July’s Indie Box featured a game called Moon Hunters. The box featured a physical copy of the game on a really cool USB drive shaped like the Sun Temple in the game, 4 coasters of the types of places you can visit in game, a beautiful pin, soundtrack, magnets of the food you can collect and make in game, stickers and instruction manual.
Moon Hunters is an interesting take on the dungeon crawl RPG genre. The Moon Goddess has disappeared and the Sun Cult has threatened to take over your villages and kill you. As one of the Moon Hunters, you must kill the king of the Sun Cult and find the Moon Goddess within 3 days.
You choose one of 6 different Moon Hunters, Spellblade, Druid, Occultist, Witch, Songweaver, and Sun Cultist. The last 2 must be unlocked using special methods.
At first glance, this game is pretty cool. The art direction and music really set the mood for this religious experience. Each playthrough feels more like a folktale. You get dropped into this world with no direction or tutorial, which may not be for everyone. But the more you play, the more you learn. It felt more like an artistic piece than an RPG.
Though I could appreciate the beauty and directions the game takes, I didn’t really enjoy it that much. I did about 10 playthroughs and I barely knew what I was doing. Some of the classes seemed weaker than others, and I just ended up saying yes to everyone that crossed my path, which wasn’t always the smartest decision.
The community for this game is small as well. I was left to look at a Steam forum to figure out there were different endings (4 in total). From what I could find, there weren’t any complete, well-written guides or tutorials.
Through it all, I still believe this game is worth trying. It isn’t fantastic, but it isn’t bad. The sum of its parts create this artistic piece that’s really interesting to experience. Each playthrough only took me about 45 minutes. So I still recommend it for all you people that like to analyze and study the different ways we can use video games to create different experiences.