The afterlife is no stranger to being portrayed in entertainment. Sometimes it’s a paradise, sometimes it’s a hellscape. For parts of Hauntii, it’s a carnival.
Hauntii begins with a little ghost being guided through Eternity by an angelic being to what may or may not be a heaven, a paradise. You don’t know because your little ghost is quickly pulled back down by chains, and you’ll spend the rest of the game journeying through the afterlife in search of the angelic being and the way back to wherever she was going to take you. But is she really on your side? That’s the central question the game asks, as other ghosts will warn you of her and some ghosts band together in a sort of angel-hunting gang.
The opening section of Hauntii is one of its most beautiful. The animation is top notch as the ghost and angel travel above Eternity. The city, basked in a dark green hue, sprawls before them as they venture to the central tower. Swept up above, the ghost and angel fly high over the city, past floating islands and beings that also may be angels, piano keys wrapped between multiple sets of wings. I highly recommend watching the opening moments of the game as words can’t do them justice. The music, art, and animation come together to create one of the best opening sequences I’ve seen in a game this year.
I just wish I loved the whole of Hauntii as much as its opening moments.
That’s not to say that Hauntii is a bad game or peaked twenty minutes in. Rather, I found the whole of it to be frustrating at times and beautiful in others.
Hauntii’s beauty is easily found in its art style. Wonderfully hand-drawn and animated, Hauntii possesses a very unique look. The levels are predominantly black, with green, white, light orange, or another singular hue giving depth and form to the levels. Each level looks as good as the last, from the early forests to the carnival full of rollercoasters and fireworks.
While the art is wonderful, I sometimes felt like it worked against the game. Structures and trees will recede if your ghost goes behind them, letting you keep an eye on the ghost, but this could lead to visual clutter and the lack of an ability to actually know where the ghost was. I would occasionally have a difficult time differentiating between a black cylindrical structure and the black wasteland of corrupted ghosts, trapping me in the wastelands behind an elevated platform that I didn’t know existed.
When the visuals work, though, they’re wonderful – just like the music and sound cues. Hauntii’s score both complements and helps build the world. It swells during cinematic and emotional moments; is melancholy at times and upbeat and joyous during others. The music is extremely fun, and the sounds of the carnival level stuck out to me particularly – I felt like a kid again trying for prizes at the local fair. I encountered a few audio glitches, either the music cutting out or distorting. It was mostly limited to a specific rollercoaster, and restarting the game after entering a new area typically fixed any issues.
If the beauty of Hauntii is its art and music, the frustration comes with its gameplay. The main gameplay mechanic is its twin-stick shooting, which barely evolves throughout the game’s 7-10 hour runtime. Your little ghost’s green projectiles never reach far and don’t quite feel like they pack a punch when they land. Combine that with the ghost’s slow movement speed and limited dashing ability, and you’re stuck with an unremarkable shooting experience that’s leaned on too often throughout Hauntii.
The haunt mechanic is Hauntii’s calling card. In combat, you can take control of bouncy ghosts to squash enemies or ghosts with fireworks strapped to their backs to shoot other enemies from the sky, adding some necessary variety to combat encounters. The haunt mechanic is typically more necessary for traversal and puzzle solving; occasionally you’ll have to haunt a ladybug and fly between trees to advance a level or take control of a pair of wings to fly to the next checkpoint.
Hauntii’s gameplay could lead to frustrations, and during one boss fight I wanted to tap into my inner thirteen-year-old and chuck my controller. The controls never felt tight enough for me to enjoy the rollercoaster obstacle course segment that needed to be finished multiple times to defeat the specific boss, dragging the fight along after death after death after death.
While I had some frustrations with Hauntii, the wonderful art style, great music, and intriguing, heartfelt story were enough to keep me engaged through my playthrough. If you can look past Hauntii’s rough-around-the-edges core gameplay loop – or, better yet, enjoy it – then Hauntii might be next up on your indie game docket — especially come spooky season.
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