Shapik: The Moon Quest

Fun point-and-click adventure that reminds me of Samorost. Took me a little time to figure out that some things were clickable. Sometimes the games holds your hand a little bit too much and sometimes nothing at all, but overall a very enjoyable experience!

I hate the player character’s shrugging idle-animation. Other than that, this game is pretty cool.

Short adventure with easy puzzles and the message to not destroy the planet but protect it. I like the art style and atmosphere, it reminds me of Amanita games. Switching between chapters and hints (you don't ever need) are really convenient, so it's easy to 100 % the game in three hours.

For a game that boasts about its lack of text, there sure is a lot of talking in Shapik: The Moon Quest. Characters will chatter at you with nonsense sounds and indecipherable scribbles standing in for the written word appear frequently. But the main tool this game uses in the place of text is animated thought bubbles directly showing you what the character needs to say. None of it's necessary to solve any puzzles, but the thought bubbles are the main way Shapik tells its story, so interpreting those slideshows are how you get more than puzzles out of the game. The Moon Quest is separated into 22 discrete levels which it allows you to replay at any time after you've completed them. This solves all the usual point-and-click worries about having to backtrack to find what you've missed however many screens back or which items in your inventory are still useful. A couple of the level transition even take the time to show why you've lost any equipment collected on a previous level. The premise may be grim, but Shapik: The Moon Quest has a sort of fairy tale logic to it. The intentions and motivations of its characters would be morally complicated if the game was interested in exp…

<3

Shapik: The Moon Quest, developed by Paul Podberezko, Daniil Naletov, Alexander Ahura, and Haim Schnitzer and published by Rapid Snail, is a hand-crafted point-and-click adventure that places atmosphere and visual storytelling at the center of its design. Rather than relying on written dialogue or voice acting, the game communicates almost entirely through animation, environmental detail, and musical cues. This wordless approach immediately distinguishes it from many traditional adventure titles, encouraging players to interpret its world and characters through observation rather than exposition. The story follows Shapik, a small, silent protagonist navigating a world that appears to have been reshaped by catastrophe. The setting suggests a post-apocalyptic landscape, where remnants of technology, unusual machinery, and altered environments coexist with organic life. The narrative unfolds gradually through environmental interactions and expressive character gestures. Thought bubbles and symbolic imagery replace conventional dialogue, allowing players to infer motivations and emotional beats without explicit explanation. This minimalism gives the experience a poetic quality, inviti…