Moonlight Peaks review: An anemic execution of cutely spooky themes
Need to know
What is it? A nocturnal farm sim in a town of supernaturals
Expect to pay: $35/£30
Developer: Little Chicken
Publisher: Xseed Games, Marvelous Europe
Reviewed on: Intel Core Ultra 7 265, RTX 5070 Ti, 32GB RAM
Multiplayer: No
Steam Deck: Verified
Link: Official site
“A nocturnal farm sim where you’re a vampire” is one of the better hooks I’ve heard lately in a subgenre that’s long become overstuffed with too many same-y, saccharine rural community sims. Moonlight Peaks’ slightly spooky theme is a welcome twist, but that’s where its originality ends, because it struggles to ever turn that concept into a story with any bite.
You play as Dracula’s spawn, storming out of Dad’s castle to take up farming “cruelcumbers” and “blood tomatoes” at the overgrown family retreat in small town Moonlight Peaks, where families of vampires, witches, seers, and werewolves are mired in years of bickering. There’s a whole lot of all-caps dialogue in this town.
Eternally familiar farming
It’s got the requisite activities checklist for a post-Stardew, Animal Crossing-like farm sim: crops, animals, foraging, fishing, bug catching, a museum, cooking, friendship and dating, decorating, and a bit of crafting. All those basics are executed competently enough that I can shut my brain off and have a good time for a few hours. Digging tidy rows for my blueberry plants, using kegs to make wine, and running off to mine copper for an axe upgrade is all comfortingly familiar, but as soon as I try to look any closer the cracks show.
Unlike more open-ended cousins like Stardew Valley, progression in Moonlight Peaks is extremely main quest-driven. There’s no leveling your farming skills or unlocking buffs here. It’s all about making money to fund the string of crafting and collecting tasks that help revitalize the town and repair the relationships between its supernatural families. Despite that, I often go days at a time without an active quest to pursue, going to bed early after watering my crops and talking to a couple villagers as I wait for my next goal to trigger.
In between quests and farm planning there are several side activity minigames like flower arranging and pottery, which are genuinely neat, though there’s not much incentive to engage with them after making a couple custom decorations for my farm. Some are used as date activities, which is a cute concept, but each character only goes on one date type, so players who choose to only woo one character will be stuck endlessly embroidering or marshmallow roasting their way to marriage, which gets old fast.
For those who do date around, being able to play the field before committing to marriage is nice, and common now in farm sims. With just a few families living in Moonlight Peaks, though, I’ve found myself simultaneously dating parents and their adult kids, or all four members of a witch coven, or two siblings, which feels a bit odd.
The relationships panel does track gifts that I’ve given to the locals to earn their friendship, but only the past eight items, duplicates included, which isn’t nearly as useful as a discrete list would be.
Every interesting idea or variation on farm sim standards that I can find to praise in Moonlight Peaks comes with an asterisk, which is most true of its story and characters.
Totally de-fanged
Thanks to that driving main quest, there’s a ton of story content in Moonlight Peaks. Each character has four cutscenes doled out as we become friends, with more available if I choose to date and marry them. Many of the main quests also involve a handful of the cast getting together to banter and bicker. It’s a total feast of character interaction compared to so many other farm sims out there. But yet again, a caveat: The writing is offensively bland.
I don’t expect literary innovation from a genre whose current trends prescribe a cast of character tropes. There must always be a friendly rancher, fastidious mayor, plucky carpenter, and a charming bartender (etc.), most of whom should be hot, single, and down to date. Moonlight Peaks has done more than just cleave to character archetypes, though. It’s managed to not find a single original string of words in that bounty of character dialogue.
The coven’s relentless flirt of a warlock Noel is all confident bluster, which of course begs a relationship arc to uncover his inner sincerity. In one of his early cutscenes he says “there’s more to me than this front,” in nearly those exact words. “When I’m around you… I don’t have to pretend,” Noel later says in the scene confessing his feelings to me after we’ve been dating. Every character interaction is full of these same trite lines I rolled my eyes at in network TV shows 20 years ago.
The tone is inconsistent. Interactions with alcoholic vampire dad Orlock are played for laughs at every opportunity, but his behavior is treated as a serious emotional burden for his adult kids in their own character scenes. Then it’s right back to blacking out gags. Its characters all fail to find a compelling identity with inconsistencies like Elvira expressing excitement over seeing pumpkins in the autumn festival but being totally disinterested in receiving one as a gift.
I just haven’t managed to care about the story when Moonlight Peaks can’t decide if it wants to be silly or sincere, sweet or dark. It’s possible to juggle those moods at different moments, but this cast consistently drops the ball.
Moonlight Peaks works as a second screen game for farm sim fans who just want a new aesthetic in which to decorate a home and lay out perfectly even rows of tomato plants. This subgenre is completely packed with options at competitive prices, though, so I can’t eagerly recommend one that feels so thin.
