Verdict
Turns out that vampires will never hurt you - at least not in Moonlight Peaks. Welcome to the spookiest farm sim yet, where everything happens at night and your crops are suitably supernatural. Moonlight Peaks refreshes the genre with plenty of inventive additions, a cute cast of characters, and absolutely plenty to do during your time in the town.
Finally, I've sunk my teeth into Moonlight Peaks and am having a great time haunting the town while cultivating crops and getting to know the locals. Don't let the fact that you're Dracula's child go to your head - you run away from home and start fresh. You, your Hellkitten, and a dream.
Moonlight Peaks starts with the standard fare. You've got barely any money, an overgrown farm, and a few packs of seeds to plant. Well, better get to it. Once night rolls around, you rise up out of your coffin and get to work clearing some weeds.
Then you meet the town's alcoholic vampire Orlock, who demands wine from you, and you find your long-lost uncle in an outbuilding, stuck in his bat form. There's also the werewolf mayor who keeps arguing with Orlock, and a strange girl with a bag on her head that you need to try and befriend. There's lots going on, and it's all super(naturally) engaging, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
The core gameplay is, of course, farming. Moonlight takes the classic farm game formula and flips it just a little, but enough to make it fresh and exciting. Sure, the core is planting crops and raising them to sell for money, but this time you can enchant watering cans to do the work for you.
While I've mostly spent my time planting up a sizable garden, there's so, so much more to do in Moonlight Peaks. Obviously, there are some animals to rear on the farm too, and special crops that you can dry and turn into herbal powder with a mortar and pestle. Off the farmstead, you can fish in the sea and rivers, catch bugs and small critters, try your hand at bouquet making and pottery, or track down 100 different Vampsters to return to their home in the mines.
Oh, um, also, Death itself introduces itself to you and tells you to capture 100 lost Soul Blobs (spirits of the deceased that have turned unruly), with each one having a name and a cause of death. They're found whizzing around all over the place.
To help you out with all of this, there are handy spells to make use of. The aforementioned magical watering can lightens the load, as will purchasable spells that increase your collecting and mining abilities, or increase growth. Your very own vampire can turn into certain animals, such as the Hellkitten, which lets you move faster and access more places.
Not all of these missions and abilities unlock at once - thankfully. You get introduced to all the new mechanics slowly during the story, so it's not overwhelming. Even if I wish I could be as fast as the Hellkitten from day one.
My only qualm with the game is that stamina runs out quickly. Not all forageables grant you stamina refills, not even all crops either, and food that does is expensive. Or if you've made the food, you want to sell it for money, not consume it yourself. Every action takes stamina, including swinging your net at bugs, which feels a little excessive. A slight tweak to this could change a lot.
Sometimes it can be hard to start new quests, as well, as they seem to happen at random. You get exclamation points or sparkles on the map to show where a cutscene is, but they're not usually quests, and just a fun little 'movie' that almost 'stars' a character. I mean, they're great - one was a pub quiz with Elvira - but I want to know how to move the story along. While it's no real issue, just spending time on the homestead or getting to know people, a tiny bit more direction would be nice.
While I've nowhere near 'completed' the game yet - wooing the fine and fermenting wine takes time, y'know - I feel like there's replay value here. Focusing on different areas of farming like raising animals or going all-in on magical crops, being purely a fisherperson or critter collector, for instance, or starting a different family will likely lead to different experiences. There's also room for DLC or updates, which I hope to see happen in the future.
I think what really makes the game for me is the setting and theming. I love gothic literature; I love cryptids and supernatural stories, so hearing that you can be THE Dracula's child and get to meet other vampires, mermaids, werewolves, and witches? Hell yeah! The characters really live up to my expectations, too. I especially love the Snek that sells hats and the inclusion of a sullen emo romance option, even if I have bungled it by giving them gifts they hate. Oops.
Moonlight Peaks is definitely one of the more interesting farm sims recently - and trust me, I've played a lot. It's most similar to games like Stardew Valley and Fae Farm, but with a creepy-cozy vibe over the top. I love the aesthetics: the dark, tree-filled town feels cozy, and the characters' portraits show off their personalities really well. I have truly been having an excellent time playing, and will continue to do so for many moons to come.
Last, but certainly not least, let's look at the performance of the game on Nintendo Switch 2. I played the demo and did a preview on PC, and it looks just as good (if not better) on the handheld console. I've had no issues or frame rate drops, no crashes, nothing of the sort on Switch 2. Having tried a lot of games on the new-gen console that don't live up to the hype, I'm very pleased with how it runs.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and schmooze Moonlight Peaks' Samael as a romance candidate, as he's giving serious Rhysand from A Court of Thorns and Roses vibes.