The fight between light and dark and the fall out it’s caused is in the stars today, as I illuminate the puzzle adventure Luna The Shadow Dust.
Luna The Shadow Dust is the debut offering from Lantern Studio, published by Application System Heidelberg and was released in February 2020. The game starts with some magical hand-drawn animations as a small boy slowly falls to earth, only to be caught and softly placed down by what seems like a bubble. We’re then faced with a looming dark tower, and with no other options to take, we head inside. Within, we’re faced with a gorgeous ancient wall covered in shadowy pictures depicting strange birds, mythic beasts and tales of lore, and opposite us, a locked door. To exit this confined space and escape our confinement we need to enliven the room by considering the room, and it’s secrets. As we move closer to the strange illustrations delicately drawn on the wall, they start to come alive with colour. Once colour has bloomed into all four, our locked exit magically opens. Moving on to the next room, our entrance closes behind us and once more we’re in a locked space, this time with some pastel buttons available to press. This then, continues the story of Luna.
We need to move from room to room, and work out how to exit, to continue our seemly never-ending rise through the dark tower. After only a handful of areas, a quizzical cat joins us and together, we’re able to crack the code ahead of us. The Cat, dressed in what looks like it’s own cat costume, can enter smaller spaces, and is more agile, jumping from platform to platform. The boy on the other hand can push objects and pull levers. As the title suggests, there is a lot of symbolic puzzles here, specifically involving celestial symbols, nature and light. The cat on occasion has the ability to turn into a shadow. Areas that once seemed unreachable could then be achieved. The controls couldn’t be simpler, just left click to move and interact, and to change to either character click on them, click on their icons in the top right, or press space. There’s nothing more to it. There’s no inventory and nothing to pick up.
Some of the rooms it becomes clear what we have to do to continue on pretty much the second we step in, such as a room full of paintings pointing in certain directions. Others though, we have to use both the boy and the cat together in creative ways. Some of my favourite ways was using the boys own shadow as a stepping stone for the shadow cat to reach somewhere that otherwise would be too far. One other set of puzzles worth mentioning is the door of seasons. Pushing a button allows us to cycle a room through all four seasons, and a puzzle needs to be complete in each one. We can move the cat to one season, then push a button and move the boy to another season, leaving both characters in exactly the same place, but seasons apart. My other favourite puzzle was similar but with time, where we can go forward and back to see what a set of rooms looked like at differing moments. The higher up the tower we climbed you’d think that the difficulty would increase, but it kind of plateaus after around 10 rooms. In some rooms I would find myself happily pushing buttons and pulling leavings, knowing exactly what I needed to do and enjoying the process, where-as others I’d work out the solution, put it into practice and it would get too repetitive, such as collecting books via a cart, or travelling in a floating boat. The real strength of the game though is not its puzzles. It’s the art and music.
There are dozens of rooms to investigate and each one is beautifully illustrated. It is not simply a game to throw on and run through the puzzles to the end to ‘Beat’ it. I’d recommend taking your time and inhaling the environment. For a game such as Luna, you need patience. And not because of the tricky puzzles, because honestly except for one right at the end involving a clock, I didn’t find any of them tricky. But more for the pace of the game. Both the boy and cat walk at a fair pace, but there are sections where you need to traverse a long distance, with nothing more to do except experience your surroundings. I’d even go as far to say my favourite part of the entire game was crossing a magical library on invisible books. All I had to do was walk across the screen through a vast blank void, and glowing visuals revealed themselves. It was stunning. Once a room had been completed, we walk through the door one by one, but we have to do this for each character, so we exit with the boy, then we click on the cat and exit with the cat. They never just go together automatically. I don’t highlight this as a negative, but just another way that emphasize the game really is about being in the moment and being patient. The soundtrack created by Wang Qian has easily entered some of my favourite game music in recent years. I’d happily listen to this without even playing Luna The Shadow Dust.
The game has large sections of cut scenes, all created with beautiful art and music, with the last cut scene taking around 10 minutes. There’s a lot to take in during this last section and although it looks and sounds fabulous, it’s all a little abstract. There’s no dialogue either spoken or on screen in the whole game so from one point of view, it’s absolutely universal, but from a narrative perspective, it’s quite foggy. Reading the developers website afterwards gave me more insight into what was happening.
Luna The Shadow Dust is a triumph in both art and music, and at only around 3 hours long, is time I’m delighted I spent in it’s world. The struggle between light and dark might leave more questions than answers but the Miyazaki-style construct holds it together alongside some inventive puzzles, albeit somewhat repetitive.
Get your copy of LUNA from Humble.
Join like minded adventure game fans at my Point & Click Adventurers Facebook group, and also consider supporting me over on Patreon too.
Michael
Comments