LUNA The Shadow Dust

Luna: The Shadow Dust is a nice nod to classic point-and-click puzzle games. Everything melds together beautifully, and it provided me with a solid puzzle experience. Despite my aversion to this genre, I found the experience pleasant overall. Some of the puzzles left me stumped, but after getting through them I felt accomplished in their defeat.

A small work of art, well-made and compact, flooded with colours and bittersweet feelings. Unfortunately, it doesn't last longer than a Saturday gaming session.

Quotation forthcoming.

LUNA’s design creates the feeling that we are watching a lovely European animation of a simple yet affectionate fairy tale. The slightly easy riddles keep the momentum forward in order to experience it as a one-shot 3-4 hours gaming session.

Luna is a beautiful indie title with smooth gameplay. It owes it a little bit to games like Neverhood and Journey, but nevertheless it is an entertaining experience.

LUNA The Shadow Dust is a splendid first work by Lantern Studio, beautiful to look at and fun to play, simple in concept and well-kept in its creation, capable of entertaining and making itself loved even by the least passionate of puzzle games.

Luna: The Shadow Dust is a lovely fable dressed up as a classic point and click adventure. The art direction, the visual style and the soundtrack are simply beautiful, while the gameplay mechanics convey in a solid way the path to the consciousness of the main character. The puzzles are gentle and interesting, but sometimes the game plays it too safely and it feels a little bit too light. Anyway, Luna: The Shadow Dust lets the players live a handful of heartwarming hours.

So what price beauty? Patience. And how much you have with the game will determine your enjoyment. For me, an hour or so after finishing it, I’m already finding the memory of the irritations melting away, and the lovely art and story taking over. But the exasperation happened, and it’s my job to say so.

LUNA The Shadow Dust is a magical point-and-click adventure with amazing hand-drawn backdrops and animations. Too bad the puzzles are trivial and the pacing is a bit messy.

LUNA The Shadow Dust is a streamlined point & click adventure that offers superb art design and peaceful music. While many of its puzzles are simple, some late-game challenges make fantastic use of the two well-animated characters in a brief tale told adequately without words.

With all its puzzling adventures, out-of-the-box thinking, and stunning hand drawn visuals, it’s a memorable game in its genre. Solving the puzzles offers such gratification that one looks forward to continuing climbing the tower and solving the next. But with a lack of a meaningful story, it lacks complete immersion from the player.

LUNA The Shadow Dust’s amazingly-integrated package of wordless storytelling, clear gameplay and unique visual style would be even more powerful if not for the clichéd finale. Even so, it’s a wonderful experience well worth anyone’s time.

In the end, I felt that Luna: The Shadow Dust ebbed and flowed more like a beautifully soundtracked picture book than an actual video game, which is admittedly a refreshing change of direction for this genre. If you're looking for something a little more out of the box than a typical point-and-click experience, then Luna: The Shadow Dust might be the game for you.

If Luna had not been so obtuse, it might have been close to greatness. I loved the atmosphere and the little touches in this world. Many puzzles are a joy to solve, but the bad ones are so poorly constructed that they tipped my frustration over the edge. As much as I wanted to love Luna, I felt like the game was pushing me away.

An enchanting adventure that boasts some magical hand-drawn animation, but will inevitably leave some players perplexed.

Though a little on the short side, this beautifully drawn puzzler is full of variety and well worth checking out.

LUNA: The Shadow Dust is an audio-visual delight, with charming hand-drawn animation accompanied by a stellar soundtrack, though its gameplay isn’t very inventive and is ultimately more a case of style over substance.

There’s no question that LUNA: The Shadow Dust has been a passion project for Lantern Studio. The care and attention that’s gone into even the smallest details is plain and clear to see. While its puzzles can be quite obtuse at times, any video game enthusiast will be happy to turn a blind eye to experience what this game has to offer. It isn’t perfect, and it isn’t for everyone, but it’s a true accomplishment – of that I have no doubt.

Beautiful and short point and click adventure with gorgeous visuals inspired by the works of the Ghibli studio, with some good puzzles that could have offered much more in their mechanics.

The gameplay tries to accomplish too many things at once and would use more simplicity in exchange for a more interesting, unique story. [04/2020, p.82]

Too easy, too simple, and more often than not, too dull and slow, LUNA The Shadow Dust counts on its beautiful, fairy-tail, dreamy graphics, and soothing OST, a bit too much than it should. It's not a bad point-and-click adventure, sure, and those who can look past its heavy flaws will be entertained for about two to three hours, but if it weren't for its stunning hand-painted world, few would give it a second look.