Embrace the tingling warmth of glowing lanterns and the creeping chill of stooping shadows in Lantern Studio‘s monumental new title, LUNA The Shadow Dust. Lantern Studio’s four-person team is releasing LUNA The Shadow Dust on February 13, the perfect date to be a singularly beautiful and well-timed love letter to gamers everywhere. Originally a Kickstarter darling, LUNA The Shadow Dust has since matured into a full release that does more than merely stand on its own four paws–it shines, brilliantly, casting its own shadow on future point-and-click puzzlers that dare to so confidently scale such treacherous heights.
LUNA The Shadow Dust is a wordless narrative that follows a young, hat-clad boy and his adorable, fur-clad companion. The boy’s memories have been lost and his adventure begins at the foot of an ominous narrow building. To scale this building and discover the secrets at its summit, the player must solve puzzles by flipping from the boy’s perspective to his companion’s, controlling both at different points and clearing room after radiant room. The world is illustrated with mythological artwork scattered throughout the rooms and their puzzles. Because much of the focus is on solving locked doors and achieving forward progress, these universe-building panoramas offer a strong incentive for an unmarred second playthrough. The story of LUNA The Shadow Dust is dense, beautiful, and elusive–blink, and you might miss something important.
Roughly five hours is enough for the average player to make it through to the luminous finale. Puzzles increase in complexity as you near the end, succeeding as much as deeply memorable set pieces as genuinely satisfying challenges. The rooms in which these puzzles live never fail to surprise with their deceptively simple aesthetic and brilliantly subtle storytelling. Effortlessly weaving humor with sorrow, joy with fear, LUNA The Shadow Dust is an emotional journey worth every minute. For being Lantern Studio’s first title, it’s a staggeringly polished product that gleams as brightly and as purely as its twinkling namesake.
Game Pilgrim 