Moon Hunters

Moon Hunters has some similarities to a rogue-like, with random maps, designed for repeat playthroughs, and aspects carrying over to the next run. However, it doesn't use the typical single-life system.

You can play solo or up to 4 player co-op, and the runs take around 45 minutes. The core gameplay is a basic hack and slash. Each character has a basic attack, a magic attack and a dodge. Some characters are melee based and others are ranged.

"Moon Hunters" sounds like you are enemies of the moon, but your clan worships the Moon. When it doesn't show, you go on a journey to try and find what has happened. Meanwhile, a clan that worships the Sun seems to want to take power.

The world map is a set of interconnected locations of nodes, and you move from one area to the next, 1 per day, which reveals the next set of locations. You have 5 days of exploration, then you battle against the boss. If you die during the normal levels, you just return to the camp, so you will reach the end regardless of performance. However the final boss is a one-attempt boss.

The areas often have branching paths and it's up to you if you want to fully explore them, or just leave when you find the exit. You can destroy some objects in the world - sometimes you get nothing, but sometimes they can give you health drops or Opals (currency), or possibly find items this way. Additionally, you can also find objects of interest which boost stats for the current run, or unlocks content for new runs. You can sometimes find cooking ingredients which are permanently unlocked for the next playthrough.

At the end of each day, you can choose actions to upgrade your stats, with some random events to possibly boost further. Your character increases their stats a fair bit via the camp, and since you use the camp regardless if you succeed or fail, the penalty for death doesn't seem severe. Failure will mean you lose potential extra attribute increases and personality changes; but I think the biggest boosts are via the camp, so that's why I don't think exploration and defeating standard enemies is as important as you would expect it should be in a game like this.

Enemies drop Opals and sometimes health but technically you could avoid them because the largest benefits are found via landmarks/people or the campsite. Sometimes there is an arena fight where you are suddenly blocked off into a rectangular area and a few waves of enemies spawn in. This rewards you with a stack of Opals. Opals can be spent when you find merchants. These can upgrade your attacks which can make a difference (depending on your character and skill with them).

The woodland enemies can be really tricky. There's one that charges at you and cannot be attacked from the front. You often have to wait until they stop, then walk around to their back, then attack. Sometimes they can start attacking by the time you get there. Depending on the surrounding scenery, they may end up repeatedly hitting you if you get wedged against a tree. I think these enemies were my biggest cause of death - either directly, or leaving me on low health for a different enemy to finish me off.

I felt the final boss is generally easy as long as you play sensibly. Sometimes the boss' health-bar seems quite high depending on your attacking stats but can easily be whittled down due to easily dodged attacks and plenty of health drops.

There's a bit of dialogue when you meet characters, but it's pretty minimal. When you are presented with decisions, it's all binary choices but you aren't sure of the effect it is going to have. So you might have an option to pray at a statue or destroy it, or accept/refuse someone's offer of food. Each choice will give you some attribute boost (rarely a penalty) and can change your personality which allows you to interact with certain objects/NPCs that you find. For example, there could be an eerie-looking cave and unless you are described as "Brave", then you can't go in. I quite liked this idea but sometimes you just didn't get presented with opportunities to gain these traits (or I suppose it could have been in part of the map you didn't explore), so then I felt like you couldn't quite customise the character as you want. The brief nature of the game means it will end by the time you feel like you are really beginning to shape your character.

I think Moon Hunters has enough features to be a decent game but then it feels a bit simplistic and bland. It's probably a good introduction for someone to Hack and Slash style RPGs, but I think more experienced gamers will find it a little dull.