While not the first game to combine farming mechanics with relationship building, Stardew Valley thrust the genre fully into the spotlight, attracting fans from across the world and creating a culture of modding, speedruns, and a number of inevitable clones. Moonlight Peaks is the latest title to take on this approach but has a few unique characteristics of its own to mix things up.
Unlike the cute and simplistic 2D graphics of its main influence, Moonlight Peaks employs a more 3D aesthetic, with a camera viewpoint and controls closer to Nintendo’s Animal Crossing. This adds a greater degree of depth to the world and allows for more detail in the environment and character models. Every character also has a portrait that is displayed during conversations and there are two different sets of these, one somewhat more ‘yassified’ than the other. Playing mostly on Steam Deck I found the aesthetics clear and easy to parse on the smaller screen which is always a plus. There are options to increase the text size if you need to as well.
So, what is Moonlight Peaks about? In true genre fashion, your player character sets out to find their way in a small town and takes on the mantle of a new farmer. Unlike previous titles, though, you are the child of Dracula and leave home to get away from his overly traditional views on vampire behaviour. Escaping to the town where your parents seemingly ‘grew up’ and met reveals a society that is still divided by longstanding rivalries and petty disagreements. Alongside developing a flourishing agricultural space you set out to resolve these issues and redeem the Dracula name.
Being a vampire leads to some key differences from genre traditions, although this is perhaps not as deeply explored as it could be. You operate only at night, and must return to your coffin at daybreak. Failing to do so sees you transform into a cloud of bats and teleport there with no penalty – a much gentler approach when compared to games that see you lose carried items or receive a collection fine of some kind. As the game progresses you’ll unlock transformations that can aid your exploration and speed up your movement, as well as magic spells that can make farming more efficient – these effectively replace the kind of automation that is more common in the genre.
The lack of any real penalties in the game is part of the cozy atmosphere in general. There is absolutely no combat to be had here, which could be a positive or negative depending on your perspective. I didn’t exactly miss combat, but it does feel like Moonlight Peaks is therefore offering a slightly more streamlined experience than other farming games without it. The easy-going mood is furthered by the lack of complex mechanics in general. Fishing is a simple matter of holding a button, mining and logging just require you to grind for improved tools, and even a crafting minigame involves little more than tapping the action button.
None of these mechanical choices are terrible, but it makes it clear that the focus here is not on mastering controls or practising techniques. Moonlight Peaks expects you to set up your farm as you see fit and then spend your time managing it and carrying out fetch quests for the various residents. Many of these are randomly selected and pinned on a notice board whilst others are more narrative and occur as time passes and/or your relationship with different characters develop. This kind of low resistance gameplay is ironically more in keeping with the cozy label that Stardew Valley helped to popularise and makes Moonlight Peaks a great game to play alongside more involved titles.
The cast of residents includes vampires, werewolves, witches, and other mythical beings that all have their own quirks and personalities. Orlock, the head vampire is haughty and constantly falling out with others, while the head werewolf is the town’s mayor and has to balance managing everything around his own issues. I found the range of different characters well judged and could see potential for many of them to become favourites for players looking for romance in the game.
Farming is perhaps the main mechanic and this is all solid, without being revolutionary in any way. Preparing the soil, clearing the area of trees and debris etc is always satisfying, and the methods of planting and maintaining crops are intuitive. Obviously there is a lot of busywork involved as that is key to the genre but the magic you learn later in the game can help to speed this up. As well as growing crops and using them to make dishes, juices, powders etc you can explore the land and look for bugs and fish, as well as try to find the 100 Vampsters hidden around the world. These cute little guys need to be returned to their home and must be carried all the way.
Throughout my time in Moonlight Peaks I only encountered a few annoyances. The main one was the fact that if you trigger a cutscene while holding a Vampster, it disappears back to where you found it. Given the fact that you can’t transform and speed up whilst carrying them this proved quite frustrating. Cutscenes trigger just by entering the area they occur in as well so there is no way to avoid them if that area is on your way to the Vampster home. The random quests also threw up some odd moments, such as the café owner wanting a mocha – I bought one from him and then gave it back for a reward that was three times the initial cost…
