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(Reviewed by using PSVR)
First impression
Anything from the makers of Journey and Flower will caught up my attention. The most recent one of theirs is Luna, a VR/non-VR game and I had strong feelings this game is gonna be marvelous. The little footage I saw of it, I was immediately in love with the mystical and magical world of Luna.
Story
The story in Luna is dream-like and many things were more symbolical than literal. This is a story of a Bird who have to collect back missing Moon pieces, which last piece was taken by a mysterious Owl.
The story is very children-night-time-storybook-esque with all the themes of night and sleeping hours. Luna includes different stages that unravels the story one by one. The storyteller is composed male voice actor, that give the story even more peaceful tone. The story itself wasn’t anything overly special, but the way it was presented was beautiful.
Gameplay & Controls
Luna can be played as VR and non-VR. I chose the VR, just to give the experience more immersive feeling. First thing I had to do was to open the stage by doing astral puzzles, that I found to be easy going, rather than stressful. The stages were like a round dioramas, that I had to decorate first with different plants to make it come alive. I could implant flowers and trees and choose their colour and size—finally being ready, I dived into the scenery to watch the story continue.
I could choose between usual Dualshock controller or Move controllers, and playing with VR, I chose Move. The controls worked fine, besides when I tried to do something specific, like place/adjust small plants, it became difficult to do. I think the diorama was too small and packed, they could’ve been bigger to make things easier to handle.
Graphics
Everything looked like coloured paper folded into shapes, it enhanced the feeling of being in a storybook. All the colours were smooth and easy, the palette following the same tone. What comes to the quality of the graphics, I found them being little rough sometimes, especially all edges (afterwards I quickly tried Luna in non-VR and everything looked much smoother).
Sound
The male narrator of Luna, was calm and made me even relaxed at times. He told the story well and I could see him telling the story more to the children than to a 30-year-old grown-up, making everything little bit too childlike for me. The background music was beautiful to listen, as well.
Difficulty
It was easy to play Luna, even the puzzles weren’t that hard. I honestly can’t say anything difficult about this title. Everything was like giving an experience than challenge the players.
Last impression
Luna is peaceful and calm, telling easy-going story with beautiful surroundings. Being more of relaxed experience than loud and complex. It’s very evident this game is from makers of Journey and Flower, because it holds same kind of specialness in it. For hard gamers this surely isn’t meant to, but everyday players and younger audience for sure.
Review copy provided by the publisher
RELEASE DATE: Jun 19, 2019
GENRE: Puzzle / Adventure / Casual
DEVELOPER: Funomena
PUBLISHER: Funomena
PLATFORMS: PlayStation 4
(PS VR & PS Camera Compatible
PS Move Compatible)
Microsoft Windows
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One More Level 