Hauntii feels a bit short of its full potential, for me. Which is hard to imagine, since on the surface this is a jaw-dropping game. Clearly, a lot of effort was put into it. One look at the screen ought to tell you that. Gorgeous animated sprite work and visual excellence can take a game far, dynamic soundtracks can uplift it further. What felt missing was everything in between. And at first, I was a bit upset at this because Hauntii is a very creative project that I wanted to love. But the more I played, the more drained I felt, I'd put it down. Wake up the next morning, remember how pretty it was, be excited. Start playing and immediately become tired again.

To explain why though I'd have to introduce the gameplay loop, which consists of a few different things. Hauntii has you play as a recently departed ghost, searching for his lost memories. To find them, one must travel through Eternity collecting Mario Odyssey-esque stars, which can then be taken to shrines and transformed into constellations. Each shows you one memory of your previous life in a darling little animated cutscene, four or five of these together creating a jewel- which is your main objective. Obtaining stars is a means of exercising the true components of the gameplay: possessing objects and bullet hell. Possession is the more fun (and thematic) of the two, with there being a bunch of unique enemies and inanimate things to take control of that change the way you move and interact in the world significantly. The combat is... not so exciting. There are a few problems with it, first one being that you can never actually upgrade the damage/speed at which you fire, only how much you can shoot until you need to reload. And you attack very slowly. It doesnt feel satisfying to do in the way that other shmups succeed at. Secondly, this is a 2.5D game that only lets you attack in 8 directions. But you, and other things, can move in a 3D space. Its so fucking difficult to aim. I cant emphasize how hard it is to line yourself up with anything and hit them successfully.

This is another huge problem with Hauntii: the depth perception is atrocious. Maneuvering around objects, going up stairs, hitting a target, going through race rings- doing anything besides pretty much just moving gave me immense problems. Sometimes I feel like the game forgets that its monochromatic, the color scheme also makes it difficult to parse what youre actually looking at occassionally. There is a segment- a very big story moment- where youre possessing a whale, near the end. To attack you have to go down into the (normally!) white colored sand, and then rise back up and flop down onto your enemy. This is difficult to do normally. But then Hauntii decides to make you attack a moving ship (many, many times per phase) with the screen super zoomed out. Youre also in a black and white vortex, which is swirling, moving (sickeningly) and youre also moving (cant see yourself against the background) and the ship is moving (and attacking you) and everything is small and it sucks it sucks it sucks and the game is just completely unaware that this is in any way challenging cause it makes you do it for 30 minutes straight. If you get hit a few times you have to do it all over.

So, you go through Eternity, fighting a few enemies and solving a few puzzles, and you find yourself amassing a hoarde of stars. Like, a lot of stars. 20 at least. You begin to get tired looking for stars because you simply have way too many of them- and you want to progress the story- but theres no shrine around to deposit the stars in and on your way to one you find MORE stars and you just really have too many of these things. When you finally get to the shrine, you unlock all the memories at once. And then for the rest of the level there is no backstory, no story at all usually- and youre still collecting stars which feel partially useless because you cant use them till the next area unlocks. Games about death tend to make me very upset, see: Spiritfarer, which I could not finish because it made me feel too empty. But with Hauntii, past the first opening segment, the story and your motivations just completely dry up. The game also puts a large emphasis on your angel companion, who works to help you ascend, but past the frontloaded worldbuilding theyre either not there or just float around following you. And I would want to love them, I want to feel wretched when shes taken away but... I dont! Feel! Anything! Because the story is so all over the place! And I dont understand why because it has just a good premise, I should be crying! But I'm not. You dont even get to see why you died.

And I didnt get it, until I got to the final segment of the game. Where you and the angel ascend. And she lifts you up into the sky, and its really, really breathtaking. Then a vocal track begins playing. Thats when it hit me. This is a music video game. This is a game that does best when youre just watching it unfold. The second you actually have to play it, the wonder of it kind of fades away and youre struggling to go up stairs and shoot an enemy that is slightly to the left and up, but its visual prowess and soundtrack really are beautiful things to see. Then the angel lets go of our hand, and our protagonist evaporates. And then the game was over. So I sat there. It was truly very pretty and ethereal. But if I am left with one singular lasting emotion, it's that I simply wish it had been more.

There's something about playing Hauntii that's just incredibly irritating to me. I notice annoyance rising in my body when I play this game longer than 30 minutes. The game tries to copy Super Mario Odyssey's task-based reward structure and adapt it to its twin-stick shooter format - which just does not work for me. None of the tasks you do are especially rewarding or complex, they're mostly senseless busywork, of which the game asks you to do a lot of. The twin-stick shooting is decent enough, if it weren't for the really random shooting cooldown and the weird dash - both bearable on their own, but exhausting when put together. Both get improved while playing the game, though I'd argue that having to choose whether you want to improve your dismal health (where you always start off with two hearts even if you unlocked more heart containers) or your weird dash or your annoying shooting cooldown is not a case of fun player choice but moreso allowing them to toggle in which way they want to suffer.

And all of this is such a shame, because Hauntii is an incredibly beautiful game. Like, immensely so. It's gorgeous. From top to bottom. I adore this game's visual style and I went in expecting to love it, but well, I've now dropped it halfway through. I wish its gameplay core was strong enough to be able to see more of its beautiful world. For me, it sadly wasn't.

Given this is an indie title, I was expecting a short linear title with melancholic visuals and atmosphere; instead, it was a collectathon with a twin-stick shooting mechanics. If content or busywork was a key metric, this would be value for money; however, I felt it was more repetitive and monotonous without much variety and memorability in its tasks where it outstayed its welcome. Progression is blocked until a certain amount is collected incentivizing task clearing before moving on each room since the next checkpoint amount is unknown. As a completionist, this means that I quickly got tired with the gameplay loop since the game does not add more mechanics or depth such as powerups or skills. Not to mention some tasks and puzzle are downright annoying or levels long to traverse. Why there is a level with long flat space without strong traversal is beyond me. Also, I always had too many collectibles to spend for upgrades at any given time so the balance already feels off. I understand this loop was to let players engage in its world and mechanics but it felt artificial as the activities are rarely worth it.

Being a twin-stick shooter aficionado, the execution feels bad with its camera and hurtboxes. Firstly, gauging if a bullet will hit is ambiguous with the isometric camera and tall sprite models. While it may be a skill issue, I have called out several hits that should have not which is my barometer. On the offensive side, the range and damage of the basic fire is just short and weak that I would rather have melee combat instead. Aside from haunting objects, majority of the shooting is plain and uninteresting. Completing the combat trio, the enemies themselves are barely engaging or either annoying specially with how they spawn for unfair damage. The set pieces themselves are okay but was not thrilled and one of them had a bug that kept damaging me after every cycle. If the static tracking camera is kept, having perhaps a lock-on or homing attacks would have at least smoothened out the issues but would still feel underwhelming as a whole.

As for the experience, the story and world is vague that its emotional moments barely land. With its collectathon structure, the player is barely given motivation or intrigue with interconnecting moments hanging by a thread of curiosity. I would like to see the main protagonist be more conflicted with what is going instead of going thru the motions. I do like what it is going for but I feel other games have tackled something similar to greater effect and meaning. Simply having interactive options like a hug or be pet button would have at least made this all more believable as the cutscenes already do that.

Taking it as a whole, I feel this can be a good beginner or entry point game. While not completely devoid of value, I do not recommend this.

Thoroughly impressed by Hauntii! It's an under the radar indie gem that surprisingly punches well above its weight with its exploration-based gameplay, a strong, well realized aesthetic and a great take on afterlife/purgatory. It features an optimistic yet melancholic narrative thoroughly sprinkled with lighter undertones so it never feels excessively sorrowful.

Gameplay-wise, it's structured similarly to Super Mario Galaxy. The game consists of open world zones, each with their multitude of levels. Each map has you doing different tasks in order to get stars, which allow you to level up and progress further. The minigame variety is surprisingly big. Lots of fun and delightful objects to "haunt" (the main mechanic of the game where you take control of stuff like trees, animals, bells and even trains) and tasks ranging from straight to the point "destroy waves of enemies" to climbing trees with a ladybug and even shaping your own roller-coaster track!

The actual twin shooting gameplay can get very repetitive and could've done with a bigger variety of enemies and aura types. Still, the minute to minute collectathon dynamics guarantee you'll never feel bored. There's no incentive to get every star, yet I ended up getting them all just because it was fun - Hauntii is always nudging you towards exploration.

Huge props to the insanely talented 1-bit visual style and the fully orchestral soundtrack, which ranks among some of the most beautiful ambient tracks I've had the pleasure of listening for a while. Both definitely inspired by Hollow Knight.

What's great: The art style and music are wonderful. Just listen to the soundtrack on streaming (Spotify and Apple Music). It's phenomenal. The little animated cutscenes after unlocking each new constellation. Some affecting vignettes. You can sort of extrapolate what sort of person Hauntii was before their death. It's all very evocative and makes one reflect on their own life. I also love some of the world design. Especially the amusement park entrance.

The gameplay is this strange mix of twin-stick shooter combat combined with the puzzle design of Super Mario Odyssey/BOTW. So there's a lot of trial and error as you make your way around these surprisingly big levels and mess around with different npc's, items, and enemies. Using your haunt power to embody a wide number of npc's and inanimate objects. Finding hidden stars along the way. Some of the puzzle designs were really cool, but unfortunately, too much of it is repeated.

What's bad: The upgrade system doesn't give out upgrades enough to feel a frequent enough sense of progression. It's made worse by the upgrade station not being easily accessible on a lot of levels in the world. So I had stars I could have used to upgrade but I had to wait for another station or backtrack back to one, which would take forever.

The story of your relationship and attraction with an Eternian, another type of being, goes completely unexplained. The main baddie in the game seems half-baked. Some Eternian-hating lady with a bunch of Minion-like characters as her goons. Also some levels are dead zones for health points. That led to some extremely frustrating moments where I couldn't get health unless I backtracked.

There are quite a few visual bugs. Nothing major. All the bad aspects of Hauntii added up. The backtracking, health dead zones, bad antagonist, the lack of upgrades, and the story issues. I wish I could have seen the story to its conclusion, but I had to call it. I will be listening to the soundtrack for a while though. It's that good.

Incredibly charming and beautiful but the gameplay becomes repetitive and the overall pacing is far too slow. BUT.. its on gamepass so GO TRY IT ANYWAY!

Probably the best art direction of the year, this game is gorgeous. The game itself is sadly a bit drawn out, there are a lot of fun/cute little gimmicks and puzzles but the game consistently overuses the same ones to the point of tedium. Each area overstays its welcome by just enough to become tiring, its a shame. The game also has a pretty useless map, often I'd be missing one star in an area and a local map would have been so helpful but nah, you just get a world map to show how areas connect.

This game needed to be tightened up, if it were half the length and a bit more condensed it would be fantastic.