I could do with a break from online gaming this is what I got myself Moonstone Island. With the recent release of Call of Duty Modern Warfare III and the OG Fortnite season, I feel like there is no escaping the sweats of the gaming world. Thankfully that’s where Moonstone Island comes to the rescue. I love single-player games as much as I do a (good) online game but in recent months I feel like the main single-player games I have been playing are Planet Zoo and Jurassic World Evolution 2.
After stumbling across the trailer for Moonstone Island I instantly got drawn in by the art style then after doing a little background check I noticed that this game ticks all the right boxes for a game I’d play. This then brought me to my next problem, how come I’m only just hearing about Moonstone Island now? A cheeky request here and a few days later I found myself venturing into the wonderfully charming experience that you get when you play Moonstone Island. I manage to get a copy of the game on PC so this article will cover the Steam version.
Moonstone Island is a creature-collecting open-world game with the addition of life-sim elements sprinkled on top by Studio Supersoft. It has 100 islands to explore, make friends, brew potions, collect Spirits, and finish off with card-based combat. Following your Village’s tradition, you must move to an island in the sky to spend a year training to complete your Alchemy training. This will see you explore ancient temples, dungeons, and hostile biomes to try and uncover the dark secrets surrounding Moonstone Island.
Each day works out more or less like your standard farming game. You’ll wake up, leave the house, and tend to your crops. After that, you can then choose between exploration, crafting, quests, or collecting spirits. There are a generous amount of plants and fruit you can grow. I love the fact that the game has seasons and seasonal crops as it builds into the way you tend to your crops and the overall landscape changes. Who doesn’t love a snow-covered map?
On top of the farming you will need to find time to build your relationship with the villages and eventually maybe even go on dates with them. There are quests to complete that will help move the story along but you don’t feel forced into it and can do it at your own pace. Though Moonstone Island wouldn’t be complete without its creature-collecting element. You can use certain crops to tame spirits who will fight alongside you in a card-based battle system. This kind of gave me a huge Pokémon vibe, a cool thing about these spirits is that you could go into your pendant where you were housing them and and interact with them.
Later in the game, you can build a bigger area for them which increases the number of spirits you can tame. Going back to the combat, each spirit comes with a deck of cards which are the spirit’s moves. You can level up the stats of the spirits by having them fight. The deck mechanic allows you to pull off mad combos and get the upper hand on enemy spirits. You’ll come across unique traits like healing, multi-hit, and energy generation.
The combat is paired mainly with the exploration as the world is split into 100 floating islands. These are placed randomly when your adventure begins. You must fly between these islands to collect more resources, expand your stamina bar, and solve the mysteries surrounding the dark-type spirits. All the different gameplay styles, like the farming sim and creature collection work hand in hand making Moonstone Island an addictive and fun game to play.
I find myself wanting to farm more, and explore more, and even more so when there are dungeons and temples to venture into. You need to find more resources so that you can upgrade your home and unlock more things to craft.
Taming spirits is enjoyable and ties in well with the farming of crops as these are used to tame them. You will come across spirits in the wild while progressing through the game and can be added to your roster of creatures. The designs of a few of them are cool but not as good as the original 150 Pokémon. You’ll need to upgrade your tools to make gathering resources easier. You will also find yourself making multiple farms and houses due to the way that the game plays.
It has a day and night cycle as well as a stamina system that you have to stay on top of. If you run out of stamina you can’t gather resources and if you stay out later than 2:00 pm you’ll pass out. Make sure you keep an eye on both of these as it can be a pain to be caught off guard.
Each part of Moonstone Island is fun on its own but becomes incredible when it all ties together. You can get caught in a rut of feeling like you are doing the same thing over and over but that is one of the relaxing and enjoyable elements of this game. Just go into autopilot and enjoy, it allows you to tackle the game however you like which in some cases would see you sinking a lot of time into the farming element for example but not once did I feel like I was wasting my time.
As mentioned there are main is a main questline and a few side ones but you will never find yourself with nothing to do and this is what made this game so much fun for me.
I love everything about the art style and audio used in Moonstone Island. It is so charming and reminds me of games like Terraria and the original Pokémon games. It is nice to have an open world to explore and take in. The villagers are charming to talk to and the Spirits all have unique and cool designs. I loved the first time encountered new spirits as it was one of the things, I loved about Pokémon so having this kind of feeling in Moonstone Island made it even more enjoyable.
The UI is nicely layout out not overly crowded and was easily navigable. I played this game both on my PC and laptop and they ran smoothly, other than a few bugs/frame drops during combat but nothing too major. I also enjoyed the romance feature where you could build relationships with the villages, I do wish it was a bit more fleshed out but it was a nice addition neither the less.
Plenty is going on in Moonstone Island, with the main storyline, side quests, general exploration, farming, and gathering of the Spirits. This game does a solid job of encouraging you to go off and gather resources, farm plants, and just explore the world without forcing you to progress with the story. Its pacing is brilliant and I love just being able to take my time and not feel rushed into anything. The writing for Moonstone Island is good which is a positive and a nice breath of fresh air after the last campaign I played (Not naming the game, cough check last reviewed game) wasn’t the best.
Conclusion
Moonstone Island is a nice change of pace with its enjoyable farming and creature collecting. It was no surprise that I sunk many hours into it and still was eager to play more. It was one of those games where you are like “I’ll just do this then I’ll come off” but you end up spending a couple more hours on it. The art style was another selling point for me as I love these sorts of games, the card-based combat was interesting and worked well for me and I loved being able to collect spirits and look after them.
The farming is super relaxing and easy to get lost in. The exploration of the islands, dungeons, and temples always had me wanting to explore rather than go from A to B. This cosy single-player experience is one that I’m happy I have found after the mediocre experience I had with my previous review title. Its light-hearted farming and engaging spirit collecting and combat is a must for anyone who loves these sorts of games.
Not only that but it is a fraction of the price you will be paying for AAA titles nowadays and in my opinion a lot more fleshed out and polished and for those reasons I’m giving Moonstone Island a 9 out of 10.
Moonstone Island Trailer
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