Luna: The Shadow Dust (PC)

Like a storybook created by Studio Ghibli, the first noticed and most striking feature of Luna: The Shadow Dust is definitely its art style that melds together simplicity and detail. The main character’s face evokes the simple features of a wooden doll, the little black rats found throughout the game are nearly formless, and the shadowy creatures that threaten this fantasy world move shapelessly about, but then the backgrounds and rooms of the game’s central tower are lovingly drawn with plenty of detail that feels purposeful, some areas existing purely as a visual treat. Luna: The Shadow Dust’s efforts to make a vivid world definitely help the game stand out and make each new room first about drinking in the look of the place before you consider what needs to be done there, and to make further use of its greatest strength, the game’s story relies purely on visual storytelling.

 

There is not a single spoken word in Luna: The Shadow Dust and the written words are kept to a minimum, mostly appearing only for the game’s title, the credits, and technically the otherwise visual tutorial labeling the space bar with SPACE for clarity. Everything else is carried primarily by environmental storytelling and the few cutscenes scattered throughout the experience, the player not getting outright clear answers on what certain things are but seeing them in a context where their general purpose is clear and the narrative can be easily followed. The scenes carry the same art style as the hand drawn game world but animate it with varying results, some of it more fluid and other cutscenes perhaps over relying on still frames, but the emotional beats and plot come across properly despite some ambiguous aspects, the biggest unspoken detail perhaps being the lack of names.

The game deliberately starts off with little explanation of what you’re doing, a young boy with a bunny hat falling from the sky and finding himself at the base of a tower that looks more like a series of stacked segments rather than a cohesive design. As he climbs up the tower, he learns not only the purpose of this strange structure, but that malicious shadows seem to spreading all across the land, none present in the tower to harm him in this game that lacks any death or failure states, but there are clearly stakes much bigger than simply ascertaining the tower’s purpose. The game’s Steam achievements are the only way you would ever learn his name is Üri, but his name is irrelevant to a game that seems to prefer dreamlike imagery and unusual magics in a way that feels natural to this fantasy world while foreign to the player. Üri begins to climb the tower, very quickly meeting a small round cat creature whose unspoken name is Layh, the two working together to get past the many lock doors that stand in their way.

 

While the art style and presentation are definitely one of the game’s biggest focuses, the actual gameplay of the title is that of a point and click puzzle game. The different rooms the boy and the cat find themselves in involve puzzles that often require both characters to be in different places performing whatever limited tasks they are capable of in that specific area. The boy has no impressive abilities to help with this, mostly taking advantage of his height and hands for interacting with objects his partner can’t reach, but the cat packs a more curious ability to leap into and out of shadows. When the game is at its most clever, it’s usually mixing together cooperation between the two characters and Layh’s ability to interact with shadows, many of its better puzzles about rearranging a room or interacting with unusual devices or objects to solve whatever puzzle blocks your way.

While rooms often feature extra detail to make them appear like they have a purpose beyond being a video game obstacle, the point and click nature of the game means that you’ll find what you can work with easily even in rooms cluttered with items. The mouse cursor is used for all actions in the game, changing its shape to indicate the kinds of objects that can be interacted with, most rooms having very little relevant to your task. Learning the functions of available items and then using them appropriately is the most common formula, but sometimes the game does indulge in some puzzle designs that are far too easy and straightforward to tickle the brain. A few like the library’s book puzzle and the flying ship in the night sky have hardly anything going on, the path to success obvious or easily completed without much trouble. There are definitely some areas that are kept simple because they’re trying to focus on the look of the place rather than the substance of the activity, but in a game with so few puzzles total, having some that are basically freebies means the strength of the gameplay hinges mostly on the more involved ones.

 

There are some satisfying puzzles to be found thankfully, either just in concept or in the challenge they present. One involving cloning Layh to interact with a pipe organ and another involving a naturalistic room that you can alter the seasons in stand as good examples of an interactive puzzle that mixes together concept and challenge well, and some of the plainer ones are at least simple enough that you can quickly move through them and onto the next room. However, while the point and click nature and intuitive design of the rooms usually means you’ll eventually figure out how to overcome even the more complex challenges, there is a bit of a snag to doing so. Both of the main characters move at a leisurely pace once the player clicks where they want them to move to, and while there are not many time sensitive moments where this speed can be an issue, it does make some puzzles take a bit longer than necessary. In particular, an area near the end involving repeated use of an elevator to move between two levels ends up a little drawn out because of the need to walk around so much both to execute the proper solution and during the learning period as you find out what can even be interacted with. Most areas aren’t so large that the tedious movement has the chance to harm the experience, but it can also have little moments like trying to get a character to position themselves or an object properly in order to solve a puzzle that adds a bit of a hitch to the game’s pace.

THE VERDICT: The general experience of Luna: The Shadow Dust is definitely an enjoyable one. The world is beautifully realized with sight and sound even though not a single word is used to explain the story, but much like its puzzles, much of it is intuitively understood. Climbing up the tower is definitely designed more as an experience devoted to exploring a simple but interesting plot through visual storytelling than providing strong point and click gameplay, but enough of the puzzles do provide interesting concepts or decent challenges to make getting to the top a mostly enjoyable experience. Movement is too slow for its own good and a few puzzles are much too simple, but these are easily overlooked thanks to the moments that do have more involved problem solving or are just a chance to appreciate the artistry featured throughout this title.

 

And so I give Luna: The Shadow Dust for PC…

A GOOD rating. While the walking speed feels like an outright blemish on the experience, most other little quibbles like the easy puzzles don’t offend so much as they are missed opportunities to include better challenges. Sometimes these are more focused on realizing a tone or providing an interesting visual though so overcomplicating the room could risk lessening the impact of those more emotionally focused moments, but in other areas it can mix together a multistep puzzle with such things quite effectively. It does do that mixing often enough that Luna: The Shadow Dust never hits a slump, and by keeping the scope of each room’s interactivity small, it prevents the player from getting stuck while also providing enough to make its better puzzles satisfying to figure out. Progress is interesting to make because of the desire to see more of this beautiful hand drawn world or uncover more of the story tied to it, the experience rewarding enough that its pace and moments of simplicity don’t negatively impact those vital components.

 

Luna: The Shadow Dust feels like it’s more art than game in quite a few ways, but its more inspired puzzles allow it to be appreciated for reasons beyond its look and wordless storytelling. It is not a game that you come to for challenging problem solving, but it provides enough interactivity to keep you invested during its short exploration of a beautiful world.