Moonlight Peaks - Switch 2 Review

In a time where “cozy gaming” has become an overcrowded genre filled with predictable sunny landscapes, it takes more than great mechanics to stand out. It takes a unique identity. Moonlight Peaks delivers exactly that by flipping the traditional life-sim upside down, trading sun-soaked fields for a delightfully macabre, supernatural vibe. As the rebellious child of Count Dracula, you run away to the family’s forgotten countryside estate to forge your own path in a town teeming with witches, werewolves, seers, and vampires. It’s a clever twist that breathes some fresh, undead life into a tired formula.

The Good

As someone who has played countless life sims and cozy games, there is always one feature that can make or break the experience for me: character creation and customization. Moonlight Peaks absolutely nails this. It offers more customization than many big budget titles out there, which is a massive breath of fresh air. From eyebrows and eyelashes to the outfit you want your vampire to wear, the options seem virtually endless. But the personalization doesn’t stop at the opening sequence! The game also offers a seemingly bottomless well of options to design your castle and farm to be truly worthy of the child of Count Dracula.

Something that I appreciate that Moonlight Peaks offers: stress-free inventory management. Gone are the days of juggling dozens of chests and embarking on a glorified scavenger hunt every time you need to find that one type of wood for a recipe. Instead, all you have to do is walk through your front door and open your home’s built-in storage. Here, you can dump anything and everything that you’ve gathered thus far into one seamless, organized space. Say goodbye to the chaos of dedicating an entire shed to your growing chest monster! Well, unless we’re talking about Chester, the literal sentient shipping box who you feed the items you want to sell. He’s great, and honestly, he probably deserves a shed of his own. 

Quickly, I would like to highlight some brilliant quality-of-life (QOL) improvements where Moonlight Peaks truly outshines some of its bigger competitors. First, building on the bottomless home storage, the proximity crafting had me sighing with relief. You don’t have to manually pull materials out of storage to craft a recipe. The crafting bench (as an example) automatically pulls the materials from storage! Second, I absolutely adore the real-time NPC icons on the map. Say goodbye to keeping a wiki tab open just to figure out where Sabrina is wandering at 9PM. Knowing where every NPC is at a glance makes turning in quests an absolute breeze. Honestly, these are the kinds of QOL that should be implemented in every life sim game.

TL;DR

• Character and base customization options
• Stress-free inventory
• Crafting made easy
• Locating NPCs made easy

The Bad

I don’t have too many negative things to say about Moonlight Peaks, but there is one area that I hope that the developers could optimize: the loading screens. The frequency and length of these transitions can be a bit of a drag. For example, simply stepping out of your house greets you with a black loading screen for upwards of twenty seconds. It happens often enough that I found myself actively planning my routes for the least amount of load times, rather than just relaxing and experiencing the world. While it’s certainly not a game-breaking issue, it is a persistent enough speedbump that it took me out of my flow.

Another minor hurdle I encountered was the early game energy management. Granted, this is a rite of passage in nearly every title in this genre: you break two rocks and suddenly your character has to take a huge nap just to survive until tomorrow. In the beginning, you’re trapped in the classic loop of horrible tools, no income, and no reliable way to cook or buy food to replenish your energy. While it does get better as the game goes on, the initial grind feels a bit intense. My advice? Just push through that first week or so, because the payoff will be worth it.

TL;DR

• Loading times
• Rough early energy management

Final Score: 8/10

Moonlight Peaks proves that the "cozy" genre doesn’t need a sunny pasture to feel like home. Sometimes, a forgotten countryside estate filled with witches and werewolves is exactly where you belong. It takes a tired formula and fills it with personality. The developers at Little Chicken set out to give an overcrowded genre a distinct identity, and they succeeded. Moonlight Peaks is a beautifully stylized, atmospheric breath of fresh night air that proves you don't need the sun to make a game truly shine. If you are looking to break the cycle of pastel farming clones, go and sink your teeth into this one.

Thank you for checking out our Moonlight Peaks Switch review, thank you to Marvelous (via Decibel PR) for providing the review code and thank you to our Patreon Backers for their ongoing support:

• Andrew Caluzzi (Inca Studios / Camped Out)
• Bel Cubitt
• Bobby Jack
• Jack Caven
• Nintendo Maniacs
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