The DS has all levels of quality in its games, from some of the most deeply engaging stories and experiences to the ‘under 10’ section at Walmart.
There were 3 Moomin games for the DS: Moomindani no Okurimono (which is Japan-exclusive, and good), and the New Adventures of Moomin: the Mysterious Howling and the Great Autumn Party. The New Adventures were released only in Europe, with a cancelled US release (more on that later) The producers seem to be Prelusion Games, a company that seemed to mostly make localisations and now seems defunct. I’m saying this here since it’s hard to find concise info about these games’ backstory. There was no marketing done other than one line in an announcement from GBATemp I found with the announcer not being particularly happy about it.
He’s right - the only details you can find even now are the release dates, who made it, the system, cover, and ROMs for both the games, and some screenshots. Huge gigantic shoutouts to whoever dumped those ROMs. I’m pretty sure you might not even be able to find a physical EU copy.
So why is it so obscure? Well, as I mentioned before, the games had pretty much no fanfare as they were released. The US (except maybe Hawaii) was mostly unaware of the Moomins until the late 2010s, so a game featuring them in 2009-10 flew under the radar as many more exciting and familiar games were released, regardless of the fact the release was cancelled. People didn’t care so much that listings for the US vers. of the games still exist today, either as being out of stock or from statistics websites that probably were never edited.
In fact, it seems the only people that know anything about the game itself are me (who played the Great Howling) and a guy on YouTube (who played the Autumn Party) who uploaded a video in 2021, 11 YEARS after its release. The games themselves are extremely fascinating to me solely for the fact that they’re probably the only Nintendo games to not only have options for the Nordic languages, but only options for the Nordic languages. This is because the game itself is a voice-acted point-and-click for baaabies who can’t read. The voice acting seems to all be done by the original voice actors from the show's dubs very specifically for this game - which just makes it weirder that there’s practically no info about it.
Indeed, when you start the game, after the opening splash credits you're faced with an ominous prompt. (get picture)
I know Swedish, so that's what I choose and am coming at this game from. You then get a difficulty setting, putting yourself at an age from four to nine.