Review: Moonlight Peaks (Nintendo Switch)

Cozy gaming popularity has risen to the point we’re also seeing “cozy horror.” I’ve played a decent amount of games that fall under that category, and while a lot were fun, they’ve all followed the same kind of format, being visual novels or puzzle-adventure games. Moonlight Peaks, takes the cozy horror vibe and combines it with an adorable farming/life simulator, offering a town full of supernatural creatures, characters, and crops. Think Stardew Valley meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer…except without the slaying. There’s only farming and falling in love with werewolves, witches, or vampires.

Moonlight Peaks comes in native Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 versions, and our review time was spent with the former. Taking place from 6pm to 6am (instead of vice versa), you play as the son or daughter of Count Dracula. After some tension with your father, you’ve decided to move away from home. You bring your hell kitten with you and start fresh in Moonlight Peaks, a simple and relaxing town with a lot of history and a lot of drama.

There are seven families in town, only four of which introduce themselves when you first start: the Logan, Ambrosia, Webb, and Khazan families, which consist of werewolves, vampires, witches, and seers. There are also ghosts, deities, and other creatures you can find and talk to. Because you have such a wide range of cryptids living among you, it’s only inevitable that there’d be some disagreement twixt the families.

So, while you move into the town’s farmhouse and tend to the crops, it’s also your job to help bring unity back to Moonlight Peaks—as well as collect all of the soul blobs floating around town, return every vampster back to their cave, contribute to the museum, and help every townsfolk with their every need. While doing so, you’ll also find yourself foraging, mining, cooking, tending to your animals, casting spells, shapeshifting, playing Nokturna, fishing, crafting, making potions, bouquets, and embroideries, and—best of all—decorating your home and farm.

Needless to say, Moonlight Peaks offers a ton of gameplay—about 50-100+ hours, depending on how you play. Most of your time will be spent farming, foraging, mining, and interacting with villagers, as most farming games often go.

Farming is similar to other games like this; you plant, fertilize, water, and harvest crops daily and can turn them into wine or other beverages or jams to sell them at a higher profit. Selling items from your farm is the best way to make money, whether you’re selling plain crops, items made from crops, or any animal products. You can cook any harvested crops or give them to villagers if requested on the jobs board posted in town.

However, what makes Moonlight Peaks farming mechanics stand out is that there are certain crops you can only grow through magic. Once you obtain your wand, you can use it to cast a spell that summons a magic watering can which is the only water these magic seeds will take. Magic crops can be used in all the same ways normal crops can, but they can also be used to gain extra mana, which is helpful as you start to cast more spells later in the game.

Mining and foraging are what you would expect, as is villager interaction. You can gift items and talk to villagers daily. As you grow closer to them, you can begin to date or even marry.

Moonlight Peaks adds another mechanic here though that I found to be really fun, and that’s a card game called Nokturna. Created by Dragan, one of the seers in town, Nokturna is a best-of-three game in which your goal is to end each round with the highest number of points. You start with a basic deck consisting of 20 cards with a total of 60 points. Each card has a different worth from 1-6, and some have specialties that can increase another card’s worth, return your card to your deck for the next round, stay in play for the next round, or even lower the points of your opponent’s cards. Every time you win a game, your opponent gives you a new card so you can create your own deck based on what kind of cards you prefer. There are vampire cards, werewolf cards, aquatic cards, and more, each with different abilities. Playing Nokturna with the villagers builds friendship, so it’s not only a fun addition, but also very useful.

Outside of the basic farming sim mechanics, Moonlight Peaks also offers some fun objectives and mini games like catching soul blobs around town, returning vampsters to their little cave, making bouquets, and doing embroidery. Soul blobs are little skulls that float around town. Some blue flames, others pink, and there’s yellow as well. The flames determine how quickly they move, and therefore how hard they are to catch. Just like with bugs and other critters, you’ll use your butterfly net to catch them. Catching enough soul blobs allows you to unlock the ability to change the duration of your nights, which I thought was a pretty handy add-on.

Vampsters are little bat-like creatures that sit around town and never move. When you find one, all you need to do is pick it up and take it home to its cave. The tricky part about this task is that you can’t interact with anything else while holding one or you’ll drop it and it’ll run back to its hiding place.

Bouquet making and embroidery are little minigames added that allow you to create your own designs that can be used as decor for your farm or gifts for the villagers.

Along with all of the game’s unique mechanics and traits, Moonlight Peaks also provides players with amazing details and fun easter eggs. Not only can you grow googly eyes and wolfsbane, but you can also raise draculambs and cowculas, and even find skull snails and spiders with eyes on their backs.

The bed in which you end each night is actually a coffin, and the decoration and character customization options offer a lot of goth or spooky items if you’d like to really add to the game’s aesthetic. The controls are also really easy; I only had a few interface problems, such as only being able to use my right and left bumpers if the Joy-Cons were disconnected from my Switch (which may have been fixed by the time this goes to print).

It’s clear to me how much effort has gone into Moonlight Peaks. From the funny yet heartwarming dialogue, the town’s layout, and the many quests to complete, the game feels full and worth getting lost in. It’s spooky, but cute—easy, but without hand outs—and can be very time consuming; perfect for slow weekends or wind down time at night.