Moonlighter Reviews

I think this game is really cool and fun to play - It can be a bit repetitive at times (but that could be due to my low risk play style) and is more of a dungeon crawler than a shop management game but I really enjoyed the gameplay. Combat is smooth.

I would have loved this game. But it had two flaws. It has 4 directional movement which to me made it feel clunky. And also the dungeon felt too repetitive and not that fun compared to shopkeeping

I feel it is important to stress that for what this game is, it is a ton of fun in its simplicity. But then you reach the Tech Dungeon and the bugs rear their ugly heads… aside from getting stuck in my shop one time requiring a reset, the game played smooth as butter. But once I got to the Tech Dungeon it seemed to trigger what I feel is a game breaking glitch. I constantly was getting knocked into or dodging into the walls and was going through them and getting stuck in the wall. This required me to constantly warp out, costing me the rest of the day. This leads to quest failures and difficulty making it all the way through the dungeon. This also seemed to trigger glitches around town leading to getting stuck inside the potion shop or forge. Now, I get glitches happen. But the developers were made aware of this glitch six years ago and advised they were working to fix it. That has not happened. And now they are finalizing a sequel to come out this year. I can’t recommend this game despite all the fun I was having because this glitch is terrible and the developers did not fix it as they said they would. Very unfortunate. Up til this moment, I’d been telling people how great it was and to get it. Now I have to walk all that back due to a terrible glitch. Very disappointing.

This type of game could already be a separate niche genre - where you get some kind of shop as inheritance or whatever and go on with developing it along with hunting for stuff to sell in it. Shoppe Keep, Cuisineer, Moonlighter would all be representatives of this sub-genre. And such general direction of gameplay is quite to my liking. What you do could be separated into two parts - dungeon crawling to get bunch of loot from defeating foes and finding treasures and selling things in your shop situated in city hub, that also contains some vendors and upgrades for both combat and trade. This loop of adventuring in dungeons and selling stuff to get better at both and be able to go further in your expeditions is rather engaging. Graphic design is pixel stylised one. Audio is decently fitting. Plot's simplistic to not bother you much distracting from core gameplay.

I love this game. you can make a lot of money really quickly and killing stuff is fun

The game isnt bad, but the souls like aspect in it is. Telegraphs only start like 2ms before an attack, making the die and repeat part mandatory, unless you like to play it very safe and slow (then it gets very boring), movement and attacks are clunky. But thats about it, i was never a fan of shopkeeping games, so if thats your thing than this could be the game for you. Again the game isnt terrible, its cute and all but I have the artifically inflating the difficulty by not giving you time to react to attacks and imposing you to die over and over again.

Overall I can't recommend it but I did play it to completion and thoroughly enjoyed the gameplay loop. Even got the achievement for less than 40 deaths on the hardest difficulty so I feel I've experienced the mechanics to their limits. Fantasy shopkeep is a pretty peak genre to tap into. But I feel that the devs might've spread themselves a bit thin with this one because between the shopkeeping and the dungeon crawling there's a few missed opportunities that feel a little underdeveloped and quality of life issues pretty evenly between the two halves of the gameplay loop. Firstly the pixel art is mwah. Very cute sprites for everything and the animations are solid and neat to watch. No notes I love it. The plot was pretty forgettable sadly and being able to skip town upgrade animations would go a long way. The mechanics are where the game falls apart for me though: On the dungeon side the combat feels stiff and clunky. There was a neat tech I found that made me use gloves for most of the game where the three hit combo could be animation cancelled with a charged attack and then the heavy would hit twice if you space it right at the tip and turned around during the end lag after the charge forward. Giving it a sweet spot that felt real good actually to pull off even though it feels like an exploit but wasn't gamebreaking since it usually was impossible to pull off without getting hit once or thrice and has the same dps as spamming lights, just fun. The majority of enemies usually felt quite obtuse to deal with and could combo you with very little windows to actually attack unless you use the greatsword or bow, they are easily the most threatening and it's mostly because of 1d attack directions in a 2d space. But then the dungeon guardians are complete pushovers compared to the floor bosses that are pretty engaging but most fall to 3hit-dodge 3hit-dodge without much thought. The shopkeeping aspect felt a little unfinished. Few of the decorations mattered when have 4 tip jars was almost doubles profits. The multitasking is a non-issue for the register can be accessed on both sides: a beige flag but worth noting. And profiling criminals and always being right has funny connotations. Setting prices could have been supplemented with a haggling system which kinda exists because of the demand but having low demand for an item never meant customers tried buying for cheap. And no matter how many goods I managed to stockpile there was never any reason to open bc items never spoiled and there's always enough time to sell absolutely everything in your inventory for a frankly ridiculous amount of money without fail. What affects both sides is the lack of weapon variety. Customers don't try selling you armour or potions so you're limited to finding maybe one weapon or a potion during a run and there's no reason to sell potions since you'll stock up on 20 to breeze through a dungeon and it'll be chump change because it's extremely generous how much money the game gives you at every stage of the game. And there's no contest between physical dmg (unless you use the bow) in weapon choices and move speed for armour since the gameplay loop gets quite tedious. The game tries to introduce time management at the 3rd dungeon but it was really difficult to keep track of and half the time the customer never showed up to tell me I failed so without a calendar it's pretty underdeveloped and there was no other reason to backtrack through past dungeons so I think having all the loot be recurring with all the dungeons would have curved a lot of these problems. The last complaint was about cursed goods, it's a neat idea but the worst thing it does is not let you stack it on non-cursed goods and it's just tedious to sort through. Also having crafting materials be nigh worthless to sell makes the decision making of loot moot since you either want one or the other and just mirror the rest. It would also be nice to toggle the mirror to auto trash items as it's also tedious and the menuing tends to be jolted when using it. I'll leave the dlc as another review. But it's a solid foundation for the sequel that I saw was coming out soon and am interested to see how it goes.

lovely game, completed the game within 28 hrs, just bought the new dlc- between dimensions during sale to try out, excited to play once more with this new content, and excited for moonlighter 2 :)

This game has become a bit of comfort food for me. It's quite grindy, but the story is simple and don't require lots of recall. So I'll pop in once and a while and run a dungeon and run the shop. I feel like there's a lot more under the surface if I really want to try for it, but as it stands, this is a pop in and play sort of game, and as Dad now, a lot more games need to be just that.

Game has potential, but there are few things which ruin it. Hope devs will make notes for the second part. 1. Price system is just 3 numbers of - base + . No actual fluctations, so you will never be able to sell item with base cost of 1 gold for thousands because market will never go that high. Also you will never be able to drop a price of an item by oversaturating the market below certain point. If you make us play as a merchant, then don't make the merchant system just an afterthought! 2. Speaking of which, you can sell items, and do quests, but what about BUYING items? Well, there's an over overpriced shop which can sell you some in time of need, but all those adventurers visiting you hoping for some potions or weapons never offer any items from their dives? Also why are you, as a merchant, diving into the dungeon to get some materials, but you can't put up a quest for someone to do so for you? 3. Combat system feels somewhat clunky. I don't feel moving that much faster in full light armor? The dodgeroll is always the same no matter how heavy your gear is? If you are trying to implement different playstyles of agile but squishy and slow but tanky then don't do that just as an afterthought! Speaking of which... 4. Gauntlets are just worse sword&board. They are supposed to be a faster weapon, but they feel too slow for a fist weapon, and there is barely any noticeable difference in speed between them and sword&board, but with sword&board you at least get blocking special. Speaking of which... 5. Why all specials besides maybe bow and sword&board suck so much? Why is sword&board the only special you can move while holding the charge, and it blocks pretty much anything? Bow is at least ranged and terrain ignoring, but with all the other weapons you can't move during the charge? Like, maybe slower but you can't at all, and can barely change 4 directions aiming? So no positioning yourself for better spear charging thrust/greatsword whirlwind/ fist piercing blow? Who made this decision and what logic was it based upon? Overall the game feels bad as a merchant simulator, and bad as a dungeon roguelike crawler. If second game does not improve on both mechanics, just avoid it. So far i am really disappointed by this game, it's really sad seeing all the great potential the idea had - wasted by not polishing the elements enough.