Kitfox Games' Moon Hunters just isn't up to par, both for it's time and today. There are surely good things to say about the game's grandiose pixel art aesthetic, which is right in line with indie darlings like Hyper Light Drifter and Dead Cells. There's some nice music, a well-constructed world that calls to mind both Sumerian and Mesopotamian mythology, and well-done environmental storytelling. Overall, it is an otherwise serviceable roguelite held by back by shallow combat and confusing narrative mechanics.
Pre-2016, the standout roguelites were games like The Binding of Isaac, Enter the Gungeon, Crypt of the Necrodancer, Relic Hunter Zero, and Nuclear Throne. While these games are quite distinct from Hunters mechanically, which pulls its combat from Diablo rather than something like Mystery Dungeon, they offered more emergent gameplay loops. In this game, there is a very basic skill tree and that is it. Beyond vapid stat upgrades with no appreciable effect on the gameplay loop or its difficulty, nothing changes for your character. Every fight boils down to just stunlocking enemies in place and spamming the primary attack until they are dead. The pace of combat is glacial, even at "normal" difficulty. It appears the developers made every single enemy a damage sponge because the game would be too easy otherwise.
Moon Hunters is moreso narrative-focused, with dialogue choices directly affecting the run (and having permanent effects on all future runs.) Kitfox's Tanya X. Short aimed to leverage the procedural generation to craft personal narratives, but the implementation is flawed at best. While I can appreciate the choices unlocking future characters or opening up the game world, it becomes very confusing when it starts to influence your player character.
Sometimes you will randomly be given a new trait ie. "Brave," "Vengeful,": etc. and this is straightforward enough, but its not immediately apparent how this affects anything. As it turns out, this will only affect subsequent dialogue choices and interactions, which is the core to the "replayability" of Moon Hunters. Each run would have the player approaching situations differently, thus unlocking new story routes. This is a strong point in the game's favor, but the problem is you would have to trudge through multiple runs of the same mind-numbing combat sequences to find that out. The game undercuts itself, as the story could get better, but the combat itself will never change.
Some mention must also be given to the game's poor implementation of co-operative multiplayer. Firstly, playing as a group breaks the combat loop and makes it even more tedious than it already is. Given that each character only gets three skills, and 4 small upgrades to each of those skills, it only takes around 15 minutes to find a combo that will trivialize every encounter (including all the bosses.) The narrative sections are also underwhelming in co-op; as for some reason each character can select an option, but this has zero bearing on the actual choice. The person who initiates the dialogue will always choose the outcome, and thus change the game state. The only agency the second player in this scenario gets is the potential of a new personality trait.
The potential was obviously there for a game like this, and in a scant few years titles like Children of Morta and Hades would find the sweet spot between narrative and gameplay that Moon Hunters failed to capture. Unfortunately, this only hurts any case you could make to give it time. As a complete experience, the game is unable to justify repeat playthroughs outside of a strong interest in its lore and worldbuilding. There could be a world out there to explore and love, if you are willing to sit there spamming left click all the way to end.
Pre-2016, the standout roguelites were games like The Binding of Isaac, Enter the Gungeon, Crypt of the Necrodancer, Relic Hunter Zero, and Nuclear Throne. While these games are quite distinct from Hunters mechanically, which pulls its combat from Diablo rather than something like Mystery Dungeon, they offered more emergent gameplay loops. In this game, there is a very basic skill tree and that is it. Beyond vapid stat upgrades with no appreciable effect on the gameplay loop or its difficulty, nothing changes for your character. Every fight boils down to just stunlocking enemies in place and spamming the primary attack until they are dead. The pace of combat is glacial, even at "normal" difficulty. It appears the developers made every single enemy a damage sponge because the game would be too easy otherwise.
Moon Hunters is moreso narrative-focused, with dialogue choices directly affecting the run (and having permanent effects on all future runs.) Kitfox's Tanya X. Short aimed to leverage the procedural generation to craft personal narratives, but the implementation is flawed at best. While I can appreciate the choices unlocking future characters or opening up the game world, it becomes very confusing when it starts to influence your player character.
Sometimes you will randomly be given a new trait ie. "Brave," "Vengeful,": etc. and this is straightforward enough, but its not immediately apparent how this affects anything. As it turns out, this will only affect subsequent dialogue choices and interactions, which is the core to the "replayability" of Moon Hunters. Each run would have the player approaching situations differently, thus unlocking new story routes. This is a strong point in the game's favor, but the problem is you would have to trudge through multiple runs of the same mind-numbing combat sequences to find that out. The game undercuts itself, as the story could get better, but the combat itself will never change.
Some mention must also be given to the game's poor implementation of co-operative multiplayer. Firstly, playing as a group breaks the combat loop and makes it even more tedious than it already is. Given that each character only gets three skills, and 4 small upgrades to each of those skills, it only takes around 15 minutes to find a combo that will trivialize every encounter (including all the bosses.) The narrative sections are also underwhelming in co-op; as for some reason each character can select an option, but this has zero bearing on the actual choice. The person who initiates the dialogue will always choose the outcome, and thus change the game state. The only agency the second player in this scenario gets is the potential of a new personality trait.
The potential was obviously there for a game like this, and in a scant few years titles like Children of Morta and Hades would find the sweet spot between narrative and gameplay that Moon Hunters failed to capture. Unfortunately, this only hurts any case you could make to give it time. As a complete experience, the game is unable to justify repeat playthroughs outside of a strong interest in its lore and worldbuilding. There could be a world out there to explore and love, if you are willing to sit there spamming left click all the way to end.