Moonlight Peaks is a brand-new entry to the farming sim genre. Developed by Little Chicken and published by XSEED Games and Marvelous Europe, the game released on July 7th on Steam, Nintendo Switch, and Google Play Games. Raise mystical crops, cast spells and brew potions in this fresh new spin on the classic formula!
WARNING: SUM OF DIS REVIEW IS XTREMLY SCARY.
Originally, I wanted to fill this review with as many My Immortal references as I could. I have made the executive decision to not do that, for both your and my own sanity. Sorry to be such a prep.
Gameplay
Moonlight Peaks is not your typical farming game. Instead of inheriting some farm from some dead relative, you have actively chosen to run away from home. As the child of Dracula, you just had enough of your father and his endless demands. You end up in Moonlight Peaks, moving into your mother’s old, abandoned farm. Which I guess is kind of like inheriting it, but from an undead relative instead. The townsfolk are mostly welcoming. They are a wild mix of vampires, witches, seers, werewolves, and even Death himself! And, spoilers, you can romance almost all of them! And yes, you can date multiple people at a time. But once you do get married, your other lovers will return to just being friends with you, so keep that in mind if that is something that matters to you!
Now, I don’t think that I need to explain the core mechanics of a farming game to you. You water dirt, plant stuff, you know the drill. So let me tell you what this game does differently instead!
The Basics
For starters, there is magic! Lots of it. You get access to a variety of spells that will help you around your farm. Aquaflux will summon a magical watering can that waters a lot of crops for you. Or, if you want to do it yourself but don’t feel like walking all the way to the river, you can cast Refilliarmus to instantly refill your own watering can for zero Mana cost. There are even spells to summon rain for the next night, move entire buildings instantly, and summon axes or pickaxes to do the material harvesting for you! There is a lot to play around with and it really speeds up your daily tasks.
You can also build and tend to some herb gardens to plant flowers and, well, herbs. You then hang them to dry and grind them into a powder to use in a variety of potions and cooking. Kegs are available right from the start too! So no need to grind for a year to get to the point where you can actually process your produce. That’s not the only nice thing though! The game is packed with a ton of quality of life features.
Quality of Life
Your house comes with a massive built-in storage system right from the get-go, saving you from needing 50 or so chests just to hold all your clutter. If you choose to upgrade your tools, it happens immediately! No waiting around for days for a copper axe to finish. Fishing is also relatively easy, which is great because I am a certified video game fishing hater. It feels a lot like fishing in Animal Crossing, but you don’t have to be quite as fast to reel in a bite. On top of all that, you can shape-shift into a Hellkitten (and other forms later on, no spoilers tho!) to get around the map much faster.
Sidequests and Minigames
Apart from the main story, there are many little heart events for the characters once you reach certain friendship levels. You raise your friendship by talking to them, gifting them items once a day, or doing quests for them from the town quest board. The usual farming game friendship mechanics.
If you want a break from farming, the game is filled with cute side tasks, like flower arranging, pottery, and even embroidery. They are a nice touch to make the town’s stores feel more lively, especially since your partner will actually invite you to these activities when you go on dates, so you can make little trinkets for each other! How cute.
There is also Nokturna, an in-game card game where you compete to get the highest card value on the board. Winning actually requires some strategy as most cards have unique abilities. It’s a whole thing really. Beating someone in town rewards you with a card to fill your book, gotta collect ’em all!
Like most games of the genre, this one also has a museum to fill with artifacts, critters and more. But this one needs you to grow a 2-star version of every single available crop too. It isn’t too difficult, but it does make you actually plant some seeds you would normally never touch, which is nice. It unlocks a little late for my taste though, but that just kind of fits into the pacing of the game. Which brings me to my next section.
My Complaints
My biggest gripe with Moonlight Peaks is probably that the pacing at the beginning of the game is incredibly slow. I gotta admit, I was a bit bored for the first few hours before the game really picked up. It takes until about hour 10 or 15 to get most of the important stuff unlocked. On the bright side, that also means you get a lot of gameplay out of it! I’ve played for about 40 hours so far, and I think I’m maybe halfway through the story.
Originally, I also felt like the days were a bit too short, I couldn’t really get much done before the day was over. But the game has a pretty neat fix for this, which is also a lovely feature to have in general! Finding certain collectibles unlocks a special section of the in-game settings that lets you change the length of the day to make it longer or shorter! You can change it at any time without needing to restart the game.
I have run into a few bugs, like characters rotating weirdly in cutscenes, or my fruit trees simply refusing to regrow even though they are allegedly in season. Nothing game-breaking or anything though! And then there’s the lag…
Graphics & Audio
Yeah, unfortunately, the game does have a few issues with lag. At least for me. Every now and then you get one big lag spike, which is especially annoying while farming or cooking. It is something you definitely get used to, but it still majorly bothered me when I first started playing. (Heya! Charlie from the Future here! They just deployed a patch to address this issue. Hooray!)
As for the graphics, Moonlight Peaks has a very cute, cartoonish chibi art style with a moody goffik (fine, I’ll stop) color palette. What is really cool is that the game actually gives you two different character portrait styles to choose from! You can stick to the standard, stylized look, or you can switch to a more anime-esque style if you prefer! It is so nice to see something that is normally only possible via mods integrated into a base game.
Audio-wise, the game nails the cozy and eerie atmosphere. The soundtrack features a lot of sombre, moody music that fits the supernatural theme without being depressing or dragging down the vibe. It blends in well with the nature sounds of the wind rustling, the crickets and the birds in the distance.
Longevity
Moonlight Peaks easily provides you with at least 80 hours of gameplay, if not more. While it’s partially due to the slow pacing, most of those hours would be for the story alone. If you want to 100% the game, it will probably take you even longer. I don’t think it would be too grindy, even if some of the tasks can be a bit tedious. I will absolutely try my best to do everything in the game, though! I want to get to know all the quirky characters and see all the heartfelt events that clearly had so much effort put into them.
Final Thoughts
All in all, Moonlight Peaks is such a lovingly crafted twist on the cozy farming genre. From the incredible attention to detail and cute atmosphere, to the great story and massive quality-of-life features, the game just has so much going for it. The slow pacing isn’t the biggest issue in the world, just a personal preference, and any lag issues or bugs can easily be fixed with updates down the line.
If you are looking for a new charming farming sim to pick up, you should absolutely give this one a go!
Today, I am giving Moonlight Peaks the Thumb Culture Gold Award!
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
Fangs for reading! (I’ll see myself out). PS I’m nut writing more umtil I get five good revoiws! /s (PPS, I know I talked about My Immortal a lot, but I want to make it clear that I don’t support anything related to Harry Potter. TRANS RIGHTS)
If you enjoyed this review, why not check out my previous article about Cheap Car Repair.
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