely present) story but they provide nice callbacks for fans of the first ten stages.
Totemic
It's also, pleasingly, more difficult, with multi-faceted puzzles and riddles whose solutions aren't immediately obvious at first glance. It's always gently challenging, rather than being a true brain teaser, but a nice bump for those who already aced the original set of stages.
Monument Valley was an incredible game in its own right. Every single screen a gorgeous screenshot opportunity and every stage a pleasing puzzle box to solve. But these eight new levels are an essential addition.
Not only do they add new ideas, bits of story, and an extra touch of challenge - they might even be better than the first game's set of levels.
