Hunt the Night Preview

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. 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 A-game 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.

Speaking of the actual skill involved in playing Hunt the Night, you won’t need too much of it. That’s not to say the souls-like title is a cakewalk by any means, only that you don’t need to have frame-perfect reflexes or hours of practice to complete the demo. Most of the challenges in the story mode provided aren’t too bad, offering roughly four different types of enemies that each feature their own specific characteristics. Additionally, Hunt the Night offers an interesting mechanic where every three successful melee attacks will reload one bullet for your firearm. Between the two, most guns offer a higher amount of damage and a significantly longer range, so that reloading mechanic essentially forces the player to alternate between their options in combat as opposed to just shooting everything. Thankfully, both the guns and the swords are very fun to use, with at least four different melee options and two firearms unlockable through normal play. Each weapon plays slightly differently, mostly in terms of its speed and range, so there’s a lot of room for testing out different options for any given fight. I personally found that the faster weapons were more my speed, though completely crunching enemies to dust with a heavy sword was also a good time.

There are a few other pieces of equipment to find, including several options to boost defensive stats like health and stamina regeneration, as well as special darkness powers. These abilities offer unique actions in combat in exchange for a cooldown period before they can be used again, though the ones I found in the demo mostly amounted to blasting enemies with bits of darkness for lots of damage. One radiated around my character while the other just streamed out in front of her, but both turned out to be fairly useful.

Moving away from the gameplay for a moment, I'd like to move on to the story within the demo. You may have noticed that, beyond the basic premise, I've been a tad reticent to bring up many of the details. That's because there wasn't much that terribly impressed me throughout. Hunt the Night's demo revolves around a hunt to take out a monster in a dark manor-esque area. Therein, several crow's feathers can be picked up to reveal aspects of the world's past. However, there wasn't much to speak of in the three feathers I found during the demo, with one only offering a solution to a puzzle. Perhaps the full game will have more to it in this regard, but I, for one, don't feel hooked on whatever comes next.

The demo concluded with a boss fight against a large wolf named The Devourer, which certainly tried its best to devour me. It was a gruelling battle, requiring me to dodge roll around the arena just to survive. It possessed a respectable range of attacks that only got more complicated and stressful to work around as the fight progressed. With slashes and leaps that took it across the screen and clouds of miasma appearing out of nowhere, I took a while to make my way through. Nevertheless, I managed to defeat it while on my last sliver of health.

With the boss well and truly defeated, all that was left to do was play through the other mode Hunt the Night’s demo had to offer. Named Prime Hunt, this mode acted as a way to quickly replay against a slightly harder version of The Devourer, starting with a shopkeeper offering several different tools to assist in the fight. Even with the limited budget provided by the game, the player is given several good options to use against the giant wolf and the fight is easy enough to repeat that I had little trouble giving the encounter try after try.

Yet, despite the strong dark fantasy aesthetic and satisfying gameplay, I did not add Hunt the Night to my wishlist. It certainly seems like it could be a lot of fun and I am excited to see what else it has in store for its players, don't get me wrong. However, due to the negatives I've mentioned throughout the preview, particularly the difficulties I experienced in actually seeing the areas, I just wasn’t completely sold.