Kitfox Games built Moon Hunters around a question most role-playing games never ask: how will you be remembered? The studio calls it a “personality test RPG,” and it shipped on March 10, 2016 for Windows through Steam, with Linux and macOS following on April 1.
The pitch is stronger than the execution. Moon Hunters is a co-op roguelike for up to four players, and it earns points for trying something other than another loot grind.
Trailer, via Kitfox Games.
Six Characters, One Missing Moon
The setup is clean. One summer evening in the fantasy land of Issaria, the moon does not rise. It is the source of all magic and spiritual power, and without it monsters infest the land. You set out alone or with the other chosen children of the Moon to solve the mystery and restore balance.
Players pick from one of six characters, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, then fight through the Sun Cult across procedurally generated areas. No two playthroughs look alike. What carries over is information about past runs, saved as constellations.
- Single player, multiplayer and co-operative modes
- Six playable characters with distinct strengths and weaknesses
- Procedurally generated areas that differ every run
- Non-linear story that shifts with player choices up to the ending
The release schedule sprawled across platforms and years:
| Platform | Release date |
|---|---|
| Windows (Steam) | March 10, 2016 |
| Linux and macOS | April 1, 2016 |
| PlayStation 4 | July 19, 2016 |
| Xbox One | July 19, 2017 |
| Nintendo Switch | October 26, 2017 |
Where the Myth-Making Holds Up
The best idea in Moon Hunters is that your decisions shape your reputation, and that reputation decides how your tribe remembers you generations later. Endings diverge widely based on choices during the journey and the outcome of the final battle. A hand-painted pixel art world, isometric and viewed from above, gives the whole thing a storybook weight that the systems mostly support.
That is the part worth keeping. Kitfox understood that a roguelike can trade in memory instead of loot.
The Short Journey
The problems are structural. Moon Hunters is short, and its combat lacks depth. Those two complaints land because the game’s best material — the myth-weaving, the constellations, the personality test framing — needs room to breathe. A run ends before the world has a chance to feel ancient.
The procedural generation compounds this. Randomly assembled areas keep replays from repeating, but they also keep the world from accumulating the history the story keeps promising. Hand-crafted characters and legends sit inside a landscape that never quite becomes a place.
Co-op is where the design makes the most sense. Relying on one another in an ever-changing world, splitting wits, weapons and magical study across four players, is the version of Moon Hunters that justifies its own premise.
What Issaria Gets Right
Moon Hunters is a game with a thesis and not enough time to defend it. The personality test idea is genuinely novel, the art holds up, and the constellation system gives failure a shape. But a roguelike lives on the moment-to-moment fight, and this one runs thin.
It is worth playing for the endings and the arguments they start. It is hard to recommend for the combat.
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