The Haunted Hoard: Hauntii (Xbox Series X)

Memories are what make you who you are, so when the spirits in Hauntii’s version of the afterlife learn their path to Ascension would involve having to sacrifice all of them, many are content to linger in Eternity instead. Eternity doesn’t look too awful either in some places, some ghosts happy to head to cafes or even a theme park, but if you stray out of the lit path in this two-tone underworld, you’re at risk of unseen things threatening your life. Thus, it may be in your best interests to collect the stars in the mix of collect-a-thon puzzler and twin-stick shooter known as Hauntii.

 

Hauntii, that being the name of the ghost you play as, find himself in Eternity with no memories of his life, and while this may make him sound perfect for Ascension, it actually makes it a bit rougher. To leave this limbo, Hauntii must rebuild his memories by collecting stars he then builds into constellations, these giving him flashes of his former life. Relearning who you are only to have to then part with your rebuilt identity certainly sounds like it could be tragic or even have a grander point to speak on the importance of our past compared to our future, but Hauntii doesn’t actually ever speak. In fact, when he enters the underworld, he is quick to meet an Eternian, an angelic being who tries to help him ascend only to see the chains of his memories still holding him back. Hauntii seems almost more concerned with meeting back up with the Eternian after his failed Ascension rather than thinking much on the memories he’s tossing away, and this is despite the fact the game does do a simple but charming job in showing you little fragments of the man he was in life. Portrayed by way of scenes featuring simple human shapes, you get a general idea of who Hauntii was and perhaps you, the player, are meant to feel the angst of tossing away such precious and adorably rendered memories, but Hauntii doesn’t prove to be all that reactive. Other characters such as the Angelpunks even actively oppose Eternians and Ascension and can actually speak their minds on this moral quandary, and yet Hauntii marches onward towards his goal without ever making it too clear what he thinks about his situation beyond not sacrificing his memories right away after he gets them.

Hauntii’s premise feels underexplored and mostly just something for characters to comment on, the Angelpunks at least directly fighting you at times so that all the opining on this afterlife’s nature doesn’t just amount to slowly doling out the deeper details on what you’re working towards. Eternity is a more fascinating setting because it’s not a traditional underworld though, almost like a spiritual waiting room where people settled in despite areas of hostility. There are malevolent spirits and dangerous machines found in certain spaces, but you also have unique cultures like nomadic wanderers or spirits trying to mimic the upper class behaviors from human life despite most of Eternity’s economy seeming to relate to buying hats. Hauntii’s quest for his memories will take him to a good range of locations that can be intricately detailed despite sticking usually to using two shades of coloration, black always present in some form but areas will have either white or some color like orange or green presented rather brightly to contrast the darkness. At once it can catch your eye with the detailed art and yet important details can sometimes blend in because of the limited color palette, but attacks and collectibles are able to stand out well against these backgrounds with bright reds, blues, and purples. Hauntii can make imposing towering heights with uncanny beings flying past or just a fun space for little blobby ghosts to play, the environment very crucial to the gameplay because the focus in Hauntii is on collection most of all.

 

Those stars you need to restore your little ghost’s memories can be found in abundance as you travel through the afterlife, but the means through which you acquire them change quite a bit. Hauntii is capable of firing energy that can defeat enemies and clear away an ethereal substance many enemies leave behind to slow you down, although your attacks always do feel a little weak even as you build constellations and start upgrading your energy to be able to open fire for longer periods. Battles are a common way you can earn stars, and while they are frequent and few areas are fully free of active threats, a good degree of stars don’t require killing spirits at all. One trick Hauntii has up his sleeve for some interesting interactions is one that matches his name, the little ghost able to haunt objects so he can use their powers himself. There are definitely times this is relevant to combat, popping into something that attacks with fireworks poppers or commandeering a laser turret would fit into this game if it was purely a shooter, but perhaps more often it might involve a puzzle or a clever way of getting around. Hop in a ladybug and you can drift over darkness to reach trees full of goodies. Enter a Test Your Might machine as the amusement park and when someone hits it, you’ll be launched high up into the air. Getting on roller coasters or possessing a flying skull to reach high places mean a good amount of stars can feature more imaginative requirements to acquire, although there are definitely repeated formats like reuniting a dog ghost with its owner that don’t feel like they evolve. Others like timed dashes through checkpoint gates or collecting pieces of shattered stars within a time limit get away with repeat showings by utilizing differing level geometry though, and there is some entertainment to be found to arriving at a new place and wandering around to see if you can spot anything out of place that might help you earn a new collectible.

Hauntii does wait until near the end of the game to give you a limited means of quickly traveling through its many locations, and with area-specific collectibles to be used as currency at the hat shops, it can be annoying to wait to return to an area later if you do feel you want to 100% the game. Thankfully, while stars are tied to upgrades to your health, shot energy, and how many dashes you can perform before they need to recharge, there are far more stars than there are upgrades. Stars can sometimes have unusual conditions that might be hard to immediately parse but outside of ones tied to battles, most aren’t too difficult. The rollercoaster rides can be tedious to retry if you miss something important, but searching for stars and currency can grow a bit rote eventually too as areas become too large for their own good. Scouring a huge area only to find a repeated idea you won’t struggle much to overcome means sometimes the puzzles in Hauntii are less headscratchers and more a quick job before you scurry off in search of a more robust activity, although the bosses can feel a little sloppy too, especially in face of something that undermines Hauntii a fair bit: its camera angle.

 

Hauntii is presented from an isometric diagonal view, this allowing the space to feel like it has visual depth despite featuring two-dimensional characters. There are times where you need to line up shots that utilize all three dimensions, such as launching attacks at an enemy flying above you, and it feels rough trying to line up what should be simple shots because the flat characters don’t follow that illusion of depth. Hauntii’s own attacks are all restricted to his horizontal axis, but when haunting something that moves upwards, it can be annoying to see things aren’t interacting as they appear they should. The perspective woes are sometimes complicated when busier environments have to make structures transparent so you can even see what you’re doing, but some parts may be rendered visible still and you try to walk over to them only to be baffled that was apparently a roof you were trying to reach while on ground level. Perhaps one of the weakest parts of Hauntii’s area design though is those dark areas where you will be attacked if you linger in them too long. Finding safe ways to travel through it or taking the risk and charging through do provide interesting moments, but sometimes an important area is far off in the darkness and the clues that you need to brave racing through the pitch black aren’t always the best. You have no area specific maps to rely on, meaning if you’re struggling to finish collecting everything in the area, sometimes it feels like blindly charging into the dark and hoping to find a valid path becomes your only option. Since the number of required collectibles isn’t too high you don’t have to engage with some of the less cleanly implemented tasks, but it is a shame when a game makes you want to collect everything only to reveal the process loses its appeal in the face of some less creative goal ideas.

THE VERDICT: Hauntii’s afterlife has lovely environments with some emotional music underpinning your journey, but a story not too interested in exploring its concepts does let down the potential of its setting. Thankfully, Eternity is filled with plenty of collectibles to scrounge up through puzzles, unique applications of your possession powers, and combat encounters. It doesn’t excel in any one gameplay area, but the mix of different tasks makes up for it as each new area piques your curiosity. Get too curious and you’ll run up against some rough edges like repeated or hollow goals for stars, but Hauntii can pull you back in when you reach the next big setting shift and the new ideas that come with it.

 

And so, I give Hauntii for Xbox Series X…

An OKAY rating. Visually striking but conceptually playful, Hauntii can’t be said to be lacking in heart or imagination, but a bit more follow through could help it be the kind of game that hooks you into completing it fully. The story seemingly losing interesting in the questions it poses is a curious direction, and while some questions are deliberately unanswered, it still feels like it’s food for thought rather than the personal tale you’d expect when the game shows you sentimental memories backed by moving music. Your haunting powers and twin stick shooting battles can feel like they stagnate at times too, large spaces sometimes filled with things to sidetrack you rather than reward you which makes those hunts if you are trying to find the last collectibles go on even longer. Inventive new ideas do get rolled out and put through their paces though, Hauntii able to recover from lingering too long on ideas even if a consistent freshness would better benefit the game. You won’t be steeped in repetition, but you can still feel the specter of it at times when convenient travel isn’t on a list of the game’s priorities, sometimes getting from one end of a space to another being a bit of a process. This approach to a collect-a-thon does have promise though, mostly through its casual searching that leads to finding something abnormal and learning how to interact with it. Uncovering what can be possessed or triggering a surprise battle do make you curious for what’s waiting in the next area, it just needed a better sense for mixing up returning ideas, something it does succeed at with more obvious cases like needing to have a race match the new environment.

 

Playing a great deal of video games will inevitably push out the memories of older ones, and while Hauntii’s distinct look and general feel might linger with you after you’ve cleared it, it doesn’t strike hard enough with its story’s emotions or captivate enough with its star collecting to cement it as something you won’t want to forget. It is a fine and fun time when it’s doing what it does well, but over time it gets bigger than it needs to be and thins out its thrills, meaning that while you are usually engaged at least a bit when you find something to do, you’re sometimes puttering around in search of purpose. Hauntii isn’t too memorable, but it shouldn’t be totally forgotten either, and for something involved but not too demanding, clearing Hauntii without getting too caught up in trying to grab everything could still be an enjoyable if potentially ephemeral way to spend a few evenings.