Mondrian

Mondrian is a minimalist puzzle game inspired by the abstract art of Dutch painter Piet Mondrian. Each level presents an arrangement of colored squares separated by black lines. The player’s objective is to clear the board by clicking on the lines to remove them, causing adjacent squares to expand. Squares must be matched with others of the same color to be cleared; touching a different color causes failure. The game features ten progressively complex levels, an advanced move for removing intersecting lines, and an abstract soundscape that reacts to the on-screen action.

Mondrian: Review

In the vast and often chaotic landscape of video games, where photorealism and sprawling narratives frequently dominate the discourse, there exists a quiet, contemplative corner dedicated to the purity of form and function. It is here that we find Mondrian (2008), a freeware puzzle game by developer Andrew “pansapiens” Perry. More than a mere diversion, Mondrian is a profound interactive thesis on the principles of Neo-Plasticism, a digital homage that dares to ask: what if a Piet Mondrian painting was not a static image to be observed, but a dynamic system to be solved? This review posits that Perry’s creation is a seminal, if under-recognized, work of art-game fusion—a title that masterfully translates the aesthetic and philosophical tenets of De Stijl into an elegant and challenging gameplay loop, whose influence can be traced through a lineage of subsequent, more commercially successful titles.

Development History & Context

To understand Mondrian is to first understand the environment from which it emerged. The year 2008 was a pivotal moment for digital distribution and independent development. Platforms like Steam were beginning to democratize publishing, and tools were becoming more accessible. Into this nascent indie scene stepped Andrew Perry, a developer working not with a large team or budget, but with a suite of open-source tools: Python 2.5, Pygame, Rabbyt, and PyOpenGL, all running on Ubuntu Linux.

The game’s development, as detailed in the credits, is a portrait of the solo developer ethos. The tools list reads like a manifesto of practicality—Gvim for coding, The GIMP for graphics, LMMS and BitInvader for sound. This was not a game built in a corporate vacuum; it was a weekend project, a labor of love for which Perry thanks his girlfriend “for cooking all weekend.” The “studio” credited, “pansapiens,” is Perry himself. The technological constraints are evident in the game’s minimalist presentation, but as with the art it emulates, this limitation became its greatest strength. There were no resources for elaborate animations or 3D models, so the focus shifted entirely to the core mechanic and its visual clarity.

The game also existed in a small but notable context of art-inspired games. It is explicitly described as being “more faithful to the Neo-Plasticist visual Stijl of its namesake… than its recent predecessor Mondrian Provoked.” This indicates a small, perhaps informal, genre of games directly engaging with modern art, where Mondrian sought to be the most authentic interpretation.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive

To search for a traditional narrative in Mondrian is to miss the point entirely. Its narrative is not one of character or plot, but of process and transformation. The “story” is the player’s journey from chaos to order, from a field of disparate colored squares to a unified, blank canvas. This is a narrative deeply rooted in the themes of its inspiration.

Piet Mondrian, towards the end of his career, sought to reduce art to its most fundamental elements: straight lines, primary colors (red, blue, and yellow), and non-colors (black, white, and grey). He believed this “pure plastic art” could achieve a universal harmony, representing the dynamic equilibrium of opposing forces in nature and the human spirit. Mondrian the game internalizes this philosophy. The black lines are the rigid structures, the boundaries of modern life. The colored squares are the dynamic, spiritual forces contained within.

The player’s role is that of a facilitator of harmony. The objective—to make like colors touch and vanish—is a process of resolving dissonance. The primary failure state, causing dissimilar colors to touch and turn grey, is a metaphor for the muddied, impure outcomes that result from miscalculated interactions. The ultimate goal of a blank, white screen is the Neo-Plasticist ideal of achieving a state of pure, harmonious balance. There is no dialogue, no text, no explicit narrative beyond the player’s own actions and their consequences on the digital canvas. The theme is the experience itself: a meditation on order, consequence, and the beauty of a perfectly executed plan.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems

The genius of Mondrian lies in the deceptive simplicity of its mechanics, which belies a deep and often tense strategic challenge. The rules, as meticulously described in the source material, are a masterclass in elegant design:

• The Setup: Each level presents a composition of flat-shaded squares of various sizes and colors, separated by “aesthetically-pleasing black border lines.” The initial screen is a genuine Mondrian-esque artwork.
• The Core Loop: Player input is exclusively limited to clicking on the black lines. Clicking a line removes it, triggering a chain reaction. The adjacent squares begin to “swell in all directions” in real-time.
• The Consequences: This growth continues until one of three events occurs:
  1. It touches another black line, which halts growth (maintaining the structure).
  2. It touches a square of the same color, which clears both squares from the screen (the objective).
  3. It touches a square of a different color, which renders both squares grey and makes the level unwinnable (the failure state).

This creates a compelling puzzle dynamic that is equal parts spatial reasoning and timing. The player must plan several moves ahead, anticipating how the removal of one line will affect the entire board. The introduction of the “advanced move”—clicking the intersection of two lines to remove both simultaneously—adds a layer of high-risk, high-reward complexity, causing “rapid and unpredictable change” that can either solve a level in one brilliant stroke or lead to immediate ruin.

The progression system is straightforward: ten levels of increasing complexity. There is no character progression or unlockable skills. The only thing that develops is the player’s own understanding of the game’s systems. The User Interface is the game world itself; there are no extraneous HUD elements. This purity ensures total immersion in the puzzle. The primary flaw, if one can be cited, is the potential for frustration when a single misclick irrevocably dooms a level, but this severity is consistent with the game’s theme of precise, deliberate action.

World-Building, Art & Sound

The world of Mondrian is the world of the canvas. Its art direction is its single most defining feature, and it is executed with unwavering commitment. The visuals are a direct translation of Piet Mondrian’s later work, embracing the flat planes of color, the stark black grid, and the asymmetric balance that defines Neo-Plasticism. This is not merely an artistic skin; the gameplay is inextricably linked to this visual style. The game is the art, and the art is the game.

The sound design, described as a “harmonious abstract soundscape directly informed by movement on the screen,” is a crucial component of the atmosphere. Unlike a traditional soundtrack, the audio is generative. The swelling of squares and their collisions create a unique sonic signature for each playthrough. This synesthetic feedback loop reinforces the player’s actions, making the experience feel less like manipulating objects on a screen and more like conducting an abstract symphony of color and form. The result is an atmosphere of intense focus and serene abstraction, a digital gallery space where the player is both curator and creator.

Reception & Legacy

At its launch in April 2008, Mondrian existed in the quiet hinterlands of the gaming world. As a freeware title, it bypassed traditional commercial and critical channels. MobyGames records an average player rating of 3.5 out of 5, but this is based on a single rating with no written review. There are no professional critic reviews on record. It was, by all accounts, a niche title for a niche audience.

However, to judge its legacy solely on its immediate impact would be a grave error. Mondrian‘s true significance lies in its role as a conceptual precursor. It stands as an early, pure example of the “art game” that would gain prominence in the following years. Its DNA is visible in games like Framed (2014), which also uses a static, comic-book aesthetic as its core gameplay mechanic, and the elegant spatial puzzles of Monument Valley (2014).

Most directly, Mondrian spawned its own series. The existence of the “Mondrian Series Bundle” on Steam, featuring later titles like Mondrian – Abstraction in Beauty (2015) and Mondrian – Plastic Reality (2021) from developer Lantana Games, proves that the core concept had lasting power. These successors evolved the ideas into more action-oriented, “roguelite-inspired brickbreaking” adventures, but the aesthetic and philosophical foundation was laid by Perry’s original. The 2021 game even includes a “Mondrian Maker” level editor, fulfilling the interactive potential that the 2008 version hinted at. Furthermore, the concept proved versatile enough to inspire a physical board game, Mondrian: Color in Motion, which won awards, demonstrating the strength of the core aesthetic-mechanical fusion.

Conclusion

Mondrian (2008) is a quiet masterpiece of minimalist game design. It is a game that understands its source material so profoundly that the act of playing becomes an act of artistic appreciation. Andrew Perry did not simply create a game with a Mondrian theme; he created a system that embodies the very principles of balance, reduction, and harmony that the painter championed. While it may lack the polish and reach of its spiritual successors, its importance as a pioneering work of art-game synthesis cannot be overstated. It is a testament to the power of a singular vision, a reminder that the most compelling worlds are not always the largest or loudest, but sometimes the most perfectly composed. For students of game design, art history, or anyone seeking a few moments of pure, abstract contemplation, Mondrian remains an essential and beautifully executed experience.