Fond of weirdly obscure titles since childhood, Ivanir has been captivated by many Japanese games over the years. Some of his most passionate topics are the Dept. Heaven series, Summon Night Swordcraft Story, the Infinity series, Time Hollow. He's currently enjoying a ton of Switch and PC games.

Moonlight Peaks is a life sim developed by Little Chicken and published by XSEED Games. In a small town of supernatural creatures, the player is a child of Dracula descent trying to spend some time apart from her parents in a tight, small community.

It’s Time to Go Back to the Farm… With Vampires?!

Moving to a rural area is no novelty when it comes to games, especially when they’re of the life simulator genre. After all, it has been about thirty years since the start of the Bokujou Monogatari series on Super Nintendo. Back then and for many years after, the series was known as Harvest Moon, but now it goes by the name of Story of Seasons in the West.

Taking this into account, many developers try to add a unique twist to draw attention to the project. Some may try to play with the possibilities by combining genres, like the upcoming horror life sims Village in the Shade and Neverway, but others instead try to imagine a different context for it. The latter is the case for Moonlight Peaks, which tries to imagine what a small community of supernatural creatures would be like.

The protagonist is a young vampire girl, and she’ll meet many individuals of her kind as well as werewolves, witches, ghosts and others in the town of Moonlight Peaks. Generally speaking, these people tend to be quirky in their personalities, and it’ll be possible to learn more about them as the player spends more time interacting with them.

A special aspect of the game is how these individuals and interactions feel alive. These people have their own relationships with each other, including not only friendships but also long-time feuds. One of the elements that helps this is how expressive characters are, not only in their dialogue, but in the art that shows their faces in dialogue and other visual effects.

On the other hand, the sound department ends up feeling poorly used. While there are some good tracks here and there, it feels like a major portion of the game simply ignores this aspect, making the experience feel empty and worse than it should.

Tending to the Farm at Night

When it comes to gameplay, the idea is simple: the player is now living in a farm and has to deal with multiple tasks over the period of a day. Or, rather, they have to work and interact with others during the period of a “night.” Avoiding the light of the day is part of life as a vampire, just like one would try to avoid overextending their routine in others of the genre.

For farm work, players may start using various tools that can be upgraded with some money and materials. The list includes, for instance, a shovel, a scythe, an axe and a watering can. It’s also possible to mine rocks, fish and catch bugs with nets (that double down as ghost-catching tools).

As someone who isn’t ordinary, the player also has the ability to use various spells, which may help in this process. There are magical crops that can only grow by using Aquaflux to magically water them, but this spell can be used to make the process faster for normal crops as well.

A thing to keep in mind is that physical activities cost Stamina while magic has its own points as well. When the player has no Stamina left, it’s not possible to do anything else unless the player restores it through some method like eating.

Though the concept of stamina is simple and standard-fare, Moonlight Peaks uses only a bar for it and this choice unfortunately muddies its interpretation. The absence of a number to complement it makes it so that the player has to guess how much energy they still have left, which can make the process of properly gauging stamina use harder when there are different costs to possible actions.

Kiss of the Vampire

The farm isn’t the only thing to take care of, though. Interacting with the townspeople, making friends and even enjoying some romance is a part of the experience as well. Every day, it’s possible to talk to them and give them some gifts, eventually opening up more options for what to do, like hugging, kissing and asking them on dates with special activities like arranging flower bouquets or roasting marshmallows.

A Relationships menu helps players keep track of their progress and how recent gifts fared according to their preferences. By consistently spending time with them and learning their tastes, it’s possible to get hearts, which also unlock special events around town to know more about who they are as people.

In between getting closer to the townsfolk and doing farmwork, the player can also do various quests and the story gradually advances. From time to time, there are minor jobs in town, which are just a matter of finding people and items, as well as some bigger events tied to unlocking new abilities and the mysteries of the area.

While requests tend to be simple, it can be complicated to find your bearings when things are referred to by name. The map doesn’t feature the names of relevant areas except for those indoor locations, and it’s not always that obvious where the locations mentioned would be.

Finally, another quality-of-life feature to keep in mind is that the game only features autosaving, and it only activates when the night is over. This can result in significant losses if the player has to quit midway through for whatever reason, even though the time of a full night is relatively short.

Closing Comments:

Moonlight Peaks has an interesting concept and enjoyable cast to interact with. Nonetheless, the game still feels like it could use extra polish to truly pop as a compelling contender in the life sim genre. For those who love the context of supernatural beings, it may provide times of whimsy, but the genre has many better options to pick when it comes to gameplay systems and quality of life.