Luna: Shadow Dust is spectacular. The opening sequence shows a boy falling from heaven and stepping into a twisted tower admiring the magnificent and special beauty to me of the beautiful hand-drawn beauty. Luna looks like a living picture book, and her world is so warm and inviting that I want to mold it under her like a warm blanket. Unfortunately, some of Luna's click-and-click puzzles are great for manipulating information.
The main hero in Luna is a nameless boy who surveys a large tower beside his cat friend. Each new tower level is filled with new discoveries and very useful items. As I entered the main hall, I thought of her rape, which seemed to tell the story of an ancient society suffering from terrible evil. Inside the labyrinth's library, I marveled at the small details on every brush. In the small, medieval kitchen, I could feel the warmth coming to her senses. Each new room brought new visual wonders, and I was excited to discover every inch of this mysterious tower.
Each room contains one or two puzzles, which you must solve in order to upgrade. Most of these puzzles are very rewarding, requiring outside-the-box thinking. For example, in a room full of animal bones and lab tests, I found a way for my cat partner to engage in a series of shadows hanging on the wall to reach the lever that opened our exit. In another room, I used a special door to connect between the seasons and help the tree grow. When Luna is at your best, you feel like you are uncovering a secret magic trapped inside the world.
Unfortunately, Luna is bad at clearly showing your intentions. It uses simple and vague puzzles, which often leaves me confused and disappointed. One puzzle requires you to raise a specific rat food to get it out of the room. However, the solution to this puzzle involves jumping on a mouse, which doesn't sound reasonable, so it took me a while to fix it. Another puzzle you have is going through a series of doors to illuminate wall paintings; I turned to brute-Force-and-error here because the connection between doors and paintings is never clear.
Part of my challenge in understanding Luna's world stems from the fact that the developer of Lantern Studio is narrating a story without words. After finishing the game, I came together with a lot of embarrassing storytelling, including a boy's journey to fix a previous mistake that led to the fall of his master. However, a few moments are lacking in connected key tissues, and the story ultimately leaves no lasting impact. It is fair to say that there is not a single point of discussion in the whole game, because a lot of my concern about Luna's puzzles comes from the rareness of understanding the game's language.
If Luna had never been so attacked, it might have been close to great. I loved the atmosphere and the little touches on this earth. Many of the puzzles are fun to solve, but the bad ones are so poorly built that they put my frustration on the edge. As much as I wanted to love Luna, I felt like the game was chasing me.
