Review | Moonlight Peaks - I Hate the Neighbours, They Hate Me Too

What is your comfort game? I have plenty of answers, myself. From the colourful mayhem of Katamari Damacy to the bleak anti-war action of NieR: Automata, all sorts of scenarios can provide that nice, fuzzy feeling. Over the past decade, with the runaway success of Harvest Moon homage Stardew Valley, a new category focused around that feeling spawned: the humble cozy game, beloved and despised alike for its (relatively) stress-free inclinations.

Moonlight Peaks, Little Chicken Game Company’s effort to fit this bill, sounds promising on paper. You are a vampire who wants to prove to your father, the legendary Count Dracula, that the time of supernatural entities in forever wars with each other is over. To that end, you move into the titular Moonlight Peaks, a sleepy town ruled by four families of mystical beings: other vampires, werewolves, witches and seers (some humans and mermaids enter the fray later, too). 

From there, you move on to classic farming sim fare, with a touch of the occult: grow magic crops, raise eerie beasties, cast spells to make your life easier, explore the town, and maybe even get into a romance with one of your fellow creatures of the night. Sounds all well and good, no? 

It doesn’t, however, take very long at all for Moonlight Peaks to show its true hand. Spend the first few hours engaging with what it has to offer, and you’ll find this isn’t a comfort game by any stretch of the imagination.

This is, as it stands, a confront game.

The character creator lacked my curly hair, so instead of myself I made my character Akane Owari from Danganronpa. I regret having put Kanny up to this.

With apologies for the terrible pun, I’ll explain myself: as someone who picked this game up for review in the midst of starting a new Fields of Mistria save (come to me, 1.0!), I’d like to say I have some experience with the genre — and I really don’t think I’ve ever seen a so-called “cozy” farming sim be as unabashedly mean-spirited as Moonlight Peaks. Beneath the cutesy façade lives incomprehensible vitriol for the player, showing itself in every crevice despite my doubts it was ever intended.

To start, the cast. A throughline across the writing seems to be that the fine folks at Little Chicken Game Company think cattiness is a cornerstone of humour, because about 80% of the characters take delight in being mean to the player for no good reason. It comes in all forms: a vampire praising you for being “so good” at vampire history even though you’re the literal child of Dracula; the bartender telling you they “hate small talk” when all you’re there to do is buy a drink; the local self-hating enby reacting with overblown disgust at your invitation to a museum opening (then showing up anyway for a forced “wholesome” ending to that storyline); several female characters treating you like a nuisance for existing, in a #girlboss kind of way; the list goes on. The designated “nice” characters, on their end, feel like wellness Instagram profiles personified, always going on about “energy” and “safe spaces” and never failing to make my eyes roll to the back of my skull. 

It’s not just the characters individually being nasty that poisons the purported chill vibes, though — the writing does, too. The most glaring example is Orlock, a haughty vampire lord who really seems to be putting on airs, playing up how great he is to cope with a traumatic past. He mostly does this after a couple glasses of wine; his eldest daughter tries her best to make him kick the habit, but never has any success, and constantly sees herself having to put on an overly cheery façade so as not to worry anyone. 

So far, so good. Here’s where we start to get off track: when it’s not a source of drama, Orlock’s severe drinking problem is treated as a bargaining chip. There is more than one moment in the main story (including the very first quest) where the player is mandated to supply him with red wine, thus enabling his addiction for personal gain. This can also happen through the request board, where he may request the spirit for higher than market price. 

It goes without saying that this, coupled with the many times where his over-the-top drunk self is deployed for laughs at his expense, makes Moonlight Peaks’ portrayal of addiction — clearly gunning for the people who always pick Shane in Stardew, while forgetting his main appeal isn’t just an insincere “I can fix him” but the heartfelt way his story is told — irresponsible, if not outright triggering. As someone with a close relative who struggles with drink, I squirmed every time I had to witness Orlock’s insensitive writing despite my best efforts to avoid him.

When it wasn’t offending my sensibilities, Moonlight Peaks was just not being funny in its prose. Ludo the werewolf, for example, is clearly intended to be a comedic character — a bumbling incompetent who loves either doing the bare minimum or having idiotic ideas that put everyone around him in danger — but I just straight-up hated every minute of his presence, including how much he whines about being called out like he doesn’t deserve it. If I wanted that I’d just get off the PC and have a conversation with my younger brother. 

There are also a lot of, let’s say, millennial sensitivities in the humour style on display. To be a mean little Gen Zer, it’s cringe. Somehow a game published in the Lord’s year of 2026 both includes a reference to “the cake is a lie” and calls the snake characters “snek”, not to mention the bit where it affirms someone died after reaching “terminal chonk” (dated and fatphobic, pick a struggle). It all made me feel like I’d been thrust into a time vortex where it was 2008 and 2018 at the same time. Only by a miracle did I not encounter the words “I can haz cheeseburger”.

But enough about the writing! Sure, it comprises a large part of the experience — what of the gameplay, though? Well, it shouldn’t really be a surprise that this game’s mean streak bleeds into that, too. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by other, better farming sims, but I really do think using my tools shouldn’t constantly feel like pulling teeth. While it’s OK to not have all of that late-game convenience at the start, I saw over 20 hours and three seasons come and go with very little to show for it progression-wise.

My pickaxe started out needing six whacks to break a small rock. I’ve upgraded it by two tiers and now it’s a whopping four. The animations are slow and the sound design is inconsistent — sometimes breaking a rock makes no sound at all, and sometimes it’s an ear-splitting crunch I’ll never be prepared for. Magic helps, but mana management is either costly, requiring several magic ingredients to keep my stocks topped up, or time-consuming, as it regenerates by one every day (and that’s a point I’ll usually have to use up by watering crops that demand magic water and are used for mana replenishment in the first place, trapping me in samsara). 

Moving on to the next tier requires a gameplay perk I have no clear way of obtaining; at many turns, both proceeding in the story and getting new mechanics seem to be at the full mercy of the game’s whims. I’ll get what I need whenever it decides I’m worthy of it. This leads to brutally boring stretches of play where I’m left with nothing to do and go to bed way too early, just hoping the next day will fling me into an unskippable cutscene with a new task and no warning, like Moonlight Peaks loves to do.

That’s not even to speak of the most evil little game design decision made here: while using the scythe and bug net, even if you swing at nothing, your energy will be depleted. The net in particular yanks off a huge chunk of it, which can make hunting for bugs and for the Soul Blob collectibles an even bigger pain than having to chase them across the map already is. At one point I found myself playing the Wile E. Coyote to a critter’s Roadrunner as I tried to corral it in an island stretch of the map, because it was hypersensitive to my movement and kept flying over water, where I can’t use my net. There went hours of my day I could’ve used trying to befriend the one guy that’ll give me meaningful story progression.

I can’t, however, pretend it’s all bad. Fishing, for example, is better here than in many other cozies I’ve played, aside from the low variety of fish: if you press the button at the wrong time, they don’t go away and you can try again. It’s a kindness I haven’t found anywhere else in this game. The side modes are also pretty good overall; in Evernight, the game’s store-brand Halloween, the town is filled with engaging minigames. The reason I picked this up to start was the promise of embroidery and pottery, and I can confirm they’re very good additions. I decorated my house with pixel art of the TBH Creature and was happy for a delightful moment. There’s also a simple little deckbuilder called Nokturna, which does well to mix things up a bit.

Unfortunately, no amount of extra goodies can disguise the heart of the matter: Moonlight Peaks is anything but heartwarming. Be it through unlikable characters, passé humour, hostile game design, or dangerously mishandled storylines, my time trying to make a homestead here was utterly miserable. Players looking for cozy games that integrate magic might want to aim for Fields of Mistria instead.

Moonlight Peaks was played on PC using a code provided by the publisher.