Ever since Moonlight Peaks' reveal, it's been firmly on my wishlist. Now that it's out, I've had a grand old time playing and am currently well into my second year of life in the spooky town. But I wanted to know more. Where did the idea come from, and how did these specific creatures make their way into it?
So I did what any eager beaver would do and spoke to three members of the Little Chicken Games team, who are to thank for this creepy, cozy game. Below you'll find answers from CEO Yannis Bolman, Lead 3D Artist Tobias van der Meer, and Developer Dominik Beens as they talk all things farm games, Dracula, and potential DLC.
Pocket Tactics: I've been following development for a long time, as a fan of spooky vibes and farm sims - I wonder how the idea came about to mix creepy and cozy?
Yannis Bolman: We've been looking into making a life sim for the longest of times. We were struggling with all kinds of themes, but nothing really stuck. Our Art Director Mia Boas was watching a vampire series with her sister, and it clicked. So we started from there and added our own take on the vampire lore and mixed a bit of magic and other supernatural elements. And that became Moonlight Peaks.
How has the game changed since the first announcement?
Tobias van der Meer: I think the game went through a few major shifts during development. One that I had the most impact on was the change to go PBR, which stands for Physically Based Rendering, and that comes down to having our models look like they're very high resolution by using Normal Maps and lighting shenanigans.
Next to that, we also went a slightly hand-painted route. Not full-blown; we don't have the manpower for that, but just enough to give it a lot more fidelity and a very handcrafted feel across the board. I don't think we posted a lot of how the game looked before that; we sort of consider that time pre-pre-production. But our models all used one gradient atlas with which we textured everything using the lazy unwrap method.
Art-wise, that was the biggest change. The game also got A LOT more narrative-driven. I never expected us to do so much work there. But there's an amazing storyline and a lot of character building. The character building was essential; we're a game where you can date a lot of the characters after all.
Was there any specific inspiration for the setting and look of Moonlight Peaks?
Van der Meer: I definitely wanted to go in the direction of Heroes of the Storm with a lot of the shape language and bulkiness when I started on the overhaul to PBR. We have an inside joke at the office where a lot of the time my feedback was to add more "chonk".
Later down the line, there was a project called 'Dragon' by Phoenix Labs that unfortunately got canceled. They had an incredibly similar style to the way we sculpted our models in ZBrush. That definitely had an inspirational impact on the work we've done.
I can't speak on direct inspiration we might've had for the setting of Moonlight Peaks. Our AD probably found any and all purple games that have ever been made for reference.
How did you choose which supernatural creatures to add as villager types?
Bolman: We listed all supernatural beings, and sort of tried to have them make sense when put together. That's where Moonlight Peaks as a safe haven for supernatural beings came about. Since they're always somewhat in hiding, it made sense that they would have some kind of town where they would all go to live without being harassed by humans.
Vampires, werewolves, and witches already made sense to [go] together, but we wanted a bit more variety and pretty much added what we thought would be interesting for the player. So, Seers and Mermaids were a logical addition, but we thought it would also be fun to add in some deities and such. At one point, we had to stop coming up with characters since we already had quite an elaborate cast.
Similarly, how did you pick a vampire, specifically Dracula's kid, for the main character?
Bolman: We were looking for a good excuse to have someone start a new life. A young person moving out of their parents' house and wanting to live their own life made a lot of sense here. And Moonlight Peaks being in the context of vampires made it quite easy to piece together. Not having Dracula, but rather their kid, gave us this blank slate to work from. [Not] who Dracula is, but who their kid is, is pretty much open for interpretation, and it could be anyone.
Would other cryptids make their way in, or were there any you cut?
Bolman: We had a bit more planned, but at one point, we had to stop adding new characters. Once we started writing the storylines, the cast was pretty much set. There was a lot of writing involved per character, so we committed to that set quite early on. We did cut back on some of them. We had the gods dateable at first, but they came with their own complexities that we didn't have enough time to fix. So those had to be cut back. We'd love to add it in the future, though!
What was the process of coming up with creepy crops and animals like? Where did the ideas come from?
Bolman: Ideas for the farm animals came from all over the place. We knew we didn't want to do straight farm animals. So for all we tried to give them a vampiric or supernatural twist. I did a whole bunch of scribbles for the farm animals, and we picked a few for further refinement. Other artists did similar sketches that we picked from. A notable exception is Stoney. He was actually made by Joran, one of our devs. Joran needed a placeholder when he was coding the farm animals, and he put together some rocks and added some eyes on there. We all loved it so much, so that became the rock-golem-thingy we have now!
The crops went through a similar process: lots of sketches, and some based on a specific gameplay idea. With these, we also tried to focus on doing a supernatural twist on some of them.
Who's your favorite love interest, and who do you think the fan favorites will be?
Bolman: I mean, it varies a lot, and it's hard to be surprised if you've written, read, and reread most of them. But it's still fun to be surprised by some of the lines they have in certain episodes or specific circumstances. Overall, I think my favorites are the more outlandish characters. Death, the Sun God, and Pumpkin Head are definitely full of weird surprises and story twists.
I do think Death will be a fan favorite; there's just something about being able to date Death and finding out he's a bit of a gentleman and also a bit oblivious to all earthly things.
What happens if you (the MC) were to go into the sun? I'm not brave enough to stay up all night to find out, but would they sparkle a la Twilight, burn to ash, or something else?
Bolman: Currently, your player character passes out and is whisked back to their home, and the day ends. Nothing too dramatic.
Did you face any issues when it came to the Nintendo Switch/2 version(s)?
Dominik Beens: One of the challenging parts about developing for the Nintendo Switch was getting familiar with the Nintendo developer environment and the build process that comes with getting your game playable on the device. As we were already targeting controllers and handheld devices like the Steam Deck, the control scheme and input were easy to implement. But testing on the Nintendo Switch is a little trickier than, for example, testing for PC, which you can do straight from within the Unity Editor.
What inspired you to port the game to mobile? How has the process of getting it on Android been?
Beens: Google approached us about the possibility of getting Moonlight Peaks released on Google Play Games. Since the game is being made in Unity and we already have previous experience building mobile games, we managed to get a working build of the game running on a phone pretty quickly. The entire process of adapting the game to be playable on Android has been fairly smooth. The biggest addition was having to make an on-screen joystick to control the player and putting some of the hotkeys as extra buttons on screen. Most of the remaining gameplay mechanics were already set up in such a way that it was either already playable or easily adaptable to be played on a phone.
Will the game be available in all regions on Google Play? We noticed it wasn't available (ahead of release) in the UK.
Bolman: We think so, yeah. It's challenging to add Android to the release platforms because it's so ubiquitous and widespread. But as far as we know, it should be available everywhere!
Is there controller support, and if not, will it get added?
Beens: Yes! There is full controller support on PC, and you can even use external controllers on Android. Moonlight Peaks has been developed and designed with controllers in mind from day one, and we think it's the best way to play the game. But keyboard and mouse are also fully supported if that's your preferred playstyle.
Are there any plans for DLC, expansions, or content updates? Or is there any scope for it in the future if it's not currently a plan?
Bolman: We have plenty of stuff we still want to add to the game. In an ideal world, we'll be adding to Moonlight Peaks for a long time to come. It depends on how the game does as well, of course.
…or any anecdotes, secret things, or fun facts you can share?
Bolman: Haha, there are many small things we hid in there. All of the devs have their own Soul Blob, for example, and everyone got to put in their own funny reason for dying (all Soul Blobs come with a reason why they died). Also, once you've unlocked some of the forms, you can chat with all animals and figure out what's on their minds. Some of them are a bit nuts. It's fun; definitely try that out!
There you have it - a look behind the scenes of Moonlight Peaks, and a sneaky peek at what may come in the future. You can read our Moonlight Peaks review here, and get a helping hand on how to make friends with characters like Evan, Samael, and Luna, too.