From the moment I sit down to take Moonlight Peaks for a spin, I’m enchanted by its commitment to the supernatural. Instead of a boring old bed, I rise out of a coffin late in the evening – I’m a vampire, after all. I’m immediately greeted by a three-eyed talking cat. When I leave my home, there’s a white-haired witch waiting outside, ushering me forth into a twilight-lit world.
It isn’t hard to see why Moonlight Peaks draws comparisons to the likes of Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley. It takes the classic cozy management game and dresses it in a Halloween costume, throwing a couple of unique mechanics into the cauldron for good measure. In my 30-minute demo, I dived into the magic and customization features that hope to separate it from the familiar farming fare.
The titular Moonlight Peaks is a town full of supernatural creatures, including witches, werewolves, and vampires. You, Dracula’s child, have moved in to prove to your father that the undead can be more compassionate than he thinks. While living in Moonlight Peaks, you participate in town activities, support yourself with farming and crafts, and gain new abilities as you progress through the overarching story.
Fiona, a witch who functions as the mayor in my demo, instructs me to check my mailbox for a quest. First thing on the list? Gather wood, stone, and fiber. It’s familiar, but something steady in comparison to the game’s more experimental features. The tool wheel is easy to use and the quests are easy to view, so it’s not long before I’ve accrued the relevant resources to complete my first quest.
While I hack away at the natural landscape, I’m also given a moment to admire glowing green mushrooms, floating sprites that I promptly capture with my net, and wandering animals like my feline companion and a one-eyed cow. I also find small notes in the grass, which teach me more about the town’s history (founded by three major families; the usual fantasy lore).
Farming works similarly to Stardew Valley, where you plant crops in tilled dirt during specific seasons and watch them grow after a set amount of time. However, because you have magic, you can accelerate their growth or enhance them in various ways – something you can’t do in a more realistic setting.
The magic isn’t just a gimmick. Moonlight Peaks leans into its spooky identity with unique mechanics like potion-making and vampiric abilities. Turning into a bat allows you to zoom past obstacles instead of slowly lumbering around, for instance, and you can brew potions with materials you find scattered around. Instead of just waiting for a timer to tick down, though, you can furiously mash buttons instead – a welcome, time-saving change.
But of course, with any game like Animal Crossing, customization is one of the biggest draws. Terraforming, something you can do in Nintendo’s game to shift land into ramps and other landforms, isn’t present in Moonlight Peaks, yet there are still a lot of options. Bushes, plants, arches, fences, lampposts, flowers, and more stand out in my inventory. You can also use premade templates to change the outside appearance of your home, and fashion your own catalogue of themed furniture. Just a quick look at the Steam page gives you an eyeful of the game’s vibrant gardens and witchy decor.
Considering Moonlight Peaks is still early in development, I didn’t have a lot of time to interact with the game’s supporting cast. That said, Moonlight Peaks clearly means to go beyond the typical villager relationship that you experience in Animal Crossing – yes, that means you can date people. I didn’t get to experience what that looks like, but adding in-depth relationships on top of an already solid farming and customization system could be a game-changer for Moonlight Peaks (hopefully it’s more in-depth than the surface-level dates we got in Fae Farm).
Moonlight Peaks is worth playing for farming game fans who want a little sugar, spice, and everything nice. It puts a meaningful spin on the standard farming formula and visible effort into worldbuilding, but I’m not fully sold until it shows me a little more character development. I suspect we’ll see this one grow and improve ahead of its release in 2026.