Luminary hit Steam Early Access on August 11, 2026, and the first player reactions paint a pretty mixed picture. What sounds on paper like a promising co-op action RPG turns out, on closer inspection, to be a game that borrows heavily from Enshrouded. Not just visually, but mechanically too. Whether the current asking price is worth it, or whether you should hold off, is what we break down in this review.
Before we get into the details, one thing up front: Luminary is being built by just two developers under the studio name Refractive Entertainment. That is an impressive feat, and it also explains a lot about the current state of the game. If you expect a finished product, you will be disappointed right now. If you understand that a small team is chasing a big vision, you might judge it more leniently. But leniency only goes so far, and some things still need to be called out plainly.
What is Luminary?
Luminary is a solo or co-op action RPG for up to three players that calls itself an OpenZone ARPG. Developed by Refractive Entertainment, it is set in a world corrupted centuries ago by a surge of primal magic. That same magic also created a radiant energy that dwells within pure warriors called the Luminaries, who fight to reclaim the land. Sound familiar? Exactly. The premise, the mechanics, the town-building element, the crafting, the gathering guilds of mining, fishing, and foraging: if you have played Enshrouded, you will experience one deja vu after another here.
Luminary as an Enshrouded clone: where the parallels lie
If you know Enshrouded, you will feel right at home in Luminary. A world threatened by darkness that you must reclaim. A town-building system where you rescue NPCs like a blacksmith, armorer, and chef and level them up. An open world with enemy camps you have to destroy. Crafting, resource gathering, exploring caves, unlocking fast travel points. Even the concept of life trees you need to liberate feels like a direct cousin of the Flame in Enshrouded.
That is not necessarily a bad thing. Enshrouded is an excellent game, and if a small dev team takes inspiration from it, something good can come of it. But Luminary currently does little to establish itself as its own game. The mechanics are nearly identical, the world structure is similar, even the UI elements and progression system feel cloned. Anyone hoping to find something new here will find that Luminary copies the Enshrouded formula almost one to one, without matching its current scope or depth.
Graphics and atmosphere: looks are half the story
The positive first: Luminary does look genuinely nice. The colors are vibrant, the lighting is atmospheric, and the buildings, the small town with its market stalls and fortresses, all look pretty. One player who spoke up in the Steam community put it this way: the buildings of the small town, the market stalls, the fortresses, all of that looks very good graphically. Looking at the screenshots and footage, I can only agree.
But pretty alone is not enough. A game lives from its content and from whether the world feels alive. And that is exactly where the problem lies right now. The world is vast and beautiful, but it feels like an empty stage still waiting for its actors to arrive.
The world is empty and repetitive
This is one of the points where the first player reactions get particularly critical. One user who tested the game thoroughly described it like this: you keep running through the same goblin camps with the exact same garrison. An archer visibly shoots up to three meters wide of the mark, and it still counts as a hit. That is frustrating and makes the game feel unfinished.
On top of that, there is barely any variety in the fauna. You find a couple of deer, a few pigs, and otherwise the aforementioned goblin camps. NPCs are missing entirely, and where there are no NPCs, there are logically no quests either. The map is barely helpful because you have no overview of your own location. A minimap or compass is also missing.
Alpha build sold as Early Access?
Here is where it gets really interesting, and a bit uncomfortable. A player who already played Luminary in its alpha phase spoke up and was blunt about it. His core message: there is no improvement over the alpha or the demo. Worse still, the game itself still says “Alpha Build” on screen. Selling that as Early Access, he called pure fraud.
That is a harsh statement, but it has substance. Early Access normally means a game is in a playable state where you can already sense what it might become. With Luminary, you get the feeling of playing an alpha version that someone slapped an Early Access label on. The core mechanics work in principle, but the content is almost completely absent.
Skills and progression: everything after five minutes?
Another point of criticism that drew incomprehension from multiple players is the skill system. According to one player, 95 percent of skills say “not yet available.” There are only two skills in total right now, which you unlock at level 3. That means after about five minutes of gameplay, you have essentially unlocked everything the game currently offers in terms of depth.
That is disappointing for an action RPG. The appeal of the genre is developing your character, unlocking new abilities, and improving over hours. If that is done after a few minutes, there is not much left to keep you around long-term. Especially since the combat is not currently deep enough to sustain interest on the sheer joy of fighting alone.
Co-op: potential, but rough around the edges
This is the area where Luminary could actually shine, given some polish. A player who went co-op with friends had a good time overall, but also reported some issues. On the positive side: reviving worked smoothly without a big loading screen, and there were hardly any connection drops. The drop-in, drop-out system seems stable.
On the negative side, the first chests are not shared loot for all players. For example, only one person can grab the bow from the first chest, which is annoying especially at the start. Also, respawning did not work at the last activated tree, which led to frustration. The system is good in concept, but needs work on the details.
What is missing: climbing, orientation, NPCs
A particularly frequent wish from players concerns climbing. In a world built around vertical exploration, where you can hear chests or dwarf statues but cannot reach them because they are on or inside a tower, the lack of a climbing mechanic is glaring. This was frustrating for several players and should be added quickly, according to their feedback.
Orientation is another weak point. The map is useless, there is no minimap, and no compass. In an open world designed to be explored, that is a significant shortcoming. You quickly lose your bearings and run aimlessly through a world that is already empty.
And then there are the NPCs. Without NPCs there are no quests, without quests there is no narrative framework, and without a framework the game feels like a tech demo. The developers promise the town will come alive, but in its current state, it is a ghost town with pretty facades.
Compared to Enshrouded: what Luminary still needs to learn
If you compare Luminary directly to Enshrouded, the gap becomes clear. Enshrouded offers a dense, handcrafted world with countless dungeons, boss fights, a polished building system, and dozens of hours of content. Its NPCs are not just decoration: they unlock crafting stations, give quests, and have personalities. The world feels alive.
Luminary currently has only fragments of that. The town-building mechanic is sketched out, the NPCs exist conceptually, but the execution is missing. The world is large but empty. Combat works but lacks depth. Co-op works but needs fine-tuning. The potential is visible, but the distance to Enshrouded is obvious.
What the Steam reviews say
On Steam, Luminary currently sits at “Mostly Positive” with 73 percent positive reviews out of 146 ratings. That is a mixed bag. Some players praise the core idea and the graphics, while others sharply criticize the lack of content and unfinished state.
One more positively inclined player wrote that despite the pure alpha character, he was genuinely impressed. He does not regret the purchase at all and thinks the game has the potential to become a real gem. Of course there is still a lot of room for improvement at the moment, but a pearl does not become shimmering, large, and round in its shell overnight either. That is a nice metaphor and a fair stance, as long as you are aware you are buying an unfinished product.
On the other side is the player who tested the game in alpha and could not spot any improvement. He strongly advises against buying it and speaks of fraud because the game still displays “Alpha Build.” These counter-voices matter because they sketch the reality behind the pretty facade.
System requirements and price
Luminary costs 20 euros at full Early Access price, with a current 15 percent introductory discount bringing it to 17 euros. The minimum requirements are moderate, with an Intel i7 8700k, 16 GB RAM, and a GTX 1080. Recommended specs are an AMD Ryzen 9 3900X with an RTX 2080. The game needs 20 GB of storage and runs only on Windows 10 or 11.
For a game built by a two-person team, those are solid requirements. The question is whether the content currently justifies the price. At 17 euros for a game that the developers themselves describe as being in alpha or beta stage, you have to ask whether it would not be better to wait until more content has been delivered.
Verdict: potential yes, but hold off on buying for now
So where do we stand? Luminary has nice graphics, a working co-op mechanic, and a world with potential. But in its current state, the game is nothing more than an alpha version sold as Early Access. The world is empty, the skills are almost non-existent, NPCs are missing, and orientation is miserable.
If you have played Enshrouded, you will recognize almost everything in Luminary, only in a much earlier stage of development. The parallels are unmistakable, and that raises the question of whether Luminary can ever step out of its role model’s shadow. That depends entirely on whether the two-person team has the resources to deliver the missing content and give the game its own identity.
My recommendation: wait. Watch the development, check the updates, and reassess in a few months. The developers seem dedicated and take feedback seriously. But right now there is simply too little to justify the 17 euro price tag, especially when Enshrouded offers a much more mature experience for similar money. If you still want to buy in, know exactly what you are getting: an unfinished world with pretty visuals and a lot of promises.
Luminary could be a genuinely good game in a year or two. The basic ingredients are right, the developers’ craftsmanship is respectable, and the community seems willing to help. But there is still a long way to go, and the current Early Access release is more of a progress report than a gaming experience.