If you look at Moonlighter without knowing much about the game, it’s easy to dismiss it as another rogue-lite indie game with pixelated graphics. But once you start to dig into the game, you will find a unique take on the popular genre.
You play as Will, a merchant who lives in the village of Rynoka. The village was built just outside of four portals that appeared one day. The game doesn’t offer much of a backstory for these portals; they just showed up. These portals lead to different dungeons. Heroes from all over the world came to raid these dungeons, so Rynoka became a place for heroes to rest and gear up before their adventures. But the dungeons became too dangerous, and the village closed off access to the portals. As the village started to die out because of the lack of Dungeon raiding, the locals decided to open some portals back up to entice heroes back to the village. Now that the portals are opening back up, Will is determined to open a fifth dungeon that has always been sealed. To open this dungeon as Will, you must collect four keys, which you get from defeating the boss in each of the other four dungeons.
Will likes to think of himself as a hero merchant. Will runs a Shop called Moonlighter, where he sells items that he collects during his nighttime dungeon raids. During the day, the game becomes a shop management game where you must find the value of items you collect while dungeon raiding. Some items can be used to craft new equipment, other items are only good to sell. You find the price of items by placing them for sale, choosing a random price, and seeing how customers react to the price. As you progress to harder dungeons, the items you find go for a higher price tag.
As you upgrade your shop, there are more things that you need to pay attention to. Thieves will try to come in and steal items, but a quick tackle stops them in their tracks. Some villagers will come in and ask you for specific items to collect in the dungeons. You get a huge chunk of money for completing these quests, but since the game is a rogue-lite, your fate is left up to the algorithm that determines which enemies will show up in the dungeon.
At night, Will ventures to the dungeons to get his items for the next day. Each dungeon is comprised of three levels and a boss. This is where the rogue-lite aspects come into play. You try to see how far you can make it in each dungeon, and each level has different items for you to find. Your inventory is limited to 20 items, which I believe is a hard cap to make it so you can’t really cheat the economy. The top five items in your inventory serve as your pocket, while the bottom 15 slots are the items you can hold in your bag. Most rogue-lite games have you going on runs until you die, and Moonlighter is a bit different. When your bag is full, you can teleport back to the town. You keep all the items you find, and can put them up for sale, or use them to craft new equipment. You can also create a portal that brings you back to where you left off. A good tactic is to make it to floor three, portal out of the dungeon, re-stock, and go after the boss. If you die while in the dungeon, you have the option to either go back to town, or start the dungeon over. If you go back to town, you keep the five items that were in your pocket, but you lose everything in your bag.
This is where Moonlighter is more enjoyable for me. I get frustrated with rogue-lites, as I feel like I am not making progress between runs. Money is how you progress in Moonlighter. As you gain more and more money, you’ll spend that on revitalizing the town, and upgrading your shop and equipment. In the city square, there is a bulletin board with five different business people looking for a little capital to open a shop in Rynoka. The first two are standard fantasy shops: blacksmith and enchanter. The third is an item shop where you can buy items that you get from raiding the different dungeons. This shop is nice if you need an item for crafting new equipment, and you don’t want to venture back into a dungeon to do so. The fourth is a bank, and the fifth is a decoration shop for your own store. These items will give you benefits with customers, like better cash tips, or customers are more patient and will wait in line longer.
One unique thing about dungeon crawling in Moonlighter is some items you find in chests will have curses on them, and depending on the curse, you have to move items around in your inventory. For example, one curse forces you to place items either on the right or left hand side of your inventory. Another destroys an item in the direction an arrow is pointing when you return to town. The curses only apply to items that you will carry back to town and sell in your shop. It only affects your inventory management. Outside of that, it doesn’t change up the gameplay. These curses are usually on higher valued items that you do not want to leave behind. At first I was confused by this mechanic, but I’ve grown to like it. It feels like a little puzzle that you have to figure out during each run, and never feels like an inconvenience.
I would say the most frustrating thing about Moonlighter is the combat. It doesn’t feel as tight as other rogue-lites that I’ve played. It reminds me of a 2D Zelda game. Hit detection also seems to be a bit weird, where you will swing in the same spot multiple times, and get one hit, but not successive hits. Weapons are your standard fantasy fare. You start with a shield and sword, and when the blacksmith gets to town, you can craft a large sword, a spear, gloves with blades on them, and a bow to shoot arrows. Each weapon has two upgrade paths, and they require money plus crafting items to get to the next level. I do feel like the time it takes to get more powerful in Moonlighter is significantly less than other rogue-lites. It honestly feels more like your standard RPG, with money replacing experience points.
While there are times that I feel like I’ve seen all I need to see in Moonlighter, the core gameplay does have me coming back to the game. I like finding out the cost of new items, and I get excited when they sell for way more than I thought it would. It’s also fun upgrading your equipment, making each run a bit easier. I usually spend about two hours of gameplay per dungeon at this point. You raid a dungeon, sell the loot, buy upgrades, and do a bit better each day.
If you’re like me and are usually put off by rogue-lites, I’d recommend Moonlighter. I think the shop gameplay makes the game feel fresh enough that I can overlook the rogue-lite elements, even if those elements are incredibly lite. I also love fantasy villages, especially seeing them come back to life over time. On top of all that, the pixelated graphics are some of the best I’ve seen in an indie game like this. It all comes together well in the end, and if you’re looking for a unique take on the rogue-lite genre, Moonlighter is the game for you.
Score: 4/5
Moonlighter was developed by Digital Sun and published by 11 bit studios for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on May 29th, 2018, and will release on Nintendo Switch later this year. A retail copy of the PC version was provided by the publisher.
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