This review is 7753 words the bottom of the page includes the video review that goes over the same information if it is easier for you :).
This game has mentions of suggestive themes and use of alcohol!
Today I am going to be covering Moonlight Peaks, a relatively new farming sim.
Moonlight Peaks is an indie game made by Little Chicken, and published by XSEED Games also called Marvelous. The publisher is the reason I knew about the game since I follow anything that has to do with Story of Seasons.
Let's get into what I do and don’t like about this game!
The game's story is essentially that we are the child of Dracula and we run away from home back to Moonlight Peaks. We are tasked with essentially finding freedom and independence for the first time. We meet our Uncle Viktor and set off to farm, make the farm better, and to help improve the town.
Eventually our parents come back to see what we’ve done and there's a lot of fanfare surrounding it.
Between the story with our parents you’ll spend the game helping the townsfolk with their own stories. These quests are different to romance stories unlocked by friendship and they typically involve helping a group of townsfolk.
The game uses a 3D environment and 2D sprites. I love the models made for this game, specifically all the models for the homes and decoration items. You can tell they put a lot of effort into not only making the environment look nice and pretty, but also the environmental storytelling. It felt so nice being able to go into character’s rooms and being able to get so much information on them just based on how it looked.
I also love how the lighting is done! Since we are vampires our day starts at around 6:00 PM and we have to go to bed before 5:00 AM. I love how the lighting and environment gets brighter and more saturated as you start to enter early morning hours. Especially since it's sort of a sudden change as you go about the day as it becomes darker because it gets closer and closer to night time before ramping up to show the sun rising.
I do however think that the player models look a little silly in some outfits. Like they’re really really cute because of the chibi vibe but I felt like some clothing, specifically some of the dresses I would wear would look a little off.
Onto the 2D portraits this game actually has two to pick from. There's the game’s own style and then there's a more anime styled portrait. I fell in love with the game’s original style and I cannot recommend it enough. It is incredibly beautiful and you can feel the love and work that went into them.
On the other hand I cannot recommend the anime portraits at all. The characters in Moonlight Peaks are either apparently too different to normal anime designs or they just aren’t the best. My main issue comes from how the anime portraits tend to change characters' features. A very common issue with these portraits is that darker skin characters will be given lighter and grayer skin colors and their facial features will be changed. I think showing the difference between Elvira’s sprites will sum up what I’m talking about pretty quickly. I don’t mean to be rude to whoever made them however and I do think having different styled sprites was a smart move considering most farming sims are very anime styled, but they just missed the mark with some of the characters.
I wasn’t totally impressed with character customization, but if you're new here I’ll be honest and let you know this is the part I’m most picky about.
There are 12 realistic skin tones and 9 fantasy skin tones giving us 21 in total. I like the variety and while the realistic skin tones are done really well I feel like the fantasy ones were a little off, especially the green.
For your eyes you can choose between 2 iris shapes, there are 30 different eye colors, 7 eyelash types, 2 eyelash colors, 18 eye makeup styles, 21 eyebrows, and 14 eyebrow colors. You can also choose to have 2 different eye colors. I will say that I think here is where a lot of the customization is which makes sense when considering the chibi proportions and how big the eyes and head are compared to everything else.
There are 39 hairstyles which sounds pretty good, but I will say a lot are either just the same hair with small variations or they are the same hair the NPCs have, which I’m personally not a big fan of, but keep in mind how picky I am with character customization. There is a good variety of different hair textures and styles though! There are 14 different hair color options which work well enough.
For the clothing you start out with there are 12 sets, 39 tops, 24 bottoms, and 12 shoes. I think there are some cute items, but they weren’t the most impressive to me, especially since we can’t recolor clothing. There are 21 accessories to choose from, mainly revolving around jewelry.
Honestly there's not much to say about farming as it's pretty self explanatory. I would like to say it's also pretty forgiving when compared to other farming games. Your crops don’t die if you forget to water them and they instead just don’t grow that day. When the next season comes around the game also gives you a last harvest of the crops that died overnight.
You can buy seeds at all times of every day which is really refreshing, although I will note that it feels like the shop seems to only carry seeds that can grow in that season so no buying ahead. It's also very annoying if you have a greenhouse as you can’t buy out of season seeds really. Eventually you can make your own seeds.
There are some special crops that are mana-infused which means you need a special spell to water them. They can be annoying to remember, but the crops they produce typically sell for more than usual crops.
As always it's better to further process your crops into things like juice or jam to earn more money.
There's livestock you can get, but honestly they aren’t really profitable at all. It feels like they’re meant to give you items you may need in quests, crafting recipes, or just to give you an item. Nothing really sells for that much even if it's the best quality.
Cheekens produce eggs, but I feel like I hardly get any most of the time. I feel like I would get one egg like once a week even though my cheeken was at max happiness and had plenty of food.
Cowcula, piggoats, and draculamb all produce their own sort of milk. Piggoats seem to produce milk daily. Draculambs also produce wool which seems to only be used to make cloth for crafting. You can try to sell wool and cloth but you’ll be making pennies.
Bumpkins produce plops which are mainly used to make moonshine.
Stoneys give you heart stones which are used in two recipes.
Rabbiculas give you luck dust which is used in love potions. Luck dust also sells for a decent price.
Looking into the livestock has made me aware that the game apparently wants specific barn configurations, apparently. This I guess is hinted at by talking to the animals in your hellkitten form, but like through the dialogue I never assumed there was a system behind it. I actually still don’t know what it does so I’ll just list what the game wants so you can figure it out if you want.
Stoneys need cheekens and piggoats need stoneys. Draculambs need to be partnered. Bumpkins need rabbiculas. Cowculas also need to be partnered, but apparently most of the other animals hate them with stoneys and piggoats being the exception.
Overall farming is very easy and livestock mainly exist for crafting recipes not profit.
Crafting is a pretty big part of the game as it's how you’ll get most of your work stations and furniture. It's pretty self explanatory and easy to understand so I won’t go too in depth on it. You’ll get a lot of recipes through adventuring and buying them from shops.
You are given basic tools and you can upgrade them at the Howling Hammer using ingots and money. You are also eventually able to enchant your tools which essentially just stops your tools from draining energy. You get this ability pretty late game so it's not really worth it due to you, hopefully having a pretty big energy bar by then.
Just to note here that you will need to extract mana from some of your crops in order to consistently use magic. You restore only one mana by sleeping. You can also refill your mana decently well using Persephone’s yoga studio when class is in session.
You buy and upgrade spells at the Webb of Wonders. There are a wide variety of spells in this game, but I honestly mainly used just one.
Your most used spell will likely be Aquaflux. This spell summons watering cans that water your crops for you. This spell is also absolutely needed if you ever plan on growing mana-infused crops as they will not grow without it. This spell can be upgraded, improving it will increase the amount of crops that can be watered.
Arborascend allows you to move trees. This spell can be upgraded, improving it will increase the amount of trees you can move with one cast.
Ethereal Axes summons axes to cut down trees in the area near you. This spell can be upgraded, improving it will increase the amount of trees you can cut down with one cast.
Ethereal Hands summons hands to help you harvest your crops. This spell can be upgraded, improving it will increase the amount of crops the spell can harvest at once.
Ethereal Pickaxes and Ethereal Shovels are next and I assume you can tell what they do based on the last two spells. These two can also be upgraded of course.
Maturio instantly grows crops in an area based on what level it is. For example the first level of this spell allows you to instantly grow a crop in a 1 by 1 area.
Metamorphosia transforms crops in an area based on what level it is.
These last four spells are ones that can’t be leveled up.
Hoisthaven allows you to move a building on your farm.
Refilliarmus instantly refills your watering can.
Tomorrow's Tears makes it rain the next day.
Finally Wanderer's Hex activates witch circles. If you have multiple witch circles activated you can teleport between them. Honestly for the mana cost I feel like this spell is so useless because at least for me the witch circles were in such inconvenient spots. It felt easier to just run to my destination in hellkitten form.
There are three different transformations you unlock while playing and they all allow you to do different things.
The first transformation will be your most used one by far. You unlock it pretty early at a dinner party between the Logans and the Ambrosias. You get the ability to turn into a hellkitten just like your pet. In hellkitten form you’re smaller and faster allowing you to cover more ground and go into small holes in some locations. This is, to me, the best form and what I most played the game as.
The second form you unlock is your mermaid form which happens after you get the ingredients for a potion that lets the mermaid characters walk on land. It mainly is used to navigate around Luna Bay. It was nice and unexpected, but you most likely won't be using this form outside of Luna Bay that often.
The last and most disappointing form by far is your vampire bat form. It is unlocked so, so late into the game and it feels so mediocre. It allows you to fly above well… anything. This sounds useful until you realize that by the time you unlock this form there are like 4 quests left in the entire main game. It's only useful to finish the museum.
Like most farming games this one has a museum for you to fill, but you wouldn't know that until later in the game because it does take a while for it to unlock. I would really recommend saving things like bugs, fish, and two star crops before the museum even unlocks.
There is a supernatural room where you turn in items that correlate with every supernatural in the game. You get these from crafting, cooking, farming, mining, and exploring mainly.
The deity room holds the relics you get from the four deities of the game. To get these you just have to become friends with them essentially.
The farming room holds every crop in the game. To turn in a crop it must be 2 stars.
I want to quickly help you out just in case you are stuck on the farming section. There are two crops that gave me a hard time because this game can be pretty bad at explaining things sometimes.
One is the Happy Mandrake. To get them you have to plant your mandrake in a way where there are at least two tiles between it and another mandrake. This to my knowledge is not said or hinted at anywhere.
The second is the Muse Tree. For the tree to grow at all you need a Gramophone playing music nearby. Look out for the gramophone as soon as you start playing because you can only get it from the random stock of 4 items at the Howling Hammer. I guess it's hinted at in the name, but like that honest to god could just be its name. It's not easy to figure out at all and developers know this as seen in a reddit comment, but like if it's known then could there maybe be an update. It doesn’t really matter if developers know most people won't figure it out when they don’t do anything to change it. It also doesn’t help that the boombox, another item that produces music, doesn't work for the tree so if someone thought they had the answer they could just give up because other items weren’t considered. (I would now like to add that in the newest update as of August 20th, 2026 the gramophone is now available to purchase anytime.)
The aquarium holds every fish in the game and honestly you will absolutely need a guide to get it complete. Most fish you can get year round but some have specific conditions and times they need to be caught in. Let me help you with the two most annoying ones.
The Moonflutter can be found in Luna Bay only on full moons which happen on the 15th of every season. How do you know it's a full moon you ask? You just have to hope you run into the werewolves in the Howling Marshes on that day or that one of the werewolves says something that tells you on that day.
The second one is Twilight which can be found in Luna Bay between 6:00 and 8:00 PM, which is pretty early in the day for this game.
The main gripe I hold with the aquarium is that you can only turn in a fish if it has no stars. I have no clue why this decision was made and I honestly think its kind of stupid. I don’t get why you are punished for getting a good fish especially when some of these fish are stupid hard to get. I still haven't even SEEN a Goliath in the 63 hours I have in this game. If I were to finally fish it up and not be able to turn it in because it has stars I’d punch my monitor I think. That's absolutely insane to me. Again as of the August 20th, 2026 update this has been changed but I think the change took way too long and that this was a stupid decision to begin with.
Next is the critter room which is essentially all the bugs and what not. There isn’t anything major to mention here. However I do want to add that to complete the museum you do have to get married because there is a bug that only spawns after you’ve married.
You’ll get some minor rewards as you complete the museum, but you absolutely should get it to at least 80% completion if you can as that is how you unlock the greenhouse and lower completion will unlock important things like the twilight catacombs.
There are actually very few festivals in this game which wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t pretty forgettable unfortunately.
Spring holds the Lovage Festival. It lasts for two days and its main event is the gift giving hosted by Llemi. Going up to Llemi before the event allows you to turn in gifts to be given to your chosen dateable NPcs. You will also be given a gift or gifts at the event.
Summer holds the Moonlight Ball. It occurs in the town hall and honest to God I don’t remember this event happening. I don’t think I have footage of it in year one and when I tried to go in year 2 it was cancelled for story reasons. Apparently the best dressed couple are awarded at the event, but from what I’ve read the event seemed to be really buggy. (I found footage and the event is LITERALLY nothing just standing around).
Autumn is the only season that holds two events. The first is the Mastersoup event which is essentially a cooking event. You have to compete over three courses and you actually have to memorize the recipes you intend to use.
The second event is the Evernight Festival. It lasts three days and is mostly tied to the Twilight Showcase, essentially a crop contest, and the various minigames meant to earn you Evernight Coins which are used to buy special items. I highly recommend the Pumpkin Dash to get your coins as it's pretty easy and you get a pumpkin hat after winning every round which sells for 500 gold a piece. Playing this event for the whole day essentially allowed me to get my next house upgrade for free.
Winter holds Winterwake. It's essentially just a gift exchange game and fireworks.
There are a few NPCs that you cannot increase your relationship with. These NPCs mainly consist of ghosts, animals, or your family.
Viktor is your uncle who will always be in his crypt on your farm. He is always in his bat form due to a curse from Fiona. He essentially takes you under his wing. It's eventually revealed that he's missed his family and is a bit of a hopeless romantic.
Your Hellkitten runs away from home with you. They make many comments about your family including Viktor, your mother, and your father. They also make comments that allude to them being older than you as they knew you when you were a baby. I also love how they make comments on who you're dating. I think it's really cute.
Balthasar Logan was the town’s previous mayor and he is the father of Brook and Ridge. He often talks about the town and his opinions on it even though he is no longer mayor. He wanders the town as a ghost.
Another ghost Jarvis Spectra is a retired butler. He served the Ambrosia family in life and thus is often dragged into Orlock’s schemes even if he is unwilling.
Jacques and Snek are merchants that sell their goods every weekend at the Midnight Market.
Yabbis is another merchant that can be found around the map daily. They also are pretty important in certain parts of the story.
Mr. Deyes is an NPC seen exclusively during Winterwake.
Yasmin Logan is a ghost and she arrives much later in the story. She is the wife of Brook and mother of Saga. She went out one night and never returned and now she is stuck between life and death. She is a major part of Brook and Saga’s story.
Our mother is revealed to be Laveau Dracula. She's a vampire/ witch and she seems very caring. She is more trusting in the player’s ability to take care of themselves than our father who she often seems to butt heads with.
Finally there's our father Vlad Dracula. He's very dramatic and stubborn. You and him seem to disagree very often, but he eventually will come around. You meet him very very late into the story, essentially its ending.
Next are the normal non-marriage candidates that you can increase your relationship levels with. Honestly you can marry just about anyone so there aren’t many to go over.
The first is Brook Logan, the current Mayor of Moonlight Peaks. He is very stubborn, standoffish, and can honestly be a bit hostile when you first meet him. As the head of the Logan family he and Orlock are honestly enemies, it's that vampires vs werewolves thing except it's only really those two at odds. As you get to know him he starts to open up and tell you his story. Now spoiler warning for this next part and honestly the rest of this section as the rest of the characters I will be going over are unlocked later into the game.
Anyways I don’t want to get too into the story details but I need to talk about this. Brook essentially like kills himself to be with Yasmin again in front of their daughter no less. Now of course it isn’t graphic or even treated as such, but essentially that's what he does as he later only shows up as a ghost. This leaves the Mayor position unfilled for a short while.
Penelope Henderson is first introduced as Skull Girl. Through a series of quests we learn she is Persephone’s daughter and that she went missing. We eventually reunite them. Penelope is very childlike and she has a very big interest in nature, specifically bugs.
The Moon Goddess also known as Selene is well the Moon Goddess. She can be often found in town and is very friendly. I absolutely adore her design.
The Sun God is the brother of the Moon Goddess. You won't see or talk to him often. He is at first very jealous and very angry that we and the town in general are asleep when he is out. He is very self absorbed and he even goes to extreme measures to try to be the only one in the spotlight for the town to adore.
Finally there is Pumpkin Head which seems to only really exist for the Evernight Festival. He can only be seen during autumn. He's a very silly and goofy character.
Here is where the majority of characters fall under. We’ll go by the families in town as it’ll be the easiest way. I also want to add that unlike my Story of Seasons video this overview will be a lot more basic. This game limits you to only like 4 heart events unless you’re dating them. I really don’t like this decision as I feel like you hardly get to know them enough before you make your decision. You can date multiple people at once, but I just don’t like doing that, it feels rude to me.
First are the werewolves consisting of Ridge, Ludo, and Saga.
Ridge is the father of Ludo and he runs the Howling Hammer. He's very hardworking, gentle, and pretty quiet. He prioritizes keeping the peace and looking out for his family. I do have to warn you that later on he will have a crush on another character, Persephone, and some of the dialogue he has surrounding her can show up even when you're with him. I heard there was going to be a fix for it, but I’m not sure if it's out.
Next is Ludo who is kind of the opposite of his father. He’s fun-loving, energetic, loud, and lazy due to not knowing what to do with his life. He isn’t concerned with his future all too much and just wants to keep doing things he loves such as writing horror stories to tell the town. He’s lowkey a chud, but he’s very very sweet and he starts focusing on domestic tasks after you marry.
Saga takes after her father Brook except I would say she is more levelheaded and focused on making the town happy rather than having it just work. Small spoiler but she eventually becomes mayor. Saga is a deeply caring person and no matter what she may say she cares about everyone in town and only wants the best for them.
Next are the vampires consisting of Elvira, Evan, Mina, Orlock, and Samael.
Elvira is a very artistic, creative, and excitable person. She often helps out with festivals and important events. She’s honestly very easy to befriend and she likes making things a game. She is shown to run trivia night and she often hides things around town to make others' days brighter.
Evan is a quiet, chill, and almost aloof person. They and their sister Mina seem to be opposites in regards to personality. They struggle to truly define their life when their dad Orlock is pushing them to take over the family name. They are learning to take time for themself and open up to others.
Mina seems to be the opposite of Evan as she has a very cheerful, happy, and inviting personality. We learn how resilient she is as she often cleans up after her dad’s messes and as she sort of takes up the responsibility for caring for Evan. She struggles with Orlock being an alcoholic and what he has done to the town and their family and you help her learn how to deal with those emotions.
Orlock is the dramatic, egotistical, self-absorbed drunk and head of the family. He struggles greatly with alcoholism and is more often drunk than not. He can always be found causing trouble for the town and his family. He does show a more caring side in some events regarding music and his children. He wants to be better and to be there for his children as they are the most important thing to him.
Samael is a mysterious, quiet, and serious person at first. He comes off as very professional and a bit of a workaholic as he runs The Broken Lamp. He pushes people away, but he very deeply cares for those he holds close. He only becomes dateable after a quest which shows the player how he truly wants a romance of his own.
Next are the witches consisting of Fiona, Noel, Sabrina, and Luna.
Fiona is very studious, serious, and closed off at first. It at first seems like she only cares about her coven, improving her skills, and trying to make her family take magic seriously and only practice it in a way she sees fit. She is very often fighting with Orlock.
Noel seems way more interested in fishing and flirting than he is magic. He comes off as very egotistical and he can be annoying at first. He wants to impress people and be liked, but he's struggled a lot with it due to this image of himself that he puts out there.
Sabrina is very rebellious at her core. She’s much more of a free thinker and she likes to experiment with what she can do and try new things regarding her magic. Although I really don’t want to give off the impression that she's a slacker because she absolutely is not. She takes magic seriously and just because she doesn’t do it “proper” does not mean she isn’t passionate.
Luna is like your stereotypical nature witch. She loves nature and animals. She's who you get seeds and livestock from. You may think that she spends all or most of her time just in nature, but she can often be found helping others. She helps people so much that she often has very little time to herself.
The seers are next consisting of Alina, Aras, and Dragan.
Alina can come off as stubborn, temperamental, and very outspoken. She is often seen alone or complaining about having to go to festivals. Although I think that a lot of her traits can be attributed to her passion and that at her core she is very fun loving and a bit rebellious. She's the person who introduces you to the vampsters and what their purpose is.
Aras is the tailor of moonlight peaks and he takes his work very seriously. His events often revolve around him needing to get a lot of work done or feeling frustrated with his work thinking it isn’t up to par. He's overall pretty quiet and I feel like more reserved than the other seers, but he is still pretty open and welcoming.
Dragan is by far the most extroverted and the most vocal about seeing the future as a seer. He puts a lot of his passion, happiness, and self worth into being a seer and the card game he created Nokturna. Under all of his extroversion it is revealed that he feels inferior to his younger siblings due to their skills and the fact that his power to see visions is waning.
The next dateables are not revealed until later in the game so if you want to keep them as a surprise feel free to skip ahead.
The humans are next consisting of Persephone, Jada, and Winston.
Persephone is a very down to earth and spiritual person. She wants to share her interests such as yoga and keeping herself grounded with the town in order to help them chill out. She is very positive and she came here with her nephew and niece to sort of get a change of scenery after something tragic occurred within her family.
Jada is very very excitable. She is completely ecstatic to be moving to Moonlight Peaks due to her interest in anything supernatural. She collects a lot of relics and is ultimately the one to open up the museum as it gives her a place to hold her relics and a place to share all her information on them. She's constantly looking to learn about new supernatural things and to grow her collection.
Winston is the complete opposite of Jada and Persephone. It is very obvious that he isn’t happy to move to Moonlight Peaks. Why Persephone chose to move her nephew who is deathly terrified of all things supernatural is unknown to me, but Winston really suffers at the beginning. He's a scaredy cat with an imagination that only makes things worse, but over time he learns to get used to Moonlight Peaks and all of its residents, although he never becomes as excitable as his family.
The mermaids are the next group consisting of Kim, Rei, and Tae.
Kim can honestly be described as happiness if it was a person. She is so bubbly about anything and she shares her happiness with the town. She cares a lot about her family and friends oftentimes helping them navigate how they feel about things, even unintentionally.
Rei is the most reserved and responsible one out of all the siblings. She feels extremely connected to her environment and has taken up the role of caring and cleaning the shores. This care for the environment isn’t exactly reciprocated by her family however, but she doesn’t let it get in between the love she has for them.
Tae seems very self-absorbed upon first meeting him as he takes a lot of pride in his beauty and it seemingly is all he can talk about. This later evolves to show that Tae just wants and often does see the beauty in everything. He often helps and supports others in finding their own style and look that makes them happy.
The next and final group is the deities consisting of Death and Llemi.
Death isn’t as scary as you may think. He's just a guy trying to chill out on vacation and learn about mortal’s day to day lives. He is very unknowledgeable about what exactly mortals get up to so he needs a lot of help having fun and experiencing all that he wants to do. He may seem hard to approach based on name and looks but he does seem to be a caring person, at least to the best of his abilities.
Llemi is the Love Demon of the town. He loves all things love and it seemingly is the only thing he talks about. He also seems to be a fan of all the chaos Moonlight Peaks seems to bring and often talks about pairings he would like to see.
After reaching 4 hearts you can ask out the romance options on a date. I should add that you may have to wait a little longer if you haven't unlocked the dateable’s preferred date type.
There are 5 types of dates and which one you do depends on who you date. For example since I was dating Ludo I would always do the marshmallow roasting date. The 5 types of dates include marshmallow roasting, pottery, flower arranging, embroidery, and stargazing.
After you ask someone out on a date they will come the next morning to pick you up. I highly recommend making sure you save before the date so you can restart it incase you mess up which you likely will. On dates you have to figure out the specific thing your date is looking for which isn’t really explained that well and is why I think you should experiment with the date and load the save back up when you’re done and know what to do. Doing dates poorly will hurt your relationship.
I wanna talk about my example so it's easier to understand. With Ludo and the marshmallow roasting date I would have to roast a marshmallow to his specific requests. He would hint at what he wanted, but only after giving him a marshmallow. You would also need to switch between giving him a marshmallow and eating one yourself. It's kinda hard to explain, but this is why I recommend having a trial run. Let me quickly help out whoever is dating Ludo before we move on. He wants the marshmallow to be brown, like burning the marshmallow twice type of brown.
If you are at eight hearts you can propose after a successful date. You’ll pick the day and wait. You’ll have to buy your own wedding attire at the tailor shop before your wedding if you want it however. Anyway when the wedding comes up you’ll have a cute event and cutscene that lasts the entire day. If you were dating multiple people all the hearts you earned with them will go back down to four and you’ll essentially break up.
After marriage your partner will come to live with you while continuing their usual schedule. Nothing major changes but you will be able to improve your relationship with them to see more events. If you ever want to break up with them you’ll have to go to Llemi.
Major spoiler warning, but the final heart event is you turning your partner into a vampire if they already weren’t one so you can spend eternity with them. I think this is so cute and I absolutely love the idea! You can still divorce them, but it's kinda even meaner then, like you change their life irreversibly and now you're leaving them to navigate immortality and seeing their close friends and family die while they stay young alone. Or maybe I am thinking way to into it.
I usually don’t have a section like this in my videos, but because this is a newer title and because of the immediate reaction I've seen in online spaces I want to mention it just in case you get really excited to talk about the game and specifically the marriage candidate you picked online. There is a lot of hate and dislike for characters that are supposedly about their personality and/or story when truly its people not used to having characters that are unique and not completely conventionally attractive. I’ve seen some people specifically on tumblr and tiktok spread genuine misinformation just to be able to avoid saying they find characters ugly.
The cozy/ farming community was always supposed to be more positive, inclusive, and inviting so I find it very disappointing how some people have reacted to the characters in this game, their identities, and their appearances. I love all the characters and they all have a story that furthers them, but like come on you can’t make multiple posts calling Ludo a no-good lazy chud and then defend Orlock with your life as if he doesn’t do the same thing and is honestly worse since all he seems to do is cause issues for the town and leave the kids he lowkey neglects to clean up after him. It's honestly a bit funny.
Now two more things that sorta connect to the last point. One is that Evan goes by they/ them. Those are the only pronouns they are ever explicitly referred to in conversation. However there are a lot of people who willfully ignore that because they want an “emoboy” love interest. I don’t care if it's a character you can say they/ them. I don’t like how I’ve seen multiple big creators disregard their pronouns to lump them in with the bachelors just so the game can have the “emoboy”.
The second is a bit of a story spoiler. It's not that major but if you want to skip to the next section feel free to do so. In the game our mother is like a vampire and witch so when she was in Moonlight Peaks she was very close with the Witches and was in their coven. I don’t know where anyone got this from and I couldn't see this said anywhere in the game, but I have seen posts asserting that because our Mom was in or helped out with the coven that that means we are related to all the witches in the game and that you shouldn’t romance them because of it. From everything I’ve seen and based on the type of game it is regarding how they handle characters this legit is just a lie.
There are 4 home upgrades and you only unlock all of the outside customization after you fully upgrade. There are lots and lots of furniture to customize your home with. I had a lot of fun with it even though I felt a bit limited by the items in the game. If you want to decorate your home to the best of your abilities be sure to buy any crafting recipes you can find and check the Howling Hammer daily for the furniture Ridge sells.
There are essentially two collection quests within the game to occupy you. When Death comes to town floating skulls called Soul Blobs will spawn around the map. It becomes your job to catch them with your net. Catching the soul blobs will give you three different clocks that allow you to adjust how long the night lasts in your game settings. These things are pretty easy to catch so you’ll complete this task without trying.
The vampsters on the other hand are much much more annoying. When you find one of these things you have to walk it all the way back to their den in the cave of echoes. You drop it once or try to do anything like talking to NPCs and it'll run back all the way to where you got it. You can’t transform or even use the witch circles to teleport when you’re holding them so they are incredibly annoying to collect. I haven’t collected them all and honestly it isn’t really worth it if you're hoping for a big reward. You get an increase to your maximum Energy but honestly by the time you complete collecting them energy isn’t gonna be a problem.
There are 4 mini-games and Nokturna, the card game created by Dragan, is by far the most fleshed out. It's pretty simple with the goal being placing 3 cards to get the most amount of points in hopes of having more than your opponent. You win after winning two rounds. There are some rules to creating your own deck and there are a lot of cards to collect.
Next is pottery. Pretty self explanatory you make custom pottery. You can either use what you make as decoration or as a gift.
Embroidery is essentially the same thing just with embroidery instead.
Flower arranging is also the same thing. You do get a discount if you bring your own flowers though.
I’ve left this section for last because this issue becomes very very obvious and very annoying the longer you play the game. I want you to keep in mind that I have 63.2 hours in the game and that I played it almost daily for up to 7 hrs a day to finish it and get this video out. Me playing it so often and for such long stretches might be a factor as to why I feel this way, but I have seen others have issues with the pacing as well so I am absolutely going to mention it.
This game has a lot of issues with pacing in regards to the story and when things are unlocked.
The bat transformation was unlocked way too late into the game. It’s honestly so late that its nearly useless with how unimportant it turns out to be. All it does is allow you to get to the final area of Moonlight Peaks which is only really needed to get bugs for the museum. It is so hyped up and there is so much suspense and it just felt annoying and like actually irritating when I actually unlocked it because of how late into the game it is. There are genuinely only 6 quests after this one and they honestly are just one big quest separated into parts because of the bad pacing.
I cannot tell you how annoying, and how genuinely like upset I was trying to finish this game. I didn't notice this because of how spaced out this game has its quests, but oh my god did the last few just show me how much this game likes to have you wait for absolutely no reason before you can move onto the next part of the quest. Near the end every single quest had me wait like 3 damn days for it to progress. Why? I cannot tell you. Being so honest with you, if It wasn’t for the final quest being a cute dinner where you bring your partner to meet your parents, I would have just not finished the quests before writing my review. The arbitrary waiting happens on a lot of quests but this is where it nearly killed me.
A smaller timing issue I had with the game had to do with when dates would unlock. This issue is I think fixed now, but because I played the game when it first came out I ran into an issue. As I’ve mentioned before to begin dating a character you need to take them out on a date first. Because each character has a different dating event it means that depending on your character you may have to wait longer to actually begin dating. In my game I was originally going to go with Noel, but because of the timing and being on a sort of time crunch for the video I had to go with Ludo instead. It was very annoying at the time and even though it should be fixed it just feels like another example of the game having a lot of issues with pacing and timing.
I started off really really liking this game and I even planned to 100% it but because of the previous issue I mentioned it sort of really killed the vibe of it for me. To be honest I am probably not going to be opening it up again, but I do want to make it clear that some of my grievances with it come from going through the game quicker than the average player. Honestly I would recommend you giving the game a try if it's on sale or if you are a newer farming sim player. It's very forgiving (even if it isn't very good at explaining things sometimes) and I honestly loved all or most of the characters.
I do highly recommend taking what I said about the game’s pacing into account if you are a player that relies on and wants to get invested into the game’s story. If the story and progressing it is a main goal for you I would heavily recommend waiting until the game is on sale because I wouldn’t recommend it based on the story.
This game isn’t bad, by any means and when you play it the love and care that went into it is incredibly obvious. I do still like the game and I really love its characters, especially Ludo, so I don’t mean to be overly negative about it.