From the start, its beautiful hand-drawn visuals, dreamlike puzzles, and mysterious story line — which unfolds without a word of dialogue — drew me in and held my interest until the credits.
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.
magnifique. 75 characters? come on guys! there are no words for this game, if you like grapghic adventures and symbols, good storie......
fck you metacritic. simply great game
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.
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.
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.
This was the first video game to make me cry. I don't mind admitting it. This game is really special. The graphics are beautiful, the music is perfect, the puzzles have just the right difficulty, and the cut scenes really tug at the heart strings in such a sincere way.
Overall, This is a good game that gives me Ghibli nostalgia and does not overstays its welcome. Positives:
1. The art work has a story book quality to them and are amazingly hand drawn. It is a rare breed in todays game industry.
2. The music is excellently composed which is a great asset to any puzzle game.
3. The puzzles are not the most difficult in the world but they are well thought out and avoid pixel finding like some of the other games in the genre does quite often.
Negatives:
1. The control does take some time to get used to when the 2nd character is introduced as you will need to control both of them separately.
Spoiler Bonus: the Main character has 4 fingers. Is that a reference to the famous Mickey Mouse or is it also a cost saving measure? Guess we have to decide ourselves ;)
The art is charming but the game is scattered, clunky, and very unrewarding. This game would have functioned better as a series of non sequiturs because the story seriously does not work on any level.
Real bad on every level. Weak animation, a story that is somehow both overwrought and nonexistent, and above all else, flat, clunky, unimaginative gameplay. This is SHRUG, the game.
1990 called and they want their boring, melodramatic, underwritten and overwrought attempts at games back. Also, they say that even their puzzles didn't **** this bad.
SummaryLUNA The Shadow Dust is a fully hand-animated Point&Click puzzle adventure, brought to life through wordless storytelling, beautiful cinematics and a breathtaking original soundtrack.