Hunt the Night – Review

Lovecraft-themed video games are on the rise, but most do not go beyond the clichés. Cthulhu is usually the focus of games, but Lovecraft’s Cthulhu story has very different gods, names and mechanics. Bloodborne, whether you agree or disagree with my statement, is the best game that I have seen inspired by Lovecraft.

Bloodborne may not have Cthulhu, but the game creates a mythology that is inspired by cosmic horror and does not hide its source. Let me first say that I admire Hunt the Night for trying to achieve the same.

Hunt the Night is a game where we take on the role of Vesper (not Yharnam), one of the Stalkers, similar to Bloodborne Hunters. We are attempting to complete our mission in the country of Medhram. The 9th Age is the age of mankind, and the world belongs to the humans during the daylight hours and the monsters at night. Every night, when night falls, the monsters take over. People are killed. Stalkers, a group of people who fight monsters in the nighttime, lose many members each night. The day-night cycle is stopped by a powerful historical artifact known as Seal of Night.

There must be some sort of reward. The sun will not fade away for centuries because of the compensation paid by these stalkers. But just like every morning has its own darkness, every night also has one. The night is engulfing all lights and falling like a nightmare on the people. This is our job. The storyline isn’t very original but it is enough to build the game.

Hunt the Night uses pixel graphics to bring both gothic architecture and monsters to the screen. The visuals in the game didn’t make us think they would have done the same thing if Bloodborne had been pixelated.

It’s not a straight-up action game, like “let’s find the boss, then kill him and find the next one”. Puzzles have been a big part of the game’s success, even though it is an action-adventure. I’m not talking about the “I opened the door, I found the key” type of puzzles, but rather the ones that require you take notes as you play the game. You can, for example, use a poem to determine the correct order in which you should touch statues, or you can follow clues left behind by previous Stalkers. These puzzles and traps make for a fun and unique gameplay experience. This game is a mix of Bloodborne, Zelda and an action-adventure dipped into pixel sauce. Just because I said this, do not think the game is slow-paced with limited combat. Although the puzzles can be helpful, the focus of the game is the combat. You have many melee weapons and a ranged gun similar to Bloodborne. This weapon has limited ammunition (six). To fill the ammo you need to hit three times. So, set up a cycle of three hits, then one shot, and three hits again. Visceral Attack would make the game complete.

If there aren’t any monsters to load ammunition, you can still use your ranged weapon. You can then fill up all six bullets using bullet fountains. This is a well-thought out feature. When choosing between weapons, you must decide “whether the weapon does less damage with one bullet or more with many bullets”, usually based on how strong the bosses are or the difficulty level of the screen.

Save points are like bonfires in Hunt the Night, which is based on the genre of soulslike games. You can replenish your health, potions, and resurrect the enemies that you killed. Once again, we are faced with the question: “Is it worth it to revive the enemies or should I keep going a bit longer?” A game makes you think.

The bosses in the game are multi-phase bosses with attacks that you would expect to see on a soulsliketa. The difficulty balance is very strange. I believe it’s necessary to separate the main points. You feel inferior to the bosses at the start of the game, with their limited health and weak attacks. Persistence pays off, and you’ll learn the boss’ attack patterns, when to dodge and strike, as well as how to best use your attacks. But I expected the difficulty curve of the game to be more smooth. Nobody likes to die in one shot. The new patch was not yet released when I wrote those lines. The power balances were improved after the game was released. There is still a lot of difficulty in the bosses, but the curve of difficulty has been removed. It’s a good thing I waited until the game was updated before I published the review.

Hunt the Night does a good job of telling the story of the environment despite the pixels. You can get a better idea of the story by looking at the Stalkers that were killed in the dungeons before you. It’s also nice to see the boss in-game before you enter a boss battle. After a while you might fight the wolf you first encountered at the start of the game as a boss and believe that you’ll be taken out quickly. These details add to the atmosphere.

This is because the game’s dungeons are designed to make it difficult for you to complete the cycle of “shoot and run, shoot and run, approach, shoot and run”. The outside of the game is open and allows for this, but the dash movement only works to a certain extent when you are in a dungeon or facing enemies from a distance. Dash’s “invincibility” framework is also insufficient for me. Some people may not mind these situations, but this was a game I disliked and I often Alt+F4’d in frustration. You can’t control your human nature when you fall into the deadly pool of miasma while trying to escape the enemies who are firing ranged attacks at you from both the left and right.

Moonlight Games has created a beautiful world and atmosphere, and brought the traditional souls-like dynamics into a bird’s eye perspective. As a Bloodborne enthusiast, I was also influenced by the fact that Bloodborne fed my addiction to the game. You will enjoy the sweet game which comes out when you peel away the layers of pain if you are someone who has tantrums.