Moonlight Peaks Review: A Charming Supernatural Experience

Moonlight Peaks is a new farming simulator that sets itself apart from the majority of farming sims by having the game centered on a town designed for supernatural creatures to live in. You move to this town, appropriately called Moonlight Peaks, after running away from home. Luckily, your family already owns property in town, and it's just in need of tending since it's become overgrown during the years it was left abandoned.

This leads to the start of your journey, which takes place entirely during nighttime rather than during the day, because you play as a vampire. I found this to be a fun shift from what you expect in farming simulators, where your character will often pass out if you don't go to bed by a certain time at night. Meanwhile, your day starts in the evening in Moonlight Peaks. While the gameplay is standard for the genre, it's the little details that make it memorable.

A Short Introduction Lets You Get Started Quickly

When you load a new game in Moonlight Peaks, you get the information you need to know and nothing else. You learn why you're leaving home, the kind of place you're moving to, and how to get started with farming. The essential tools are already in your inventory; you have a workbench, and you have a cooking station from the get-go. As somebody who has played a lot of farming simulators, I appreciate this quick start.

The concept of how you play is the same as other farming sims, so the biggest differences are the default controls, the crops you can grow, the items you can make, the map, and the romances. I don't need a tutorial on any of that, and Moonlight Peaks doesn't make me go through one unless I choose to ask NPCs for more details about how to do a task. This gives me more time to explore and enjoy the features that make the game unique, such as spell casting and completing quests.

As far as gameplay goes, it's on the slower side, which is generally expected with farming sims. It's relaxing that way, however, so you need to have a decent chunk of time set aside when you sit down to play, because I ended up playing for much longer than I intended to whenever I launched the game. My biggest complaint about the gameplay itself is that I didn't like the default controls for keyboard and mouse, so I ended up changing them to my preference, which is easily done in Settings.

The Charm Is In the Style of Moonlight Peaks

When you enter a genre that's as oversaturated as cozy games, you need to have something unique to set your game apart. I find that Moonlight Peaks accomplishes this through the art and setting. It reminds me a bit of Fae Farm, but with more dedication to the supernatural elements that are included instead of just adding a bit of magic. Moonlight Peaks feels like a cross between Fae Farm and Costume Quest in terms of the style, but it plays like Harvest Moon for people who love Halloween.

Your house starts out plain, but you can decorate it to make it cute, spooky, or something entirely your own, which is honestly time-consuming in the best way. I had a lot of fun looking at NPC houses as well to see the way they're decorated, and I imagine that once the game is released, there will be plenty of images of players sharing their own houses. I can't wait to see those screenshots, because the communities for cozy games are always filled with such creative players.

However, the real star of the atmosphere is the sound design. Sound design feels like the element of game design that tends to be overlooked most often, but reviewing games and paying more attention to every part of the experience has made me appreciate well-done sound design, and Moonlight Peaks has great sound effects.

When you roam around the game, you hear the sounds of nature, and it feels like sitting outside on a summer's night. The result is a sense of nostalgia and peace. While I enjoyed the background music as well, I struggled to hear it most of the time. Even when I turned it up in Settings, it didn't make much difference, and I felt like the nature sounds ended up louder, too, which made them too loud. I'm not sure if this is an audio bug, but I'd like to see it fixed if so, otherwise I'd like to see the volume levels between music and ambient sounds be balanced a bit better in a patch.

The Potential of Moonlight Peaks

I don't think Moonlight Peaks is perfect right now, but I do think that it's still enjoyable. I also know that cozy games tend to have a lot of future potential, because patches often add content, and their design makes it easy to add expansion packs or DLC. I'd love to see an expansion pack that adds other stories you can experience as different creatures.

Right now, you have to be a vampire who can cast spells, but it would be a lot of fun to have the game expanded in a way that lets you be other creatures. While that's my biggest wish for the future in Moonlight Peaks, it's far from the only path for the future that the game could take, and that's exciting. I don't know what the roadmap looks like, but there are a lot of directions the developers could go moving forward, and I love being able to see games evolve over time.

Moonlight Peaks is a standard farming simulator with a supernatural twist that sets it apart in an oversaturated genre. There are some features that need polishing, such as the balance in volume for music and ambience, but the overall game offers a solid experience if you enjoy cozy games. While you can explore Moonlight Peaks, fix your farm, and find love at any time of year, this game is something that I could return to every fall to match the vibes of harvest season and Halloween.