• Price: $34.99 USD (Switch V1)
  • $39.99 (Switch 2)
  • Switch 2 Upgrade: $5.00
• Developer: Little Chicken
• Publisher: Marvelous (XSEED)
• Release Date: July 7, 2026

A review code was kindly provided by ONE PR Studio on behalf of Little Chicken and Marvelous. We thank them for allowing us to cover something they’ve worked so hard on.

Content warning: rated T; alcoholic character, complicated family relationships, mention of child death, mentioned misgendering

I must confess that Moonlight Peaks has had me “under its spell” since I first saw footage of the game on social media. The graphics are incredibly charming, and the concept of a cozy supernatural farming game where you play as a vampire is so unique and fun!

The game opens with your character running away from home after an argument with their father, the infamous Dracula. Moving to Moonlight Peaks, you’ll settle on your family’s abandoned property and do your best to fix it up.

You get to customize your character’s appearance, with options for skin color, facial markings, eye color, makeup, eyebrows, hair style and color, facial hair, and clothing including shirts, pants or skirts, dresses, shoes, and accessories. Whew! That’s a lot of options! Name your character, farm, and adorable “Hellkitten” familiar, and you’re ready to go.

As is the case with many farming games, you’ll have to clear the space surrounding your house to start planting crops. Your alcoholic vampire neighbor is the first to greet you, and he wants your first batch of crops to include Blood Grapes so you can make him some wine. Oh dear… 😱

I think it’s really cool how they incorporate the supernatural theme into everything. For one thing, your “days” actually take place at night due to your status as a vampire.

If you catch a certain amount of [redacted for spoilers] you can extend or shorten the time it takes to play through each night. You must be back in your coffin by 6:00 AM; I always managed to get back in time so I don’t know what happens if you are late.

You’ll spend a decent amount of time working on your farm. Many of your crops have unique growth requirements such as feeding them, and some crops have variants depending on where the seeds are planted. Herbs must be planted in special herb garden setups, and some herbs and regular crops have special watering requirements.

Planting crops like the aforementioned Blood Grapes is just the first step of your farming journey; you won’t make much money from raw crops alone, so processing them in machines like a Keg, Press, or Jam Maker is necessary to maximize your profits.

The livestock are another “fang-tastic” manifestation of the supernatural, and provide you with byproducts that you can also process into something more profitable. “Cowculas” are adorable cows with wings, and don’t get me started on the “Draculambs,” which are probably my favorites for several reasons that I won’t spoil for you.

All I’ll say is that the Draculambs are hilarious beyond the name, and the way their tails wiggle when you pet them is so precious! (You can also put hats on your animals, which I love. 💖 Sadly this excludes your Hellkitten.)

There are other unusual animals that unlock as you continue to play (some don’t unlock until the second year). There’s an interesting mechanic that I don’t remember them explaining: your animals have preferences on who they share their barn with. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that in any other farming game I’ve played, so that was kind of a fun little detail.

You can take the (food) byproducts and crops and cook them as another way to make more money, although there are some dishes that restore your stamina as well. Before I obtained the stamina increases it seemed like I ran out of stamina pretty quickly. I like that we don’t just pass out and end the day if we run out of energy; instead we can restore our stamina with food that we forage, make, or buy.

Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like there are that many food items that restore a lot of stamina. This is another time where I don’t recall them explaining something – that apparently only dishes that include an ingredient with the word “blood” in its name really help you regain much energy. You know, since you’re a vampire. (That does make sense, in hindsight. 😅)

When you cook a dish yourself, there’s a mini game where you have to press a button when the cursor moves into the bar. I appreciated that missing it didn’t make me start over or lose ingredients, but I didn’t particularly enjoy the mini game. When you have higher quality ingredients you have to go through more rounds of button-pressing, and it gets pretty tedious – especially without an option to cook multiple meals at once.

To minimize the rapid loss of stamina every day, it’s best to upgrade your tools as fast as you can. It was nice to get my upgraded equipment back right away, since other games often have you wait a few days.

Besides a stamina gauge, you also have a mana gauge for when you eventually unlock spells. The spells you learn (purchased from the shop) help you manage your farm. There are spells that water your crops for you, relocate buildings or trees on your property, and more. I didn’t love how you only regain 1 mana the next day, but you do unlock ways to resolve the mana recovery issue later on.

There are many other activities in Moonlight Peaks that cost stamina, such as fishing and “critter” catching. The critters drastically outnumber the fish, with nearly 100 critters compared to roughly two dozen fish.

I did wish there were more fish since I really like fish/going to aquariums, but what’s great is that we can display the fish and critters we catch in our house. Catching critters can be a little annoying sometimes because of the large amount of stamina it requires (plus their tendency to flee). However, I appreciated the interesting spawn requirements for certain critters, and that the fish don’t just disappear if you try to reel them in too soon.

If you get too tired to keep working, there are other fun activities that don’t require stamina. You’ll unlock artsy activities such as pottery and embroidery, and you can display your work in your home. There’s also a cute little card game where you can challenge interested townspeople and collect cards with supernatural designs.

And speaking of design, you can spend some time decorating your house and the rest of your property. You can buy furniture from various shops (some of which seemed pretty expensive), but you can purchase new crafting recipes (or dig/fish them up) to craft furniture as well.

I like that some of the furniture recipes offer different color options using different wood types and other materials. And it’s awesome that we can place items on tables, shelves, and other items!

Your new house is pretty cramped at first, but you’re able to upgrade it once you have the materials and funds. I upgraded my house as much as possible, and ended up with a basement and a second floor to decorate! The game has a decent amount of customization options, and you can even decorate certain areas in town.

When you head into town you can check the map and see where everyone is, which is so helpful! You’ll discover that Moonlight Peaks has a wide variety of supernatural citizens, with vampires, werewolves, witches, seers, mermaids, ghosts, and more!

I was only a few days into the game and the characters really showed a lot of personality in a short period of time. The character portraits are really dynamic, with different facial expressions and poses depending on the situation.

Making an extremely unusual design choice, they gave players the ability to switch between 2 portrait styles for the townspeople. I don’t think I’ve seen this done before – except perhaps in game remakes! I liked this idea.

The little character models are adorable, and do a great job of emoting as well. Characters express their emotions with animated emotes and gestures. I really liked seeing characters hug each other in town, and even outside of events they become quite animated in conversations together as you pass by them.

Another cool detail would be the way that the werewolf and vampire characters transform into their wolf and bat forms to get around town faster. I was so surprised when I saw that for the first time, but it adds to the feeling that this is a town full of the supernatural.

Characters have routines where they spend time together. Once you become closer to them yourself you’ll find yourself triggering character events (separate from the main story) that allow you to get to know them better, and sometimes those events include several other characters. The map displays icons to let you know that an event will happen at that location, which was helpful.

It was nice to have so many people around all the time because it made the town feel more “alive.” 😉 The townspeople also gather for 5 festivals over the course of the year to celebrate different holidays and give each other gifts.

The summer festival kind of felt like a throwaway event because there wasn’t much to it. I wish they had expanded on that event more. But I liked having a few festivals that last several days, which gives players the opportunity to earn more money to purchase event exclusive furniture and recipes.

The fall festivals were probably my favorites; I especially enjoyed the Mastersoup festival because it was entertaining and you don’t have to supply your own ingredients. The Evernight festival has some fun mini games, and Aras does something special that I had a lot of fun with, too!

“My family’s kinda weird, but we make it work.” ~Aras

The people of Moonlight Peaks all have such memorable, endearing personalities; even the characters with more irritating traits have some redeeming qualities. Families deal with personal drama both within their own households and with the other people in town.

There’s a main storyline in addition to characters’ individual events. The cause of these conflicts can be serious, and yet they wrote some entertaining dialogue that often decreases the tension in those scenes.

I had a great time getting to know everyone, so it was really hard to choose which character I wanted to marry. You can date most of the townspeople (23 characters) regardless of gender, and thankfully you can date multiple characters at once as you narrow down your options.

Each dateable character has a preferred date activity. Unfortunately you go on the same type of date with that person every time, which is a shame because there’s a decent variety of activities, such as stargazing. I did like how love interests will sometimes come and ask you on a date instead of having you be the one to make all the effort in the relationship.

Once you’ve decided on the character you want to marry, you should break up with the other characters you’re dating. Breaking up temporarily changes their relationship status to “hurt,” meaning you can’t really talk to them or buy from them for a few days, which seems reasonable.

The game auto saves in between days, but you can still at least make a copy of your save file so that you can try marrying another character without having to start the game all over again. I think the wedding ceremony is cute, and there is an event or two after marriage with your spouse.

I didn’t mind not having kids, but the romance overall did feel a bit weak to me. Some of this could be attributed to the repetitive dates, but after you start dating some of the character events probably could have been a little stronger.

This carried over to the main storyline, which had a quest that resulted in anticlimactic “ending” of sorts. Personally I wasn’t very satisfied with it just “ending” there. And I don’t know if I missed out on these storylines by not dating certain characters, but many plot lines felt unresolved (i.e. Penelope, Viktor, Yasmin, Selene, etc.).

The pacing was off when it came to unlocking new forms as well. I’m not saying the writing is bad by any means – it’s just that in certain areas it could have been stronger. I still loved the characters and the dialogue despite their occasional flaws.

Some of the writing is pretty funny. And I liked how they wrote some dialogue for the townspeople that allows them to recognize changes in the game. They’ll comment on recent quest plot lines, the character(s) you’re dating, and even when you change your clothes. The characters’ acknowledgement of these changes makes the game feel more interactive.

I noticed some additional small details, such as Evan and Mina actually using the coffee machines in their shop, or the laptop item you place in your home having the loading screen Vampster bouncing on its screen.

Moonlight Peaks isn’t perfect; they could have explained a few things better – both for the game mechanics and the plot. There seem to be some slight technical issues for some players, although I haven’t noticed anything on my end. Even before the update I didn’t think the loading times were particularly bad on my Switch 2.

Other than that I found it to be quite a…magical experience. 😉 One might even say it’s “charming.” 🪄 I really had a hard time putting it down! It’s definitely a good game for completionists who enjoy catching things and filling in the encyclopedia, as well as those who like to collect clothing and furniture.

There’s just so much to do in this game, and I played for more than 150 hours because I was having so much fun getting to know the characters and unlocking new areas and features. I’m having a hard time not going back to it right this instant to catch the last few critters I’m missing. If you think that a cozy supernatural farming game sounds intriguing and are prepared to be “ensnared,” be sure to check out Moonlight Peaks. 🧛‍♂️

8/10