Reviews: Moonlighter
Spoiler free review of Moonlighter - a fun dungeon crawler and management sim
About the game
Moonlighter is an Action RPG with rogue-lite elements that demonstrates two sides of the coin – revealing everyday routines of Will, an adventurous shopkeeper that secretly dreams of becoming a hero.
Margot’s stats
Device: Steam Deck Oled
Difficulty: Easy (Maybe why I found some mechanics easy?)
Completed: yes - main story
Time: ~15.5 hours
Score: 9.5/10
Narrative and Gameplay
This game is quite old now but it kept coming up as a must play, especially if you like pixel art and management sim-esque gaming. There is a sequel planned to be out soon called Moonlighter 2, which promises more of its winning formula in a different art style and POV. It will be fun to see how the game has evolved.
Back to the original. As you may know by now I love a pixel art game, and I am not averse to playing management style sims, as well as some procedurally generated dungeon style games. Although some of that I may not have written about yet.
What really stood out to me, especially after playing Dave the Diver recently, is that this is a much more simple approach to a similar game and genre, kind of how I had wished Dave the Diver to be.
You play as Will who has inherited his Granddad’s shop. To rebuild the shop and have artefact to sell, you have to go to the mysterious dungeons, and fight different types of creatures and monsters to gather up their parts to sell or to find loot.
Part of the game mechanics is to discover the ideal price for your different types of customers as well as depending on the popularity of the items. The tutorial is pretty good at outlining these mechanics.
A main tip I came across time and time again was to only sell 1 item at a time to see how customers reacted to the proposed price. So if you had 10 stones, only list 1.
I found the pricing stuff quite difficult, mostly because I am impatient, and the prices do jump up in the next dungeons, so it was hard to know when something should be 5 coins or 5000. I guess that is meant to be part of the fun.
Taking a leaf out of
’s book from her post Why I Cheat In Single Player Games, I decided to bring up a helpful guide to give me an idea of prices. You have different types of customers and display boxes as you progress through the game, so there was still some tweaking to be done here and there but it felt nice to know I was in the right ballpark from the start.The game loop tends to be that at night you go to the dungeons and gather your wares for the shop. Then in the daytime you stock your shop and open it to sell your items. As you earn money you can spend it on several things, your shop, your town, your gear and resources.
Spending money on vendors for the town, means you enable being able to create potions and enchantments for your weapons and armour, and you are able to create new weapons and armour. None of the crafting and resource gathering seemed to be too strenuous or grindy. I did fail some challenges or it would take me a bit longer to be able to upgrade my gear, but generally it was a rewarding experience. No grinding in sight to be able to progress. I did really appreciate this.
Another thing to talk about is the dungeons and their gaming loop. These are procedurally generated, from what I understand, and follow the structure of having 3 floors. To progress to another floor you have to beat a mini boss. In essence you have to beat 2 mini bosses and a main boss to be able to complete a dungeon. Each final boss fight happens once, but the mini boss fights can reoccur on subsequent journeys through the dungeons for more loot and resources for crafting or errands you may run for your customers.
Completing the 4 dungeons unlocks the final dungeon to complete the story.
The dungeons themselves hold some secrets, loot, enemies and secret floors. I also came across a sort of battler room, where beating each wave of enemies increases the rarity of the chest of loot. Those were pretty fun.
I am unsure if it is a spoiler but I loved the desert dungeon boss the most. It was the most frustrating to beat, but then also the most rewarding.
Along your journey, you also find eggs, which hatch companions. These tend to resemble some of the enemies you fought and will then fight for you. I thought this was a nice touch.
You can also pet a dog!
Verdict 9.5/10
For me this was a refreshing, simple but pretty game. It did what it set out to do really well, create a fun RPG with dungeon crawler and management sim mechanics.
The game loop was fun, with a nice progression, that never tipped into grinding, though was it too easy to master?
I thoroughly enjoyed growing my shop empire and investing back in to the town. Although maybe having more types of shops could have been fun. I played over 15 hours in a couple of weeks and it didn’t even feel like this much and even now writing about it, I am just smiling at the experience I had with the game. I am excited to see what Moonlighter 2 may reveal in the future.
I've always seen this on sale for switch, I might look a closer look at it now! sounds fun
I'm glad you liked this game!!
I put it down after I got stuck somewhere...or maybe it was that I got so hung up on the selling side of things that I didn't really progress through the main story...but in any case, I might go back to this before Moonlighter 2 drops!