Hunter's Moon: A Sovereign Syndicate Adventure

A steampunk prequel goes roguelite

Hunter's Moon: A Sovereign Syndicate Adventure is developer Crimson Herring Studios' roguelite deckbuilder, released 24 November 2025 for Windows as a prequel to the studio's earlier RPG Sovereign Syndicate. Where that first game paired tarot-card mechanics with a broader RPG structure, Hunter's Moon narrows its focus into a leaner, run-based deckbuilder: players choose from four agents investigating a mysterious plague spreading through a steampunk Victorian London, each character bringing a distinct deck, relic pool and combat identity to turn-based encounters against corrupted beasts and bosses. Runs are split across four separate areas, each forcing a fresh deck and relic set rather than letting one long, escalating build carry across an entire playthrough, a structural choice reviewers frequently single out as the game's most distinctive departure from genre norms.

Reviewers praise an approachable, well-supported roguelite

The clearest thread running through Hunter's Moon's positive reviews is appreciation for how readable and approachable its combat feels without sacrificing real strategic depth. One detailed review lays out the appeal specifically: "The game isnt to much complicated. I really enjoy card game but sometimes they're ultra intricated, with a lot of useless effect... Nearly no tutorial, player learn step by step naturally. And that's how all game must be designed." A separate reviewer frames the game's position among its genre peers directly: "It feels like a mix between slay the spire and across the obelisk. It has some cool unique pathing," while a third highlights the connection to the wider Sovereign Syndicate story, noting real motivation to unlock each of the four agents "to continue the storyline." Developer responsiveness draws its own specific praise, with one reviewer describing reporting two broken achievements and receiving both a same-day acknowledgment and a fix within twenty-four hours, a level of support uncommon enough in the review corpus to be called out directly as a reason to recommend the game.

A short runtime and uneven balance dominate the criticism

Set against that warmth, Hunter's Moon's Very Positive score comes qualified by a dominant, heavily repeated complaint about how little content sits beneath its polished presentation. One of the corpus's most heavily upvoted critical reviews states the problem plainly: "The core gameplay is solid but there is a serious lack of content. I got 100% completion within 9.5 hours. There is a very limited pool of enemies and events so most runs are very similar." A closely related complaint concerns balance rather than length, with the same review noting some characters and mechanics "are so overpowered that it feels pointless to make any other build," while a separate reviewer describes the opposite problem on other characters: "battles were not balanced for them at all and some of them can't even get done with a run without lots of grinding." A third reviewer isolates a specific mechanical culprit, arguing that stacking status effects like poison "don't fall off over time," turning some encounters into unwinnable traps for underprepared builds regardless of skill.

The shadow of Menace From the Deep

A distinctive, recurring thread runs through a meaningful share of Hunter's Moon's reviews on both sides of the score: direct comparison to Menace From the Deep, an earlier roguelite from a developer the corpus describes as friends and collaborators with Crimson Herring Studios. One positive review addresses the comparison head-on: "All the comments about this being a rip-off of Menace from the deep falls hollow, considering the developers are friends and promote each other," framing Hunter's Moon as a deliberate structural variation rather than an imitation, splitting a single long deck-and-relic build into four separate areas that each force a restart specifically to avoid the kind of relic-stacking snowball Menace allows. Critical reviewers read that same relationship less generously. One detailed review captures the more skeptical view: "Somewhere between Menace of the Deep's complexity and sometimes insane difficulty spikes, and this game's simplicity and boring, if easy, road to victory, there is probably a great game... it really doesn't take long to see just about everything the game has to offer." That tension, whether Hunter's Moon's simplification represents a refinement of Menace's ideas or a diminishment of them, recurs often enough to shape how a meaningful portion of the review corpus frames the whole game, independent of its own individual merits. Notably, reviewers on both sides of that debate tend to describe the underlying shift in similar terms even as they disagree about whether it's welcome: fewer relics stacking across a single long run, a shorter overall time commitment, and a more forgiving early curve that trades some of Menace's mid-run tension for approachability. Whether that trade reads as a smart accessibility choice or a step down in depth appears to hinge largely on how much genre experience a given reviewer already brought with them.

A card pool some reviewers wanted deepened, not widened

A smaller but specific thread of criticism concerns the cards themselves rather than the run structure around them. One detailed review breaks the complaint down plainly: "Almost all the cards I saw are just 'Deal X damage' or 'Gain X Block'. Seems to be pretty grindy to unlock other characters too," arguing the deckbuilding layer lacks the layered synergy that defines the genre's stronger entries, even while conceding the visuals and setting are appealing. That critique sits apart from the corpus's more common complaints about length and balance, pointing instead at a gap between Hunter's Moon's presentation, which draws consistent praise, and the mechanical substance underneath it, which a smaller but consistent minority of reviewers found comparatively thin once the initial charm of learning each agent's kit wore off.

Value

At NZ$28.99, Hunter's Moon asks a moderate price for a roguelite deckbuilder that a meaningful share of its Very Positive score, 203 positive against 40 negative across 243 reviews, credits for its accessible combat, distinctive Darkest Dungeon-inspired presentation and genuinely responsive developer support, while an equally consistent share of its criticism centers on how quickly that content runs out and how unevenly its difficulty balances across characters and areas. For players who value a shorter, lower-friction roguelite run structure and enjoy the Sovereign Syndicate setting, Hunter's Moon already delivers a well-presented, well-supported experience; for players who prioritize the long-tail replayability and mechanical depth of genre heavyweights like Slay the Spire, or who already own and prefer the developer's own Menace From the Deep, the current review corpus suggests tempering expectations about how much new ground this one covers.