Last year I played a game called The Beginners Guide, which was absolutely fantastic. One of the many things that stood out was the music, composed and performed by Ryan Roth and Halina Heron.
I decided to listen to some of their other works, one of them was a soundtrack for a game called Moon Hunters. I looked into the game and decided it had to go on my list of games to play.
Who likes chocolate digestives? I know you might be thinking, chocolate digestives? Come on, there are better biscuits than that. Well the biscuits I eat are often like the films I watch, that is say it is all dependent on my mood. If I'm feeling a bit meh, then I'll watch a comedy, equally if I am not feeling the best the chocolate digestives are my go to biscuit. Playing Moon Hunters I found myself asking was this the right biscuit for me?
Story
The game is set in the fictional world of Issria, your starting character is a choice of: a druid, witch, ritualist or spellblade, (this choice expands once you finish the game). The story starts with a celebration feast, everyone is gathered around to wait for the moon to rise. Unfortunately it doesn't and people aren't dealing with it all that well. As you are the only one keeping calm it's up to you to save the day, your mission: find the moon. Seems straightforward enough right, I mean the moon is pretty big? Well there are few issues, there is a Sun Cult trying to destroy the current way of life, oh, and you only have five days to set everything right, no pressure.
The game has an interesting story that offers multiples endings that are well worth exploring. The game certainly has an out with the old, in with the new feel but as we all know new isn't necessarily better.
Visuals
The visuals are quite interesting and remind me a little of the original Flashback game, only with a top down view. The loading screen is one of the best I have seen in a game for a long while and I never got tired of seeing it (see below). There are different locations you can visit, expect to see small villages, forests, mountains and deserts. Initially these are interesting to look at but get repetitive quickly. My favorite location was Adulis - at first glance it looks like a snowed cover mountain but it actually hides a small village inside. While the up close details of the characters look simple this all changes when a dialogue window is open. My personal favorite was the druid who wears an outfit made from vines and leaves, along with a wooden mask that hides his face. The most standout enemy was Humbaba who is basically a house sized boar that has part of his back hollowed out and is filled with lava and fire.
Overall an interesting art style, the characters look unique and there are some locations that look great but unfortunately they get repetive quickly.
Music
The score shifts from a singer song writer to a Zeldaesque styles of music. While these two vary massively they some how manage to work together. The people responsible for this odd match of music are:
Ryan Roth also hails from Canada but unlike Halina focuses on very different genres of music, mostly electronic & ambient. He has worked on other albums with Halina along with doing his own solo work including; The Yawhg EP, Good Snowmen Are Hard To Build and Shattered Planet OST.
Halina Heron is a singer-songwriter from Canada, she has released a number of albums & EP's including; The Yawhg EP, Back Then, A Morticians Tale and Bloom.
The score run at little over thirty minutes but for the length of the game itself this is perfect. My favorite pieces included: 'Night Sky', 'Perilous Cave', 'Portside Daybreak' and 'Up Rising'. Overall an unusual but solid soundtrack.
Gameplay
The game is described as an RPG Personality Test. The game is quite short, is set over five days and can be completed in about an hour. There are multiple endings available which have varying requirements to unlock them.
The game menu is broken up into three sections: abilities, reputation and stats. The abilities section just shows the three abilities you have equipped, these can be upgraded by giving money to merchants. The reputation section is where the personality test comes into play, depending on your actions you can be noted as being: patient, compassionate, prideful - there are also a few others. The issue I had with this was that sometimes they would not appear in the menu or others seemed to simply disappear. The stats sections I found to quite interesting and were broken down into: intellect, faith, endurance, charm, spirit and strength. The traditional way of leveling up stats by defeating enemies does not exist, instead Kitfox Games goes for something a little different. When you clear an area you have to go and make camp, when you are there you will have multiple options as to what you can do, there is: cooking, hunting, stargazing, resting and keeping watch. Each of these help increase different stats, it's fun to try them all, the first time I varied between them, the second time I focused on charm to help in unlocking a different ending. This to me was one of the most enjoyable parts of the game and was a fun way to level up.
My favorite role to play by far was the druid, I liked his design and I thought he had some great abilities including mad leaf throwing skills and growing fields of vines to slow enemies. While the game can be played in co-op, if you don't want to play with others but want a little company you can find familiars. One of them is a turkey, which I had the option to greet or cook, a glowing flame given to me by an angry spirit, and a snake who is pretty bad ass and was my favorite.
Overall exploring Issria was interesting, that is until you finish the game a few times and it gets repititve despite the fact the levels are supposed to be randomly generated. While reputation was interesting as a whole I did not really feel it had a major impact on the way the game played out, with the exception of the ending where your decisions reflect what people thought of you. I loved the leveling up system used in the game and some of the characters. The multiples endings was a good idea but very quickly I grew tired of trying to unlock them, unlike when I played The Stanley Parable where I wanted to get all of them.
Final Thoughts
So after fours of playing how did I feel? Mmm, it had some good and not some not so good elements. The positives, story was interesting, there were some nice visuals and characters designs, the music worked well even though there were two very distinct styles used, the gameplay offered some interesting exploration options and a fun leveling up system. The negatives, the story could have been explored more, the visuals had a tendency to repeat themselves, the personality test side of the gameplay didn't really have any ramifications, the multiple endings, while interesting, lost my interest quickly. Overall the game had some great elements but suffered from being lackluster, this one gets 3 out of 5
