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La-Mulana on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
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LA-MULANA is an “Archaeological Ruin Exploration Action Game,” bringing the classic appeal of adventure with the punishing difficulty of retro-inspired gaming. Search inside ancient ruins, seeking out the “Secret Treasure of Life” – which sleeps in the sprawling ruins of “LA-MULANA” and is said to be the beginning of all civilization.
La-Mulana is a metroidvania, difficult and platformer game
developed by NIGORO
and published by PLAYISM.
Released on April 15th 2013 is available on Windows, MacOS and Linux
in 4 languages: English, Japanese, Russian and Spanish - Spain.
It has received 2,475 reviews of which 1,971 were positive and 504 were negative resulting in a rating of 7.7 out of 10. 😊
The game is currently priced at 2.99€ on Steam with a 80% discount.
The Steam community has classified La-Mulana into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
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System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- OS *:Windows XP
- Processor:Intel® Pentium 4 / 2.0GHz
- Memory:1 GB RAM
- Graphics:DirectX 9.0c compatible card, 128MB of VRAM
- DirectX®:9.0c
- Hard Drive:500 MB HD space
- Sound:DirectX 9.0c compatible card
MacOS
- OS:OS X 10.7(Lion)
- Processor:Intel® Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz
- Memory: 2 GB RAM
- Hard Drive: 500 MB available space
Linux
- Processor:Intel® Pentium 4 / 2.0GHz
- Memory:1 GB RAM
- Graphics:DirectX 9.0c compatible card, 128MB of VRAM
Steam Price & Best Deals
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
First off, let me get this out of the way: I liked La Mulana. I liked it a lot. I've told my friends to buy it. It's definitely one of the most impressive indie efforts I've ever played, with a massive world, great art, excellent soundtrack, some truly great boss battles, and intensely enjoyable action/platforming gameplay. I even got into the story, for crying out loud. But oh boy, this game has issues. Some games are designed for people who like a challenge, and I respect that. But La Mulana was designed for people who like to be /punished/ - people who like to go through brutal ordeals just so that they can brag about having survived them. If that's you, then you can stop reading right now and go buy the game. But I figure the rest of you could do with a bit of advance warning. The issue is not so much with the gameplay - while the bosses are definitely challenging, most of them are quite manageable once you figure out their patterns, and I only once got "stuck" on a boss for any length of time. No, where La Mulana gets absolutely silly is with the /puzzles/. Some of La Mulana's puzzles are merely "very hard". You will encounter hundreds of stone tablets, murals, funny little background designs, etc, and they are nearly always a clue to something - but often you won't encounter that "something" until you're six hours further and three levels deeper into the game. This basically leaves you with only three options: 1) write down /everything/ you see - every scrap of text, the location of every oddly-coloured brick, /everything/; 2) be prepared to waste a lot of time running around trying to find things again; or 3) use a walkthrough. If you don't mind spending hours scribbling endless notes, then maybe option 1 won't bother you, but personally I find that more appropriate to a point-and-click adventure than to what is ostensibly an action game. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that La Mulana gives you a lot of freedom to explore areas that you might not be properly equipped for, so it often won't be clear to you whether you're failing to solve a puzzle because you haven't thought about it enough, or whether it's because you just don't have the item you need yet. But on top of the "very hard" puzzles, La Mulana also has a number of puzzles that are just downright unfair. For example, there is one particular boss in the game who will open up several previously inaccessible areas once defeated. However, as far as I can tell, nothing in the game /tells/ you that these areas are now opened up, and there's no logical reason why defeating that particular boss would open them, and several of them are tucked away in fairly hard-to-reach corners of the game that you have no reason to go back to. So you pretty much have to just keep making special trips to what were previously dead ends, just to /see/ if anything's changed yet. And that, ultimately, is why I'm leaving this game mixed ratings from this otherwise very impressive game - it too frequently discards logic and simply demands pointless busy work in order to progress. If you honestly miss the days when you had to try to attack Every. Single. Brick. in the game, just in case it turned out to be a secret passage, then this game will fill your heart with nostalgic joy. But if, like me, you think that some of those conventions were discarded for good reason (because they reward a tolerance for repetitive boredom rather than reasoning skills or reflexes), well... La Mulana is still a great game, and I'm still recommending it, but with the caution that you should know what you're getting yourself into.
Full stop one of the best metroidvanias ever made. It's brutally cruel, not in the precision platformer sense but in the sense that it expects you to pay very close attention to absolutely everything. Go in with a notebook and a lot of patience and you'll be rewarded with a game that respects your intelligence and trusts you to work out some of the hardest puzzles in gaming and will make you feel like a genius when you do it. There are many people this game won't be For, but for the right person this will instantly become a personal favourite. It's certainly one of mine. Oh, and make sure to read the manual thoroughly.
Tentative Recommendation This is the most conflicted I've been over a videogame in a long, long time. On the one hand, La-Mulana is a contender for the Metroidvania Hall of Fame. Unique in its cryptic puzzle-based approach and its desire to play like something akin to an anime-ified Indiana Jones movie, the game revels in its near-constant, uncompromising hostility; its near-total lack of handholding; its cryptic riddles that torture the player, yet delight when finally solved; its labyrinthine level and map design that require painstaking exploration and deliver a constant sense of discovery; and its quirky old-school Japanese indie game sensibilities. Combined with its excellent visual presentation and an incredible soundtrack, La-Mulana has all the ingredients for a absolute classic. However -- however -- there's also the other hand to discuss. And that's the absurd, almost completely game-ruining pain points that saturate this game from top to bottom. To put it as bluntly as possible: La-Mulana is, for all of its wonders and positive qualities, also for large chunks of its runtime one of the most profound wastes of time I've ever played. It is so uncompromising in its hostility, so cryptic and obtuse in its puzzles, and so committed to its old-school sensibilites and lack of hand-holding that, should you deign to venture its depths without a guide, you will -- particularly once you've passed the half-way mark -- increasingly be spending hours at a time doing nothing more than tracing the same hallways, trying to interpret and reinterpret the same handwritten notes (and you will be painstakingly taking notes), and tearing your hair out trying every possible harebrained solution you can concoct to solve the puzzles you have access to at any given moment, not knowing whether you're doing something wrong or simply don't have the tools to solve the puzzle to begin with. And that's not even getting into how frequently frustrating the controls and enemy placement are, with some sections having seemingly been designed to be as annoying as humanly possible. When La-Mulana works, it's one of the most interesting and satisfying Metroidvanias I've ever played. But the mid-to-endgame lows are so unbelievably low, and take up so much of the total runtime, that I could never in good conscience place it higher than a low B-tier were I to rank everything I've ever played in the genre. 7/10 If after reading all this, you still decide to give it a shot, I'll give you a few pointers: 1.) Read the manual online. 2.) Don't leave the Gate of Guidance before acquiring the Holy Grail. 3.) Take notes. Copious notes. 4.) The scanner is more useful than you'd think. Try it on everything even remotely suspicious. 5.) Not every ladder looks like one. 6.) Don't feel ashamed if you need a hint from time to time. I'd personally wait until you're at least 5 bosses down before considering it, but Cheshire's hint-based guide on Steam is a great resource for when you're well and truly stuck. As unsatisfying as it was to look up those hints, spending an extra 50 hours wandering around would not have improved my enjoyment of the game. As it stands, I still beat 95+% of the game's puzzles on my own, and I'm perfectly happy with that.
It's an old-school style metroidvania adventure that doesn't want to be beaten. The store page's 2nd trailer basically being a mini-beginner guide should also make it clear that this game will expect a lot from you whilst giving you only the bare minimum in terms of hints and presentation. That said I loved it so much that I finished it anyway. I loved writing down all of the hints on a word doc and striking them through when I thought I solved them (only to sometimes not), drawing up more detailed maps than the pitiful grid the game gives you, whipping everything in desperation whenever the stupid blue eye wasn't watching. This game harkens to an era where spending a weekend solving a tough vague puzzle was the experience and where devs basically dared you to take your best shot to beat their tough ass game. But if you're willing to invest then you'll be treated to a great archaeological adventure that you'll never forget. And then you'll angrily wave your cane from your rocking chair about how those young whippersnappers don't know how easy they have it these days the next time you hear someone complain about a puzzle from any other game.
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Frequently Asked Questions
La-Mulana is currently priced at 2.99€ on Steam.
Yes, La-Mulana is currently available at a 80% discount. You can purchase it for 2.99€ on Steam.
Yes, La-Mulana received 1,971 positive votes out of a total of 2,475 achieving a rating of 7.68.
😊
La-Mulana was developed by NIGORO and published by PLAYISM.
Yes, La-Mulana is playable and fully supported on Windows.
Yes, La-Mulana is playable and fully supported on MacOS.
Yes, La-Mulana is playable and fully supported on Linux.
This information about La-Mulana is not available yet.
This information about La-Mulana is not available yet.
No, La-Mulana does not support VR.
La-Mulana is a single-player game.
Yes, there is a DLC available for La-Mulana. Explore additional content available for La-Mulana on Steam.
No, La-Mulana does not support mods via Steam Workshop.
No, La-Mulana does not support Steam Remote Play.
Yes, La-Mulana is enabled for Steam Family Sharing. This means you can share the game with authorized users from your Steam Library, allowing them to play it on their own accounts. For more details on how the feature works, you can read the original Steam Family Sharing announcement or visit the Steam Family Sharing user guide and FAQ page.
You can find solutions or submit a support ticket by visiting the Steam Support page for La-Mulana.
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Additionally, we incorporate data from the SteamSpy API, which offers insights into game sales and player statistics. This helps us present a comprehensive view of each game's popularity and performance within the gaming community.
Last Updates| Steam data | 31 August 2026 13:30 UTC |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 04 September 2026 16:19 UTC |
| Steam price | 12 September 2026 18:42 UTC |
| Steam reviews | 11 September 2026 04:06 UTC |
If you'd like to dive deeper into the details about La-Mulana, we invite you to check out a few dedicated websites that offer extensive information and insights. These platforms provide valuable data, analysis, and user-generated reports to enhance your understanding of the game and its performance.
- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about La-Mulana
- SteamCharts - Analysis of La-Mulana concurrent players on Steam
- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck La-Mulana compatibility
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Game modes
Features
Online players
19
Developer
NIGORO
Publisher
PLAYISM
Release
15 Apr 2013
Platforms
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