When it comes to farming sims, there is a certain repetitive similarity apparent in newer releases. This is thanks to the overwhelming success of Stardew Valley, a game that became genre-defining with both its aesthetic and gameplay mechanics. Riding the coattails of its popularity, many games want to be the next Stardew Valley, copying its vibrant and friendly aesthetic, its top-down minimalist pixel art style with more detailed character portraits, and practically copying the gameplay down to the letter. While it’s normal to take inspiration from your favorite games, the level of similarity between titles in this specific genre borders on the absurd. While it’s not impossible to be a good game while taking so much inspiration from another title, the good ones must work harder to provide a unique hook and feel transformative to keep players invested, while the bad games simply fizzle out as players return to the title that inspired them in the first place.
While you can most certainly say that Moonstone Island is full of its fair share of comparisons to Stardew Valley, you can’t also say the game fails to be transformative. Moonstone Island, even with a name derivative of Stardew Valley, isn’t afraid to stand out and make its own name in certain areas. While certainly a game worth your time if you’re a fan of the genre, you might just find yourself wishing more time were spent on these original mechanics and that certain features moved away from the game’s ConcernedApe inspirations.
Moonstone Valley, I mean Moonstone Island, begins with a premise strikingly similar to many in the genre. As a young Alchemist, you must venture away from home to a new land for at least a year to strike it out on your own as a farmer. You arrive at a cozy, small town full of friendly villagers and quickly attune yourself to the wilderness. The sleepy little town is poor but has just enough of a market to purchase your crops and help you along your way with upgraded tools and various goods and services.
The first major step that Moonstone Island takes away from its generic inspirations is with the setting. In this magical world, you’re traveling between floating islands using a witch’s broom — or, until you can repair it, a balloon — and constantly interact with magic and ancient, colorful spirits. I would go so far as to say that farming in this game is almost totally optional, as your main objective is to battle, catalog, and tame the 66 types of spirits you find in the overworld and deep underground in dungeons.
The game’s big standout gameplay mechanic is a Pokémon-styled creature collector and battler combined with a deck builder. Beginning with one of three spirits of your choice, you venture out into the world and encounter new ones, defeating them to gain XP for your team of spirits or taming them using flax flowers. This feature is as addicting and fun as most creature battlers and is where you’ll spend most of your time. The farming aspect of the game is totally avoidable, but you’ll want to engage in it anyway, as the plants you grow and the tools you develop directly impact your ability to continue to battle spirits.
Spirit battles are a straightforward turn-based experience. Each turn, you draw a handful of cards from the decks of your spirits involved in the battle. These cards can be played for a cost to either reduce the damage-absorbing armor of a foe, buff a friendly spirit, or straight up dish out some damage. As your spirits level up, or as you find magical artifacts at ancient shrines, you can increase their stats such as health, speed, damage, etc., or modify cards to be stronger versions of themselves. Unlocking and modifying your favorite cards while milling out ones you don’t want from your deck is a fun and addicting way to reward the progression of your favorite spirits.
The game can be a bit weak with its visual presentation in places where you’d really expect it to shine. Don’t get me wrong; the pixels look astonishing, the color palette is great, and where there are animations, they’re adorable and nice to look at. Unfortunately, these animations are mostly present when using tools, passing out, or other character actions. In battles, spirits hardly move or are animated at all, which is where they really need to be; the lack of movement kills a lot of personality in many of the spirits and makes battles boring to watch. Many character designs, both for the various people in the game and the spirits, can be either hit or miss as well, but this will be more subjective based on who’s playing.
The many islands you will explore are said to be procedurally generated, and although I didn’t have the chance to start a new game to test it for myself, I believe it to be true. Each island has a unique biome populated with different kinds of spirits, incentivizing exploration to discover them all and build a team you really enjoy.
Delving into the game’s many dungeons is a rewarding experience that increases your maximum stamina and rewards your spirits with a ton of XP. It’s also a great way to find generous amounts of loot. It’s a great little break from the monotony of chores that can build up as your farm grows and is one of the bigger highlights of the game, in my opinion.
The farming, crafting, and character interaction are basically Stardew Valley to the letter. Basically, anything that isn’t a new idea brought to the game by the developers could easily be read as a mechanic copied from Stardew Valley’s code. Unfortunately, this includes some of the more frustrating design choices Stardew Valley makes.
The prime example of a mechanic inspired by Stardew Valley is the obsession with limiting your interaction to a single bit of something regardless of where you are. For example, you can only till one block of soil, water one seed, or pick up one stonefruit at a time. Using forges and other production machines is identical to Stardew Valley, where you can only produce one ingot or other material at a time per machine, and said one-ingot-at-once production is done in real-time and requires waiting. Just like in Stardew Valley, I found this feature frustrating and artificially pace-inducing.
There are a host of quality-of-life improvements over Stardew Valley and a mechanic I feel Moonstone Island especially improves on from its inspiration is the stamina system. Just like in other games in the genre, you use your stamina until you run out, and then you pass out on the spot. Thankfully, Moonstone Island makes restoring stamina much easier and gives you plenty of opportunities to improve your maximum stamina bar. Also, when you do end up passing out, a friendly wizard will bring you back to the exact spot you fell asleep the next day, with your inventory intact. No restarting at home and having to walk all the way back to continue what you were doing.
Romance and relationships between villagers are mechanics that are present but fairly poorly executed. You can improve your relationship with villagers by talking to them, giving them gifts, and going on dates… all of which are percentage-based and done in a flash. For example, talking to your in-game crush will provide you with various options, from small talk to flirting. Each one displays a percentage chance to succeed, such as 70%, 50%, or 20%, and when you select them, you just get a little indicator saying if you succeeded or not in improving your relationship with that character. There’s no unique dialogue revealing more of the character’s backstory or anything, you just see if the hearts went up or not.
I was able to take my character out on their first date with Ferra with only half a heart of relationship with her. The date consisted of a few dialogue boxes and a dialogue option, followed by the popup “I think that went well.” It wasn’t really as memorable or narrative-heavy as you might assume something like this to be in a game like Moonstone Island.
While I can safely say Moonstone Island is a game worth checking out, I believe far more in the potential of what it could be than what it is at the moment. More than anything, I believe the developers of the game need a bit of confidence to step away from their inspirations and a couple of writers to help flesh the world and the characters out a bit. The interesting, magical world of Moonstone Island could really shine if the characters were just a bit more interesting and had a lot more to say.
The Final Word
Though a bit derivative and lacking in the narrative department, Moonstone Island provides unique gameplay for its genre and is something definitely worth checking out if you’re a fan of farming-type games. With a bit of work and a lot more confidence, I believe the developers behind Moonstone Island could step away from their Stardew Valley inspirations and make a game that’s truly unique and addicting to play. While I can recommend the game at launch, I certainly hope the future has more in store than what we have at the moment.
7
Try Hard Guides was provided with a PC review copy of this game. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles in the Game Reviews section of our website! Moonstone Island is available on Steam.