Moon Hunters announced

Five-person Montreal studio Kitfox Games is working on an action RPG with local co-op support for up to 4 players. The name? Well, it’s right up there in the title: Moon Hunters.

The premise:

On one fateful summer evening, the Moon, source of all magic and spiritual power, does not rise. Your course is clear. You must set out alone or with the other chosen children of the Moon to solve the mystery and restore balance.

Without the Moon’s power, monsters rise up and chaos grows across the lands. Players must rely on one another in a dangerous, ever-changing world. As the days and nights cycle past, players use every last scrap of their wits, weapons, and magical studies to survive, craft, explore, and ultimately triumph. How you express your personality in difficult decisions shapes your reputation and, ultimately, how your tribe remembers you in the generations to come. What constellation would be your symbol?

Aside from local co-op, the thing that is perhaps most interesting about this game is that it promises a non-linear story progression. To wit: “The mythology of your character and world is determined by your actions, and the world reacts to you differently based on the mythology you build.” The process of building mythology, in turn, seems to be a combination of making dialog choices and exploring the world for landmarks with hidden myths.

Kitfox plan to release Moon Hunters to Steam Early Access sometime late this year; the estimated final release date is July 2015 (which means the developers have given less than a year to build the game–an unlikely feat). Moon Hunters is planned to be Windows-only.

The game is currently on Kickstarter, where it is already fully funded with 28 days left to go.