Lantern Studio: LUNA The Shadow Dust George Eastmead - Community Manager
Mojiken Studio: When The Past Was Around Brigitta Rena - Illustrator and Developer
What is your game about, and what does the player do in the game?
LUNA The Shadow Dust LUNA The Shadow Dust is a hand-drawn point and click puzzle adventure game. Players control both characters to journey through a magical tower in search of the mysteries of old. Gameplay is joined together with a series of hand-animated wordless soundtracks in an emotional story with an original orchestral soundtrack.
When The Past Was Around When the Past was Around tells the story of Eda, a girl who lost her way in the journey to achieve her dreams. Until she met The Owl. From this game, we could see how Eda found love and spark in her dream with Owl’s help, but after a brief time, Eda realized that Owl will not be there with her for long. It’s a bittersweet story about love, moving on, and letting go. The game is a simple point-and-click puzzle game with beautiful hand-drawn art and classic music. A short silent narrative experience that can be finished in less than 2 hours.
What inspired the development of your game?
LUNA The Shadow Dust Classic adventure games such as The Neverhood and Machinarium inspired the gameplay of LUNA The Shadow Dust. Thematically, the magical worlds of Ursula LeGuin novels and rich animation style of Studio Ghibli all played a huge part in the formation of the game.
When The Past Was Around When the Past was Around is a work of fiction. At first, I’m not sure what kind of story happened between Eda and Owl. All I know is I want to make a bitter-sweet story. So, we discussed it with everyone's life experience in the studio, and the result is what you can see in the game! Even though it is a work of fiction, somehow we put little details like Eda & Owl's favorite drinks, date spots, etc. from our own romance experience. What we’ve done with our partner, and how it feels to lose someone so dear to you. Other than that, I take inspiration from many things I like, from games like Florence and Rusty Lake, from illustrator works like Puuung, Maori Sakai, and Yuko Higuchi, and from comic books like The Ancient Magus Bride and The Girl From The Other Side.
The Tales from the East bundle celebrates Asian game development. How did your team form?
LUNA The Shadow Dust Lantern Studio is a four-person all-Chinese game dev team, with two of the group based in London and Toronto, respectively. Beidi Guo, the art director behind the game; met Fox, the project manager, back in high school and together formed the rest of the team bringing in Wang Qian, the composer and Wang Guan, the programmer who was previously working with Ubisoft at the time.
When The Past Was Around It started in 2013 when a group of college friends from Indonesia decided to make their own game development studio. All of us majored in visual design so we had zero experience with game development, especially programming. So, we made our own internal game jam named Mojiken Camp to learn anything we needed to know from programming to marketing. This Mojiken Camp soon became something that we routinely do every two years. Fast forward into 2019, we invited our audience to decide our next Mojiken Camp theme. The selected theme was “Future Memories”, and we formed small teams of 3-5 people to make small demos from this theme, one of the demos was “When the Past was Around”.
What themes or tropes from Asian culture are present in the game?
LUNA The Shadow Dust The inspirations from Studio Ghibli animation are clearly apparent to most players of LUNA The Shadow Dust. Where many Asian productions present a balance between light and dark as a conflict between good and evil, LUNA looks to show this eternal struggle as a necessary conflict that helps form the intricacies of the world.
When The Past Was Around We try our best to capture the modern culture and everyday life atmosphere in Indonesia nowadays. We made it kind of subtle, so players from wherever they live can still grasp the concept and relate to the story. For some examples, we show the concept of a Kost, a long-term rented room that is usually found in Indonesia. We also showed some props and furniture that are familiar to Indonesian people like the shape of our post box, classic naco window, enamel mug, in both Eda and Owl fashion (my favorite was Eda’s white kebaya), and many other little details. This was inspired by how I love Japanese culture from furniture, tableware, to fashion. The aesthetic is in the little details so I want to show these details but in the Indonesian version.
What is unique about your game that differentiates it from similar other titles?
LUNA The Shadow Dust Unlike many point and click games, LUNA avoids an inventory system and never forces you to backtrack from your location to solve a puzzle. The wordless narrative pushes the story forward and makes the game accessible to all cultures and languages.
When The Past Was Around While there’s nothing unique in terms of theme and mechanics, When the Past was Around is something very precious and personal to us. The story of When the Past was Around was inspired by our story; Brigitta Rena the art director and Elwin the technical artist. Of course, with a tweak here and there. I think that this personal touch is what makes the game special and has a value of its own. We also try our best to make this game without any dialogue. So the story is told with character gestures, environmental storytelling, and music. I hope that with this, people can interpret the story of When the Past was Around freely depending on their experience in relationship and life.
One year since the release! Dev Note & few thoughts
Hello to our lovely LUNA The Shadow Dust supporters,
It’s been almost a year since LUNA launched! Today, we’d like to share what we’ve learned during the game’s development and tell you about our biggest successes (and failures). If you are planning to make a game yourself, we think you’ll find our experiences helpful!
The Backstage Experience
Many of you might know that after the game was released, we produced high-quality merch (pins, posters, postcards) as a way of breathing new life into our characters. We also ran another KS campaign to make our physical LUNA artbook a reality.
We’re so thankful that our book and OST have received such great feedback. LUNA just feels so much more alive now. It’s hard work, and the costs are high, but because we’ve also been inspired by many other great art books and albums in the past, it only felt right to contribute back to the community.
Over the last year, we’ve earned the community’s recognition and have received many awards and nominations as a result. It really is the best feeling knowing that your hard work has paid off! (oﾟvﾟ)ノ
We still consider the release of the game to be our biggest success. The harsh reality is that many games—not only indie titles but some big IPs—never see the light of day for various reasons. To see LUNA finally out there is a blessing in and of itself, and we’re even more thankful that the global pandemic did not directly impact our release. It’s no secret, however, that we—and the game industry as a whole—have been affected by the newly-imposed travel restrictions. None of us were able to attend conventions, talks, and festivals. We miss meeting people face to face, and we sincerely hope that life will get back to normal as soon as possible!
Now, it’s time to shed some light on what didn’t go exactly as planned.
Our ambition was to use LUNA’s fully hand-drawn yet content-heavy cinematics to tell our story in a unique way. However, players often felt that the story was a little ambiguous, and during cutscenes, some grew impatient. The slow walking pace might have also affected players' mood as they solved puzzles. We also received some criticism regarding the difficulty of our puzzles. Some thought they were too hard; others found them too easy or repetitive.
Obviously, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to these problems, but we agreed that the gaming experience could be improved for the better. This is why our team decided to redesign one of the most criticized puzzles, improving the characters’ walking pace (without compromising the game’s feel) and optimizing repetitive routes between puzzle-solving sessions.
“But the game’s already been out for a year; isn’t it a bit too late to apply such changes?” some might ask. Well, these optimizations are not bug-related, so there’s no need to rush. We’d rather take the time to decide whether they’re really worth changing from a game design perspective. And as most of you already know, indie games need time to grow; it takes time to assess feedback and see how other players react to the same design choices. All these changes will be available to experience in the next major update.
It’s rare for an indie title to blow up overnight, but we’re confident that more and more people in the future will slowly get to know LUNA and that our community will keep growing. With that in mind, the game should always be as polished as possible.
Slow Growth
The press often offers indie games publicity for the first 3 months or so after release, but after that, many small games vanish from the radar as new titles emerge.
Getting to our players is a slow process, but that doesn't mean we just sit and wait for LUNA to magically grow on its own. Over the past year, with help from both of our publishers, we’ve continuously tried to expose more people to the game. We attended Steam’s virtual festivals and ported the game to various platforms. Our next goal is to bring LUNA to mobile for Android and iOS—spoiler alert: We’re almost there!
As a team with no other investments, we’ve still not broken even one year after LUNA’s release. But we're getting there. Your ratings, merch purchases, recommendations, and reviews all help keep the dream alive. Making and releasing indie games is not a sprint; it’s a marathon. It’s an uphill battle, but as we’re slowly heading toward our goal, we hope LUNA’s success will help us create more awesome games in the future.
Thank you for all your support. (●ˇ∀ˇ●)
Yours, The LUNA Dev Team
Cute Sidekicks Bundle
Cute Sidekicks Bundle
In LUNA The Shadow Dust our protagonist is assisted by an adorable cat-like creature. Switch between the two companions to solve puzzles. Despite living in the 50th century, Henry (Mutropolis) is old-fashioned and prefers a good old trowel for his archaeological adventures. MAX, his cute robot sidekick, prefers a more modern approach. So, it comes in handy that players can control MAX every now and then to get the job done!
MUTROPOLIS is a lovely sci-fi adventure set on the abandoned Planet Earth. Play as Henry Dijon (hero, nerd, detective) in search of a legendary lost city. Uncover weird ancient artifacts. And PLEASE don’t get obliterated by an ageless evil. You’ve been warned.
After five years of hard work by Bea and Pablo (Pirita Studio, Madrid) the new mystery point & click adventure Mutropolis finally has launched. Here are some reactions by the press the product has received:
one of the best adventure games that have appeared in recent years - 100/100 itc.ua, Yuri Melkov
theBAE 2021 - LUNA The Shadow Dust: Dev insights & gameplay
Event Information
We're digitally exhibiting at the Big Adventure Event #theBEA from January 21st - January 25th. We'll run multiple streams and announce them here. Apologies if you see several announcements.
Dev insights & gameplay
We introduce the team and talk about the inspiration and ideas behind LUNA The Shadow Dust. We show concept art and some gameplay. A lot of behind the scenes content is waiting for you.
About LUNA The Shadow Dust
LUNA 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.
Hello, all the lovely LUNA The Shadow Dust supporters,
Great news!
The LUNA Artbook we've been talked about forever is finally happening! We’ve just launched a Kickstarter Campaign today in order to bring this hardcover artbook to more people!
About the Art Book
✨ 158 pages full-color Laminated hardcover print 📕 An extra 30 pages of content over the digital version 🖋️ Limited Signed copy and more goodies exclusive to Kickstarter backer
Our Early Bird Tier & Collector Tier has limited numbers and it's going fast! Get it while still available!
Since the completion of LUNA, we immediately decided to devote ourselves to the artbook’s creation. Although it was the first book-design project for us, we wanted to do it as professionally as possible. Just as we learned much during the game development, we wouldn’t be able to gain an understanding of bookmaking without taking on this task directly. Luckily, with all the generous help from friends and family, and after almost half a year, the team was proud of the final result.
LUNA The Shadow Dust - The Artbook is like being backstage of the game - or as we see it, a visual record of the journey from the beginning towards the end. As the game itself does not contain any dialogue, players are given the freedom to enjoy, fantasize, and wonder about the world of LUNA. In presenting the hardcover copy of the artbook, we hope it will bring further delight and a deeper understanding for you when playing our game. Furthermore, we’d love to share the wonderful game making experience with many more out there. Last but not least, we would not be surprised if one day, the seed of an idea for another game or creative project from us emerges from this book, just like how LUNA The Shadow Dust was inspired and born.
This book is made for you.
If you enjoy the game, please support us to bring it to more people! Thank you!╰(*°▽°*)╯
Hoping to bring you all more news soon!
Take care and with love, Lantern Studio Team
TOMMI Awards nomination, Merchandise News & Dev Update
Hello, all the lovely LUNA The Shadow Dust supporters,
It has been a while since our last update, and today we have some exciting news to share with you all!
"The game, which is co-financed by a crowdfunding campaign, is visually different from the others: Behind the drawing of the characters and the animations is real craftsmanship. And that creates a very special, dense, almost poetic atmosphere. Another special feature of this game is that it does completely without dialogues. In fact, the puzzles are not easy, and that's good too - because once you've immersed yourself in the world of Luna, you don't want to come back so quickly. From 10 years and up” ---------- review quote from the jury expert
For us, it is so wonderful to see that LUNA has also been recognized by the culture industry as a game that can bring joy to not only adult players but also the younger audience. In fact, since the game launch, we’ve received many messages from parents all over the world, telling us that they had a wonderful family gaming experience with their little ones. It’s very rewarding to know our game is able to cross the language boundaries and reach more players as we hoped so.
The Award ceremony will be live in German children's television channel KiKa on October 17th, 17:00. We’re excited to hear more in the month to come!
Merch Shop is now open!
We asked YOU what merch you wanted to see and we are so proud to finally have it ready for you!! Now we have some beautiful quality Merch of LUNA available in our ONLINE SHOP! The numbers are limited, so get them when the stock lasts!!
Hoping to bring you all more news soon!
Take care and with love, Lantern Studio Team
Trading Cards, Badges, Emoticons and Backgrounds
Hello, lovely LUNA The Shadow Dust players
You’ve been asking about Steam trading cards for a while - here’s the news you’ve been waiting for!
Trading cards
Our artist Beidi has spent a lot of time creating some really nice artwork for cards, badges, emoticons, and backgrounds. These are available now and will drop when you play the game. If you're into collecting Steam trading cards, there's now a great reason to replay the game if you have finished it already!
LUNA on the Nintendo Switch
Unlike many action-based games, point and click titles require changes more focused on redesigning interactions, when porting to a new platform. These changes can even conflict with a lot of mechanisms within the game, for example, the ‘hover mouse over an object to get a hint icon’ feature. We have to re-imagine the experience of playing LUNA from a new perspective in order to find the best way to keep the fundamental point and click feeling, while boosting the mobility of our characters on new hardware. Players should feel that there's tangible feedback in their movements when using the controller.
Now that the control design is more or less done, we're starting together with our publisher to test and debug the full Switch version!
Mini Interviews
There are so many behind-the-scenes stories we'd like to share with our players. As a result, we've made them into a series of mini-interviews. You can watch all of them on our Youtube channel. For example, here's Composer, Susie Wang, explains how she approached composing for LUNA The Shadow Dust and matching the mood to that of the story and the wider world. [previewyoutube="U2l1WHc-FwA;full"]
Hopefully to bring more news to you all soon!
Take care and with love, Lantern Studio Team
Dev Update & Merchandise News
Hello, lovely LUNA The Shadow Dust players,
At a strange time like this, we hope all of you are well. Much the same as everyone across the world, all the members of Lantern Studio are more or less forced to work from home under each country’s individual quarantine regulations. It is a hard time for all of us, so many things have been unexpectedly affected but we're still trying our best to keep up our spirits - to work, relax and take care of our family members as best we can. There hasn't been a time in memory in which ALL of us are in such a crisis together, and the only way to get through it is to both help each other and look after ourselves. It is an extremely difficult time for any small studio like us, so we sincerely thank everyone who has purchased our game (and other indie games) or supported us (and other indie teams) in any way!
Despite all the doom and gloom, there are still some bright spots in our life. Let’s share some of the news about the LUNA tasks we’ve been working on over these recent days in quarantine!
Switch version
It occurs to us sometimes that when we first started working on LUNA, back in 2015, the Nintendo Switch didn't even exist. Since then, it has become one of the most popular gaming platforms across the globe - how fast the world changes! We are now working very hard on porting LUNA to the Switch, designing some new mechanisms that allow for a mouse-based point and click game to run smoothly and intuitively on both a touch and controller-based gaming device. Not all of us have the dev kit for the Switch yet, so testing out the game on our PS and Xbox controllers has sometimes been a bit challenging too. There are occasional visual clues and tutorial animations that will require a redesign, but we’re ultimately excited to see our little game getting shaped up for Switch in the near future!
Merchandise
After factories across the world went silent, we had some doubts about the timescale within which we could bring LUNA merch to the table. Now that some factories are back open, we have been able to receive the very first of our LUNA merchandise prototypes! Based on everyone’s feedback (thank-you!), the pin set, postcards and the poster are the first batches of items we will put into production. More will come in the future! This week, we’re really excited to be finally able to show off these lovely items for the first time! ✧*｡٩(ˊωˋ*)و✧*｡
Due to the global quarantine situation, the postage and delivery services are however still unfortunately also highly affected and we don’t know exactly when we will be receiving these items, but we’re still excited to share some of the pictures with you all. Once the restrictions are let off a bit, we will be able to sell these products to everyone worldwide. We promise we will update everyone about this!
Everyone’s feedback is important to us
We read everyone’s feedback and we can’t express how much we appreciate it, regardless of whether the comments are long or short, positive or negative. The game has connected us with people all over the world in an unexpected way. We have watched people discussing the lore in all kinds of languages we don’t even speak, parents playing LUNA with their kids and couples trying to solve puzzles together. Through it all, people have both shed tears and laughed out loud at the points where we expected the story might impact them. We have received detailed articles, review videos, podcast interview invitations and amazing fan art! Thank you for sharing these with us. We might not be able to reply to every post or comment but we can tell you we read them all and cherish them deeply.
We’re also really touched by the criticism. Sometimes it can seem a bit harsh in the beginning but it really reminds us that there are so many things to learn in game design. While doing our normal debugging, we’re still trying to optimize some of the key shortages in LUNA that some players have pointed out, like character movement speed, some repetitive puzzles that were not challenging enough and those over-complicated game design elements which might have left some players feeling frustrated or that the challenge was unfair.
If you have played our game but haven’t left us any comments, we would really appreciate it if you were to do so, it not only helps us polish the game but also helps other players discover LUNA on Steam and other various platforms. You can write a review on Steam, or send us your feedback on Twitter or Discord.
Last but not least, we want everyone to stay safe, keep up the spirit and carry on!
Take care and with love, Lantern Studio Team
March Post Launch Patch
Hello, Lovely LUNA The Shadow Dust Players,
It has been almost one month since the launch of LUNA. After another 2 weeks of collecting feedback, we immediately started work on a new patch to address any further issues. We hope that after each patch, the number of bugs can be reduced and the gameplay experience will be even smoother!
So here are the issues we fixed in this updated build:
Gameplay / functional improvements:
-Added “skip” option for all cutscenes, including the game credits that have played before -Improved interactions across a few levels (The Clock Tower / The Kitchen)
Bug fixes (in various levels):
-Audio bug when skipping cutscenes -SFX bugs (Game Menu / The Garden) -Character positional glitch / Character freezing during gameplay (The Library) -Fixed the issue in which in certain situations, players may not be able to get the Time Travel Paradox achievement.
Original Soundtrack:
We updated the soundtrack album and now players can also download tracks in FLAC format. At the same time, you may also own the MP3 versions.
Digital Artbook:
We’ve uploaded the Traditional Chinese version.
We are grateful for all the feedback provided to us and please let us know if you find any other issues. For general bug reports please comment HERE.
Thank you again for purchasing and supporting our game! ヾ(≧▽≦*)o
Lantern Studio
February Post-Launch Patch!
Hello, Lovely LUNA The Shadow Dust Players,
First of all thank you to everyone who played our game so far, within the first week of launch, we were overwhelmed by the number of the feedback and comments we received from the community. All these valuable feedback and criticisms are read by us and will be helping us to improve the quality of the game. Therefore we sincerely thank you for taking your time writing to us.
So here are the issues we fixed in this updated build:
Gameplay / visual / function related improvement:
- Added a “skip” button for any cut scene that has played before - Fixed some display issue that caused by large graphic assets - Fine tuned some cut scene details
Bug fix ( in different levels)
- Character floating or disappearing / Camera movement glitches (Garden) - Character’s interaction bugs when encountering shadows (Specimen Room) - Character position shift / Camera movement glitches / Mouse cursor display error (Master room) - SFX bugs (Top of the tower) - Typo fix (Credits)
Steam Achievement
- Fixed the bug of not being able to achieve the Bee Keeper Achievement - Improved the description of the Master Chef Achievement
After updating the game the issues above should be fixed, however, if you encounter any new bugs that weren't on this list, please comment under the [bug report] post which we pinned in our Steam community channel. We will fix them in the following updates. Thank you!
