“Press F to pay respects” is out and now it’s “Press A to run away,” which is the very first thing I do in vampire-themed farm sim Moonlight Peaks. Dracula is my not-so-dear dad and I’m ditching his castle and his dracul-onian rules to find space for myself at the family cottage in the countryside. When I arrive in Moonlight Peaks the family property is—you guessed it—overrun with weeds and boulders for me to clear out so I can start farming blood grapes and “cruelcumbers.”
What you won’t guess is that my next interactions, in order, are: a hungover vampire patriarch passed out in front of my house, the werewolf mayor and his brother arguing over fixing a broken bench, and a self-obsessed warlock hitting on me by way of relentless interruptions. That’s all in the first five minutes.
The next five hours introduce me to an old feud between the supernatural families, a doomed dinner party, and a rogue love demon. Moonlight Peaks has a soft, chibi-fied art style but this place is seriously toxic, which I say with affection. Farm sims are so often relentlessly wholesome (side-eye at Clint aside) so maybe a sloppy bunch of grumpy paranormals is the vibe shift some of us need.
Otherwise, all my nights (instead of days, because I’m a vampire, see?) in Moonlight Peaks will be very familiar to anyone who’s played a farm sim in recent years. I wake up at 6 pm, use my limited energy to water my plants and chop trees on my property, walk into town to chat with the locals or buy supplies, pick my favorite supernatural cutie (werewolf lady Saga) to obsessively gift my produce to in a bid for marriage, decorate my property, and slowly build fleet of crafting stations to turn all my raw materials into products my neighbors need to solve their problems before passing out at *checks notes* 6 am.
Two quick farm sim minutia points: Moonlight Peaks has no combat, so far as I’ve seen in its mines area, so the cozy game purists are safe. It also highly recommends playing with a gamepad for the best experience, be aware, though keyboard and mouse are supported.
Moonlight Peaks brings a couple of its own flourishes like a small spellcasting minigame for watering plants and other energy-saving unlockable spells. During my first few weeks I also unlocked a shapeshifting ability to cross town faster and explore hidden areas. It’s also got a very cute flower arranging activity. Later on there’s needlepoint, potion brewing, and a card game, though I didn’t get to play any of those in my six hours.
All the farm simming bits are executed competently, so whether or not Moonlight Peaks is for you is mostly going to come down to taste in art style and tone. The visual style you can see for yourself. The tone is a sort of sitcom-ified Real Housewives where all the feuding factions in the neighborhood can’t get through a conversation without an explosive argument.
Apart from the family of seers and Luna the farming witch, most everyone else in town is standoffish and spikey to begin with. It does lean pretty hard into vampire family head Orlock as a comedic relief alcoholic in a way that feels a bit dated in the year 2026, but otherwise the cast is endearingly flawed. I imagine, in true farm sim fashion, my role as the plucky outsider will be to rehabilitate the town by tempering all those tempers, Orlock included. I can fix him all of them.
If I’ve got any complaint about Moonlight Peaks in the six hours (20 days of in-game time) I got to play, it’s just that its tightly quest-controlled progression moves a tad too slowly in the first few weeks. Several times I found myself heading off to bed early because I’d run out of energy to do chores with and was blocked from unlocking new activities by a main quest step that would take several more days to complete. I could have done with staying busy by unlocking things like bug catching and spellcasting a bit sooner.
Moonlight Peaks launches in full on July 7. Until then, it does have a public demo available, though it tosses you onto a partly-furnished farm in the summer season to try planting and potion-making without the full character creator or story that I played through.
feedzy_import_tag feedzy_import_tag
About the Author
