• Price: $14.99 USD
• Developer/Publisher: Violet LeBeaux
• Release Date: March 23, 2026

A review code was kindly provided by Violet LeBeaux. We thank them for allowing us to cover something they’ve worked so hard on.

Content warning: rated T for “Drug Reference, Suggestive Themes, Use of Alcohol.” For a more details please check the end of the Steam listing.

In recent years cozy gamers have seen many variations on the farming game, which usually involve your character moving to a rural area to start their new life. I do love a good farming game myself, but it’s always nice to see developers try something new. Solo developer Violet LeBeaux decided to flip the script and offer a cozy experience set in the city; move into 1 of 4 unique apartment buildings and work to improve your community!

Before starting your life in the city you get to customize your character. This includes your name, birthday, pronouns, and a decent amount of options for your appearance. You get to choose from a selection of skin colors, eye styles and colors, features such as your eyebrows and mouth, and your hair. There are also different clothing items and accessories to choose from.

The game then opens with you on the train to Garland. It only took the writing a few seconds to capture my attention; the character dialogue – and your own dialogue options – are often silly and kept me entertained. There are jokes about faking your own death and being on the run from the law, which may explain why we haven’t arranged an apartment ahead of time and are getting one on such short notice. 😂

So the realtor you just “coincidentally” met on the train gives you the rundown on each of the 4 apartment buildings. They all have their own aesthetic and amenities in the surrounding areas. While each building is said to have “its own unique storyline, apartment layouts…[and] community events,” you don’t have to worry about missing out on anything because you can move to another (larger) apartment in the same building or even another building once you’ve paid off the first one!

The city has trains running through each major area; I’d suggest purchasing the annual pass early on to save money. (You can also use the rideshare service, but just like in real life it’s much more expensive.) I chose the pricier Birch Tower apartment, and the station was basically right next door.

When you enter your apartment building for the first time you get an introduction to how it works there. There’s a community notice board where the building’s residents can post delivery or cleanup requests, and an anthropomorphized recycling bin that pays you for any trash you pick up in the litter-strewn city.

The game has a lovely message about getting involved and taking care of your community – both the people and the environment they live in – without feeling “preachy.” Besides the notice boards, there are also projects you can vote on in your apartment community.

You can complete tasks for the City Council initiatives as well. There are stamp cards for different categories such as community cleanup, relationships, fishing, and more. Once you earn all the stamps on a card you can turn it in for a prize and get a more advanced card for that category. Participating in this program is a great way to get to know the city better – in addition to the monetary rewards and decor!

And speaking of earning money, I found that Moonlight in Garland differs from many cozy games in this regard. There’s no selling of crops or animal byproducts, or mining for ore and other treasures. One way to make money here is to work as a private detective’s assistant, playing related mini games and snapping pictures of evidence. I thought this was really creative!

Eventually you’ll also unlock investing as an option. That’s obviously a lot riskier, so I only invested a little bit each week for the stamp cards. Regardless of what you do, you’ll level up your personal and work stats to increase stats such as your max energy or an increase in the money you earn.

I think if you play the game in its default state it could feel somewhat slow as far as your bank account is concerned. But you know how non-PC gamers often miss out on cool mods? That’s not really the case here, as they gave players the ability to change certain aspects of the game.

Available mods/“cheat codes” include the ability to unlock all 24 slots in your backpack from the beginning, getting $1,000 each time you request cheat money, or refilling your energy meters without having to find something to eat. I did think that 24 slots was too small for the inventory, and I didn’t like how items such as fish didn’t stack, but I really appreciated having the ability to unlock these modded features.

As far as accessibility is concerned, I think this game is absolutely one of the better ones I’ve played. There’s a way to modify how long it takes to play through one day, and I liked how the text was clean and easy to read (from my perspective).

Depending on the task, I’m not always the best at mini games – to the point that I wish I could skip some of them in certain games. Moonlight in Garland is especially considerate here by giving you the options to make a mini game easier so you can still participate, or letting you skip the mini game while still obtaining its reward (like with fishing). You can also choose to lengthen the timer for the mini games that have one!

There really are a lot of great features and things to do in this game. Some of the facilities in town are unavailable when you start the game (or may have content added later as per the roadmap), but I was still pretty satisfied with the content.

As mentioned before, you can fish and take pictures of certain things around town. You can donate those items (as well as the houseplants you’ve grown) to the museum to earn rewards! I was disappointed that we can’t seem to actually visit the exhibits with the donated items and see them on display, but I did like the rewards. 😂

I liked the works on display at the art museum (the animal painting was my absolute favorite). You can express yourself artistically with different hairstyles from the salon, plus furniture including wallpaper, flooring, and some artsy pieces.

I did wish that we could see what the hair styles look like at the salon instead of just their names, and I wanted to have access to more clothing and furniture options at a time in each store when I visited every day. The furniture rotation function didn’t seem to work the way I wanted it to. And I was a little jealous of some of my neighbors’ setups. 😅

But honestly I was very impressed with the amount of options for customizing your character and your apartment – especially considering that this was made by a solo dev. Once you upgrade to a 3 bedroom apartment you can decorate even more space, and there are common areas in the apartment building that you can eventually decorate, too.

It was both humorous and realistic how we have to clean the apartment every day. (You do at least get stamps for this.) Adorable dust bunnies appear and hop around your apartment; you can pet the dust bunnies before cleaning up and getting rid of them, you monster! 🤣

If you’re desperate for the companionship of an actual animal, you can adopt pets once the store unlocks around Spring 25, if I’m remembering correctly. You can only adopt cats and dogs at the moment, and the colors are somewhat limited.

It would have been cool if we could adopt different kinds of animals, and I wanted items like the cat tree on display at the store. But something I really appreciated was that many of your new friends in Garland have pets of their own, and if they move in with you those pets become yours as well!

Now in order to get someone to move in with you, you’re going to have to befriend them first. There are 22 characters for you to befriend, with an impressive 18 (!!!) romanceable characters. Side characters fill in any gaps in the community; my favorite side character was clearly based on a celebrity many of us know, and he was hilarious in the scenes he was in.

As is traditional in this type of game, you improve your relationships with other characters by speaking to them, and of course giving them something they like. The Wiki is a helpful resource to learn the characters’ likes and dislikes, plus their petal events.

For the amount of characters there was an impressive amount of petal events. Each character has 5 base friendship events, but I believe you can’t view a dateable character’s friendship events if you chose to date them because you get to view the events on their romance storyline instead. (There is a way to undo choosing not to date someone, but I wish we could see all the dateable characters’ events without having to do that.)

Something that was kind of neat was that once you reach a certain friendship level a character will give you their phone number, and if you can’t find them you can ask where they are! There are even some petal events that start with a character calling when you’re out and about. You can keep track of the petal events you’ve seen for each character on their profile, which I like.

Your dialogue options have a lot of personality, and from what I can tell there aren’t any answers that really make a character dislike you? It feels like this game offers a fairly realistic depiction of adult friendships after leaving school.

There were characters (like Max and Dan) who I didn’t think I’d like at first, but I actually ended up warming up to them. I will say that the characters’ storylines don’t always feel complete after viewing all of their petal events. They needed better conclusions. However, I still enjoyed the petal events overall.

The game has a decent amount of focus on community events, such as the occasional vote on projects in your building or a gardening club. They only hold maybe 1 festival a season according to the calendar, but I found them quite pleasant. The mini game in the first festival is cute and easy to play, and you can purchase exclusive furniture and food that day.

You can date multiple characters at once if you’d like, and if you improve your relationship with someone (or it deteriorates because you break up) it also affects your relationship(s) with the character(s) close to them. There’s an event company at the mall that helps you with these special events. You can break up with someone via skywriting if you’d like, which made me laugh.

It was a little odd how characters you date don’t acknowledge your relationship when you talk to them outside of petal events; even when you get married it’s somewhat anticlimactic without new dialogue (although there is apparently a post-marriage petal event).

You do get to meet characters’ (very) minor NPC family members if you experience their romantic storyline. Appropriately, it felt different than the usual cozy games because we’re used to the close-knit communities in the rural areas in farming games. We don’t see the characters’ family members around town every day in Garland. Here we get to briefly meet the family in person or through video chat.

Another unusual aspect is the way you can ask a love interest to move in with you – and before marriage, too! Gasp, how scandalous! 🤣 Once you do propose to someone you get to plan very specific details of your wedding: the type of event (standard, elopement, renewal) the guest list, where it’s held, the clothing for you and your spouse, etc.

With all of the features and fine details, there was clearly a lot of love and effort put into the creation of this game. There are family photos on the walls and signs of characters’ hobbies in their apartments. The doors and windows of each storefront light up from the outside when they’re open, and dim when they’re closed. You can hear music playing when you get close to the nightclub, or the sound of people chatting in the café.

The writing is fun and witty, with the occasional pun and pop culture references here and there. I really appreciated the juxtaposition between the more cutesy character models that walk around and what I would describe as an almost comic book style (?) for the character portraits. Each character has multiple portraits with different expressions, poses, and even outfits!

While there are still some buildings and features that aren’t utilized to their full potential (yet), I’m excited to see what Violet LeBeaux does with the game in the future based on the roadmap.

I spent close to 40 hours on Moonlight in Garland, and I still haven’t finished objectives such as the museum donations and the apartment storyline. The game is so charming and has a lot of features that I don’t remember seeing in other cozy simulation games before.

It’s an incredibly unique and creative experience with great accessibility features, and I would definitely recommend it. This is such an amazing game from a solo developer, and I think people who enjoy cozy games need to play it.