In the past decade, life sims (and farming sims, in particular) have gone from a relatively niche genre with a handful of standout titles to a full-blown phenomenon. While this is great for players who now have an abundance of fields to plow, animals to tend to, and townsfolk to woo, the sheer saturation of these titles makes it harder than ever for a game to truly stand out. As such, more and more of these games have sought out interesting angles to help shake up the formula–just look at the current trend of “cozy” games subverting the genre by incorporating horror. However, players looking for something horror-adjacent but decidedly less blood-soaked than Neverway or Grave Seasons have long been out of luck–until now.
Little Chicken’s Moonlight Peaks seeks to bridge the gap between the cozy and the macabre, offering up a lighthearted life-sim experience set in a world filled with vampires, werewolves, witches, and seers. After spending around five hours with Moonlight Peaks, I found a fair amount to enjoy–its vibrant-yet-moody color palette and lush environments being chief among them. In the demo I played, the game feels a bit barebones and lacks the ability to truly compel me (both puns very much intended). The controls also feel just a bit off and the world and its characters, not fully alive. However, I remain cautiously optimistic that, with more time spent in development (the game is set to launch in July), Moonlight Peaks could deliver an experience that sets it apart from similar titles.
In Moonlight Peaks, you play as Count Dracular’s heir apparent. After yet another fight with your blood- and soul-sucking father, you decide it’s time to leave the castle and create a life of your own somewhere else. This journey leads you to your witchy mother’s former hometown, the small village of Moonlight Peaks.
Upon arriving, you find that certain residents have strong feelings about your father and his reputation. But to be fair, your new neighbors have strong feelings about everything, and are in a few power struggles amongst themselves. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the werewolves and vampires of the town seldom see eye-to-eye, leading to plenty of petty spats. The biggest of the game’s initial quests tasks you with finding an artifact that might help the heads of two families reconcile, but, suffice to say, immortal beings can hold immortal grudges.
This leads to one of the things that impressed me most about the townsfolk: Seemingly everyone weighs in on these disputes and has a preexisting relationship that factors into things. That said, I was a bit underwhelmed by the conversations they had with me. Each character offers one instance of dialogue before interacting with them just causes a gift menu to pop up; I’d prefer repeating dialogue to utter silence from everyone once you’ve chatted with them for the day. It quickly made the town go from lively, to feeling vacant.
That said, I really liked the characters overall–that’s probably why I wish they talked to me more. Moonlight Peaks does a good job of making its characters feel like fully fleshed adults rather than codependent units, which I appreciated. The game’s character portraits reflect this sentiment, as each character has a unique and more mature look than what we see in many of the cozy games with dating mechanics.
There are also just a lot of characters–including ghosts, snakes, and other creatures–making the town feel more lively and diverse. Making things more interesting is the fact that you can romance nearly all of these characters–according to Moonlight Peak’s Steam page, there will be 24 romance options in the game. While I didn’t keep count of how many seemed open to romance when I played through the demo, it definitely felt like the overwhelming majority were single and ready to mingle. Fiona, Saga, and Alina became early favorites for me, and lead me to believe that the women of the town are a bit more compelling than the male characters.
In terms of gameplay, Moonlight Peaks feels a lot like your standard farming-meets-life-sim. Your day starts shortly after the sun sets, giving cozy-game players the rare opportunity to experience a town at night, but your waking hours largely consist of the same mix of farming, foraging, fishing, wooing, and mining we’ve come to expect from the genre. Notably missing from Moonlight Peaks is combat, which while not “cozy,” has become a staple in many of these games. There is a rogue demon who unleashes fast-moving sprites that you have to hunt down and catch with a net, adding a bit of action to your nights–however it feels slightly dull and tacked on.
As a vampire-witch hybrid, you have access to a couple abilities that help spice things up, namely the ability to shift into a handful of animal forms and cast spells. While I didn’t get the chance to play around with spellcasting too much during my time with the game, I did unlock a spell allowing me to magically water plants, letting me bypass using a watering can. Doing so requires you to complete a fairly straightforward memory game, in which you hit the correct points on a small magic circle. This adds a bit of physicality to spellcasting, but I could also foresee it feeling tedious when you simply want to cast a spell and get on with your night.
Though Moonlight Peaks promises activities like flower arranging, embroidering, potion-crafting, and Nokturna–a card game you can challenge neighbors to–none of these were in the version I played so I can’t speak to their quality. I also didn’t get to see too much of Moonlight Peaks’ furniture and clothing catalogs, though what I did see seemed to indicate they will be pretty expansive–definitely exciting for all of us who like to spend literal hours sprucing up our homestead.
Of everything, the only thing I was a bit disappointed to see missing was an emphasis on your vampirism. Though you can’t go outside during the day (a great choice that makes the game’s curfew a bit more flavorful), I was surprised that developer Little Chicken didn’t incorporate vampires’ need for blood, inability to enter homes without permission, or their inherent appeal and charisma into the game. Though perhaps drinking blood might be a bit dark for a true cozy game, it feels like something could have been supplemented in there that still emphasizes their need for a peculiar source of sustenance.
Visually, Moonlight Peaks is delightful. The running joke has been that the game could not get more purple, and that’s probably true based on my time with it. Thankfully, the choice to lean into purple is a stellar one, and makes the whole town feel moody, enchanted, and aesthetically unified. I’m curious how seasons will impact the visuals, as I only played through spring, but hopefully we’ll see meaningful changes that still retain the town’s sense of mysticism.
In comparison, I found Moonlight Peaks extremely lacking in terms of music and general sound design. I could essentially play on mute and have a similar experience, which is to say the music did not amplify the gameplay at all. I think the game would greatly benefit from more music as opposed to light ambient sounds, and hope it’s better incorporated prior to the game’s full release in a few months.
In its current, unfinished state, Moonlight Peaks is good, but it definitely needs to shake up a few things if it wants to truly sink its teeth into me. Its concept is novel and, as a lifelong vampire enthusiast, I want to love and devote all my time to it, but it feels slightly lacking compared to its contemporaries. That said, it still has a bit more time in development and I still feel optimistic about what it could deliver. Moonlight Peaks is set to release on PC, Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo Switch 2 on July 7.
