H auntii is a twin-stick shooter in the same way Super Mario Bros: Wonder is a game about jumping. This imaginative, breathtakingly beautiful debut from Moonloop Games about a ghost searching for understanding in the afterlife transforms the twitchiest of genres into an expansive, accessible adventure filled with puzzles, surprises, and ideas. You play a newly departed spirit washed up on the black shores of a purgatorial hereafter, with no recollection of their identity in their previous life.
As you thread along winding paths of white light, two goals emerge for you to pursue: find out more about who you were before you died, and chase down a mysterious angelic figure who continually eludes your grasp, like a certain princess absenting a certain castle. While Hauntii’s play involves some speedy movement (you can only move safely through illuminated areas, for example, forcing you to dash between shadows) it is more of a puzzler than a game about reactions. Its hook is that the ghostly green projectiles that your spirit can shoot can also possess enemies and objects.
Possessing a tree (yes, the afterlife has trees) will let you shake it, causing it to drop motes of light that splash on to the ground, creating new pathways between darkened areas. View image in fullscreen The afterlife has trees. And ladybirds .
.. Hauntii.
Photograph: Moonloop Games You use these powers of possession, alongside your shooting and movement, to seek out collectible stars hidden within the game�.
