The story follows Luigi as he explores Evershade Valley, capturing ghosts using a specialized vacuum cleaner invented by Professor E. Gadd.

In order to restore peace to Evershade Valley, Luigi must collect the pieces of the Dark Moon and recapture the main antagonist, King Boo.

In the single-player mode, the goal is to rescue Mario from King Boo and retrieve the shattered shards of the Dark Moon, a magical object that can pacify the ghosts of Evershade Valley.

Each location is designed around a specific theme, such as a wet and overgrown set of towers with a graveyard,[2] a clock factory covered in sand,[3] mines filled with ice and a haunted museum.

If Luigi takes too much damage from ghost attacks or environmental hazards and loses all his heart points, he will faint and the player must restart the mission.

[1] For example, the player uses the vacuum to carry buckets of water, yank pull switches, spin valve handles and propel small objects.

[8][13] Dark Moon features a cooperative multiplayer mode called "ScareScraper" ("Thrill Tower" in Europe), in which up to four players each control a differently colored Luigi.

[14] King Boo, who has escaped from his painting after the events of the original game, shatters the Dark Moon, a large crystalline object which has a pacifying effect on the ghosts that inhabit Evershade Valley, using the magical jewel embedded in his crown.

[15] Luigi makes his way through the five mansions of the valley, recovering a piece of the Dark Moon from powerful "Possessor" ghosts in each area and saving the professor's Toad assistants, who have been trapped in paintings.

The Toads share security images that provide valuable clues to the whereabouts of the Dark Moon pieces and each one shows a pair of Boos carrying a bag with a painting inside.

After Luigi obtains the final Dark Moon piece in a parallel dimension accessed in the fifth mansion, King Boo intercepts him as he is being returned to the bunker.

He compared his role to that of a shepherd, by which he let Next Level Games take control of most of the project, and rather than telling them what to do, he instead intervened when he felt they were going in the wrong direction.

The concept had Konno revisit the GameCube hardware and make a new version that included a four-inch LCD screen for glasses-free 3D compatibility.

[19] They realized that the Nintendo 3DS featured similar 3D hardware ability to that of their prototype on the GameCube, and they decided to officially develop a sequel with the 3D gameplay in mind.

[16] The development team's goal in making Dark Moon was to create a new experience different from that of Luigi's Mansion while also retaining the quality of the original title and what made it so memorable.

[16] After they showed Miyamoto a demo of a multiplayer concept, he challenged them to make it have just as much replay value as the Mario Kart series to ensure it had high quality.

[25] Miyamoto compared Luigi to a salad, considering that he was a more timid choice in comparison to Mario that helped balance out the horror aspect of the game.

[10] A lot of character ideas surfaced from Next Level Games that parodied common ghost film tropes but Miyamoto requested they stay away from them.

[10] The game was split up in a level-like format to emphasize the on-the-go portability of the Nintendo 3DS,[23] and each level was built to be about ten to twenty minutes in length and have something "satisfying" happen in each of them.

[4] Next Level Games was taught the Japanese word "karakuri" from Ikebata, which roughly translates to "surprise and delight", and they used this as a philosophy for designing each location.

[16] Next Level Games received a lot of positive feedback from players who played the Dark Moon demo at E3, and they found that 3D graphics helped make capturing ghosts easier.

He concluded on a positive note, stating "For as much as Luigi's Mansion 2 acts like the class clown, all shrieks and pratfalls, it has more heart than any game in recent memory when it isn't yanking them out of ghost chests, naturally.

"[74] Conversely, Carolyn Petit of GameSpot gave it a 6.5 out of 10, citing "difficulty spikes and a lack of checkpoints", as well as the stiff controls, but praised the multiplayer functionality.

[68] The visual presentation was widely lauded, with some considering the graphics to be the best yet seen on the 3DS,[67][69][8] and Oli Welsh of Eurogamer proclaiming that it is "as close to a playable cartoon as anything since Zelda: The Wind Waker".

The music was described as "gently foreboding" and "delightfully spooky",[68][73] with Welsh attributing a Scooby-Doo-like quality,[2] and Mitchell remarking that it "skews much closer to Alfred Hitchcock than Akira Yamaoka".

[73] Welsh commended Martinet's vocalizations,[2] and reviewers cited Luigi's tremulous idle humming along to the background music as an endearing trait.

[2][66][68][70] While Tim Turi of Game Informer affectionately likened E. Gadd's unintelligible prattling to "a lovable Ewok",[66] Kevin Schaller of GameRevolution was sometimes annoyed by his manner of speech, which he referred to as "Nintendo's version of Simlish".

[67] Luigi's Mansion debuted to high sales in the U.S.; selling 415,000 copies in the country by mid-April, it became the sixth bestselling game of the month in only a week's time in March, behind Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.

[92][93][94] At the NAVGTR Awards, the game was nominated in categories for its animation and control design, but lost to The Walking Dead: 400 Days and the critically acclaimed The Last of Us respectively.

[126] Ghosts come in waves within Dark Moon locations, and the player must push a button on the Poltergust to stun them and hold a trigger to suck them in.