The Astra Hunters is a guild of adventurers who explore ruins in order to claim treasure and unearth the secrets of ancient civilizations. The protagonist, Zosma, is ranked dead last in the guild with no treasures or discoveries to his name. One day, he falls down a trapdoor and plummets to the base of a subterranean structure, the Crescent Moon Tower. In order to escape the tower, Zosma recruits a cat blob companion and works with the mysterious Penumbra, all while collecting every bit of treasure he can find.
Can be downloaded from Steam
and itch.
This game contains examples of:
- 24-Hour Armor: Zosma and Apolune are never seen without their armor, even outside of combat situations. In the ending, Zosma removes his helmet, showing that he has blue hair like Deneb.
- Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: The further the player advances the story, the more the shopkeeper will charge for all items. They state they can get away with it because they're the only shopkeeper in the tower. If the player shops using the Mini Shop instead of talking to the shopkeeper directly, the shop listings will be even more expensive because of delivery expenses.
- Almighty Janitor: Although Zosma is a fairly capable fighter, he's ranked dead last as an Astra Hunter. He later states that it's because he plays it too safe by only taking on easy ruins, which have already been scoured clean by other hunters. Depending Zosma's treasure count, he can end up in 99th (last), 50th, 10th, or 1st place in the guild rankings in the ending, though his combat prowess is undeniable considering he and his blob companion defeated Deneb, the former top Astra Hunter.
- Ambiguous Situation: It's ambiguous how this game relates to the other Torch60 games in terms of continuity, since the postgame of Brave Hero Yuusha implies the games make up a multiverse. In Scorpius Shoal, the party meets Captain Scuttlebone, who is the main character of one of the books in Edward's school. However, if Zosma didn't get the top Astra Hunter rank, the rankings can show Alpha, Lampy Larry, and Minister Orange, who are all characters from Soma Union.
- Artificial Stupidity:
- The blob companion uses all available actions at random without any regard for the state of all other characters. This means they aren't guaranteed to use their healing skill at low HP unless the player sets them to only heal.
- It's possible for enemies to inflict Chain Break on the companion, even though only Zosma makes use of that mechanic.
- Ascended Extra: Captain Scuttlebone was a postgame boss in Brave Hero Yuusha, but in this game, she gets a character arc as the boss of the fifth stratum.
- Bittersweet Ending: If Zosma collects enough treasure but not all of them, he'll experience varying degrees of success in being an Astra Hunter and sharing the legacy of the bosses of the Crescent Moon Tower. However, his companion remains fused with him and cannot manifest in the world of the living to go on adventures with him.
- Blob Monster: Along with Torch60's trademark Oozie enemies, the game has Zosma's companion, who is a blob creature with a cat face, cat ears, a moon-shaped cowlick, and star patterns across their body.
- Book Ends: The first boss of the game is Penumbra, who is clearly holding back in order to test Zosma. The Final Boss is her true self, Deneb, who holds nothing back in order to test if Zosma has what it takes to carry on her legacy as an Astra Hunter.
- Boring, but Practical: The starting sigils, Squire and Page, have the most basic abilities of all the sigils. They have Power Focus and Magic Focus respectively, which increases SP by 2 while contributing to the combo multiplier, making them great for quickly building up SP for a stronger skill from a more advanced sigil.
- Brutal Bonus Level: The Expanding Void dungeons are much tougher than their equivalent main story counterparts, since there are random instead of touch encounters, the party loses more money for fleeing battle, and dying results in a game over instead of returning to the previous save point.
- Combination Attack: Astra skills are powerful skills that Zosma and his companion can use together, but each one can only be used once per battle and requires both characters to be alive.
- Combos: Zosma can perform multiple actions per turn and build up a combo damage multiplier, but the multiplier resets if he follows a skill type with a different skill type. Astra skills can combo into other skills without breaking the chain, but the chain will be broken if the player goes from a regular skill to an Astra Skill. Additionally, the multiplier doesn't reset until after the different skill type is used, which means the final skill in the chain can be different from the rest of the chain without any drawback.
- Company Cross References:
- Zosma states that his peers call him "Purple Dissonance" in order to annoy him.
- The Fauxma Spirits miniboss team is a reference to the protagonists of Soma Spirits, but aren't actually Heart and Soul themselves.
- The 38th treasure is the Cooler Crusader's glove.
- The 45th treasure is Zero's hat from Soma Union
- The 47th treasures is Absolution's mask from the Soma duology.
- The final treasure is the Violet Prism Stone from Crescent Prism.
- Counterattack:
- Revenge Dummy can alternate between countering physical and magical attacks, but cannot perform any offensive actions otherwise.
- If Clean Sweeper is poisoned, they will cure themselves of poison and inflict poison on the entire party, all without taking up their turn.
- Dark Is Not Evil: The boss of Ophiuchus Obelisk is Nadir, a necromancer dressed in a dark blue robe, making him the most sinister-looking of all the story bosses. Fortunately, he's a benevolent figure who wants to use his necromancy to give people a second chance to experience more in life, and gets his wish by helping Deneb revive Zosma.
- Dead All Along: In Aquila Arena, Penumbra reveals that all the bosses of the tower are important figures who died long ago and faded into obscurity, and that it's up to Zosma to help them pass onto the afterlife. This includes Penumbra herself, since she's actually Zosma's late sister Deneb. In Ophiuchus Obelisk, Zosma learns that like everyone else in the tower, he's also dead, since he didn't survive the fall from the trapdoor at the start of the game.
- Developer's Foresight: Zosma initially calls his blob companion "Blobbo," but later gets the option to give the latter a proper name. However, the player can input "Blobbo" anyways, causing Zosma to say, "Actually, Blobbo is fine after all."
- Downer Ending: If Zosma either fails to collect treasure or collects too little, he'll continue to fail as an Astra Hunter and the legacy of the Crescent Moon Tower bosses will be lost forever.
- Dual Boss:
- The second story boss, Waxing and Waning, is a pair of fairies.
- The Aquila Arena tournament has several miniboss pairs: Bullogna and Sorelami, Flarp and Droll, and Patch Sr. and Pill Jr.
- One of the postgame superbosses is Lunita and Maru, the protagonists of Crescent Prism.
- Duel Boss: While traversing Scorpius Shoal, the player will have two ship battles pitting Captain Scuttlebone's Silver Blossom against Colonel Spectrus's Salty Specter, with the latter being stronger and more durable than the regular encounter ships. While each ship has its own crew, they also count as single combat units in terms of gameplay.
- Fusion Dance: In the ending, the blob companion becomes a part of Zosma's soul and can no longer exist as an individual. This is subverted if the player obtains all the treasure in the game, allowing the companion to physically manifest and go on adventures with Zosma again.
- Golden Ending: If Zosma collects every treasure, he becomes the greatest Astra Hunter, has phenomenal success in running a museum to share the legacies of the Crescent Moon Tower bosses, and reunites with his companion.
- Guest-Star Party Member: When fighting ship enemies, the player controls Captain Scuttlebone's ship, the Silver Blossom, making Scuttlebone the closest thing the game has to a playable boss. Once Scuttlebone stops accompanying the party, the ship battles become unavailable.
- Hero Antagonist: The bosses of the Crescent Moon Tower fight Zosma for the sake of testing him, but they want him to succeed in escaping the tower so that he can carry on their legacies and so that he can be revived from his untimely death.
- Hub City: After the party defeats Penumbra, she takes them to the Betwixt, a town in another dimension that can be visited between the Crescent Moon Tower's stratums. The town itself is small, but has a shop and a library, the latter of which is used to read tutorials, view trophies, and receive Astra Hunter rank rewards. The town's exit allows the player to teleport back to any of the boss rooms.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
- Zosma is a self-absorbed Glory Seeker and is rude when he's frustrated with his current situation, but he learns to be nicer to his blob companion. Although he initially helps the bosses of each stratum in order to advance in the tower, he eventually helps them out of genuine care. In the ending, he continues searching for treasure not for his own gain, but to promote the history of the people those treasures are tied to.
- Waning and Waxing spend much of their time playing pranks on Zosma, but they ultimately support his quest and compliment him for learning the value of teamwork. Additionally, pranks are how they maintain their existence, and they never enact any lethal pranks. They also bestowed blessings upon civilization in the past, until technology rendered them obsolete.
- Saros is initially condescending towards Zosma and mocks his unluckiness, but later acknowledges that Zosma overcame her trials with skill. She also started her casino out of a desire to make people happy, only to regret it when it caused them to become gambling addicts.
- Malevolent Masked Man: The boss of the second Expanding Void area is Soap Expenser, who is dressed like an executioner with a mask that resembles Absolution.
- Multiple Endings: The endings are based on the treasure the player collected throughout their run.
- If Zosma collects no treasure, he will return to the world of the living, but without any evidence of his adventure, he ends up fading into obscurity while making no headway as an Astra Hunter. In this ending, the player doesn't even get to see the credits screen.
- If Zosma collects a small amount of treasure, he will return to the world of the living and dedicate a museum to the people in the tower so that their legacy will be remembered, but the museum goes out of business due to a lack of exhibits and Zosma fades into obscurity while making no headway as an Astra Hunter.
- If Zosma collects a modest amount of treasure, his museum and Astra Hunter career will both do good but not great.
- If Zosma collects most of the treasure, his museum will be very successful and he'll become one of the top ten Astra Hunters.
- If Zosma collects all of the treasure, his museum will be incredibly successful and he'll become the top Astra Hunter. His blob companion also physically manifests in the world of the living, allowing the two to go on adventures together.
- The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Captain Scuttlebone is much less enthusiastic about pirating than in Brave Hero Yuusha and she feels that her best days are behind her. As a result, she and her crew spend their days eating and drinking in a seaside bar. Zosma's task in Scorpius Shoal is to reignite her passion for treasure hunting.
- Powers as Programs: Zosma can equip class sigils, each of which grants him different skills. He starts out able to equip three at a time, but can upgrade this to seven if all story and Expanding Void content is cleared.
- The Power of Friendship: Every boss the party defeats improves their bond, resulting in Zosma getting more sigil slots and more actions per round while the blob companion gets more ABP to allocate to their skills, as well as new active and passive skills.
- The Prankster: The twin fairies, Waxing and Waning, need to prank humans in order to live. The humans don't mind, since they also bring blessings to human civilization.
- Pre-existing Encounters: In the main story dungeons, enemies appear as blobs that the player can dodge to avoid encounters, though some of them carry gems above their heads. All enemies can respawn, except for the minibosses guarding optional content and the ones carrying gems.
- Purgatory and Limbo: In Aquila Arena, Zosma learns that the Crescent Moon Tower contains the spirits of people who are unable to move on due to regrets. Later, it turns out he's also dead, since he wouldn't be able to enter the Crescent Moon Tower otherwise. Unlike everyone else, he has a chance to come back to life, due to the two wish granting rings and because his blob companion preserved his soul.
- Random Encounters: In the Expanding Void, all regular enemies are traditional random encounters, unlike the touch encounters in the Crescent Moon Tower.
- Sanity Slippage: In the postgame, one of the the superbosses, Cardboard Bob, went on vacation but got trapped in a void, causing him to go Mad From The Isolation. Even before that, his working conditions under Mr. Flap are still terrible, stressing him out further. The moment he sees Zosma and the blob companion, he attacks them thinking that he'll be allowed to go home if he wins.
- Schmuck Bait: In Nadir's boss fight, he has two Soul Bomb minions. Due to the way other bomb-like enemies work in the game, the player could easily assume that they have to defeat the bombs before they explode. In reality, defeating these bombs cause them to explode and revive to full health to start the cycle anew, and they automatically take damage each turn so that they'll eventually explode even if the player avoids attacking them.
- Secret Test of Character: In Ophiuchus Obelisk, Nadir doesn't tell Zosma that the latter can be revived until near the end of the stratum, since he wants to test if Zosma has the resolve to keep climing even while knowing he's dead and might never come back to life.
- Shadowed Face, Glowing Eyes: Zosma is a helmeted warrior with a completely shadowed face and glowing eyes, making him look like a magenta Dissonance. However, while most examples of this trope in Torch's works are spirits, Zosma is a human.
- Soul Jar: The companion eats special gems near the end of each stratum in order to gain new powers and Astra skills. It turns out these gems are pieces of Zosma's soul, which he needs in order to get home, and the blob's purpose is to contain the pieces until they can all be gathered.
- Tempting Fate: In the Aquila Arena pair tournament, Zosma mockingly asks how Tricky Macy is going to take on the playable duo alone. Macy proceeds to create four clones of himself to even the odds.
- Tomato in the Mirror: In Aquila Arena, Zosma learns that the people that he helps are dead people who cannot pass on without having their wish granted. In Ophiuchus Obelisk, Nadir reveals that Zosma is as dead as all the other important characters in the tower. However, unlike the others, he can still recover his soul and return to the realm of the living.
- Tournament Arc: In the Chapter 3 dungeon, Aquila Arena, Zosma helps Apolune organize a gladiator tournament while also participating in it. This pits him against several miniboss pairs, though Tricky Macy and Apolune himself fight alone.
- Trickster Mentor: Waxing and Waning set up obstacles in Gemini Grove in order to teach Zosma the value of working with his companion.
- Unexpected Gameplay Change: In Scorpius Shoal, ship combat utilizes a more traditional battle system where the player character only gets one action per turn instead of Zosma's chain system.
- Unskilled, but Strong: Zosma has higher stats than his companion and he's the only unit in the game with access to the chain system. However, he is unable to land critical hits, since the lore states that he's too clumsy to do so.
- Was It Really Worth It?: Saros set up a casino in order to bring entertainment and joy to people, but eventually became disillusioned because her casino just caused people to become addicted to gambling and ruining their lives over it.
