It’s been about a year and a half since a trio of Bungie alumni formed Moonshot Games, a studio with the stated intention of bringing AAA design values to the downloadable market. Now, gamers have been given their first glimpse as to how well Moonshot is coming along with that goal, as the studio announced its first project this week, Fallen Frontier.

　　Fallen Frontier will fall into the 2D side-scrolling shooter genre and presents the story of a hard-bitten “lawman” who is at the center of a far-future film noir-style mystery on a frontier world in the Alpha Centauri system.

　　Alpha Centauri may not be the final frontier, but it certainly is home for Fallen Frontier. As seen in the game’s first trailer (below), Fallen Frontier features an artistically rendered sci-fi universe chock-full of guns and grenades. Beyond its single-player storyline, the game also supports cooperative action.

　　Moonshot plans to give the game’s first public showing at PAX East, which will set up shop in Boston from March 11-13.

　　[UPDATE] Responding to a request for comment, Moonshot said that it hopes to release Fallen Frontier during the first half of 2012. As for platforms, the studio is targeting Steam, Xbox Live, and the PlayStation Network, though a definitive decision has yet to be made. Moonshot also said that it is still searching for a publisher.