Emma

Luna the Shadow Dust is an indie game perfect for those who want to sit down on a rainy evening and relax on a wholesome little adventure. The orchestral music transports the player into a fairytale storybook turned video game; the art has that charming hand drawn quality to it that lets you feel just how much love and care the artists poured into it; the puzzles clever and challenging; the story has well-placed suspense, mystery, and finally a touching conclusion. When I finally finished this game I felt a conflicting sense of longing, sadness, happiness, and satisfaction; sadness because I had grown attached to the main character and her doggy companion; longing because I wanted to know more about this mysterious world the developers had built; happiness at the touching ending to the story; and satisfaction because I knew that despite everything, the story and had reached its natural conclusion and that anything beyond that would and should be a new story and therefore a new game in itself. The escape-the-room puzzles are the main draw of the game. Each level has its own unique mechanic and the puzzles are well-designed, fair, and challenging. As an avid fan of puzzle games, I have seen my fair share of puzzles that make me go "that's BS!" and Luna the Shadow Dust is NOT one of those games. In my personal opinion, puzzles that fall under the BS category are those that make the reader solve long math problems that would be better plugged into WolframAlpha, puzzles that require brute force guess and check of all combinations, or puzzles that require outside knowledge of things such as Braille or Morse Code. This game requires none of these things, as the clues for every puzzle are always there: sometimes difficult to notice, often difficult to interpret, but always present and fair. One recommendation is that the game experience is better on PC than on Nintendo Switch. The point and click controls are only present on the PC, as was originally intended, whereas the Switch controls auto-select the clickable objects for the player. I feel that this detracts from some of the gameplay, as part of the fun and adventure is clicking around the screen to find what objects are interactable. By pointing out those interactable objects, the Switch experience significantly lowers the difficulty (and in my opinion some of the enjoyability) of the puzzles. Luna the Shadow Dust is, however, a relatively short game -- at around 10 hours I was able to play through all the levels. The story despite being touching, cute, and reaching a natural stopping point, never fully fleshes out many aspects, including minimal world-building and minimal character backstory. Keep in mind that there is no dialogue or text in this game -- all clues are implied through symbols and all story points are implied through the actions and expressions of the characters. Personally I feel that this adds a layer of mystery and charm to the game, but also in a way makes me wish there was more. Overall, I highly recommend this game to those who enjoy escape rooms, those who enjoy artistic games, and those who enjoy wholesome mystery adventures.