Hunt the Night

From Moonlight Games, Hunt the Night is a retro action-adventure title set in a dark-fantasy world. With a world ravaged by monsters and darkness, as well as game mechanics similar to those you might find in From Software’s most famous franchise, Hunt the Night wears its SoulsBorne influences very much on its sleeve.

- Erin McAllister

Focusing on a very quick style of action, the title sees you traversing its devastated world working as a Stalker, one of the few left that is strong enough to beat back the darkness encompassing the land. That sounds like a solid premise for a dark fantasy, so I decided to give Hunt the Night’s demo a shot during Steam Next Fest.

The pixel graphics that accompanied both the introduction and the game’s environments themselves were the first thing I noticed, in ways both good and bad. On the good side of things, the world of Hunt the Night was definitely on its Agame with the beautifully gothic theme running throughout. Frequent use of shadows and moonlight lent the experience a pervasively haunting and foreboding presence. This clicked incredibly well with the rest of the demo, where the spooky and frantic music left me on edge and I was constantly trying to anticipate the next enemy ambush.

On the bad side of the graphics, I found it hard to differentiate separate areas within each portion of the game, which made moving around the poison pool obstacle courses very annoying. I often felt like I could never be sure where the solid ground ended and the walls or pits began. This was mostly an issue in the visually darker moments of the demo, as many of the indoor scenes with artificial light were much easier to make out. At the same time, there were a few additional sections of Hunt the Night where the player is plunged into near-total darkness, making it nigh-impossible to see nearly anything. This tells me that at least some of this visual difficulty is intentional. That being said, I personally found myself more frustrated at not being able to tell what was going on than with my lack of skill at the game.