You Should Play Moonlighter

In Moonlighter you take up two seemingly contradictory roles: a humble shopkeeper by day, and intrepid adventurer by night. Yet while you aren’t really doing much farming and harvesting in this game, there’s some gentle, rustic charm in the game’s mundane routines.

The setup is straightforward enough; as a shopkeeper named Will, you would spend your day running your store and working the till, but also setting the prices of your goods. Unlike other games, there’s some degree of inflation at play. How much you price each item is dependent on supply and demand—in general, the more you have of each resource, the less they cost. Meanwhile, opportunistic thieves may also try to make off with some of your precious goods, and stopping them means giving them a good wallop.

But where do all the goods come from? They are monster parts and other rare loot salvaged from your nightly battles with vicious brutes and mutants from dungeons, which are in uncomfortably close proximity to the peaceful town. To the enterprising Will, this translates to an endless supply of monster parts to be sold, perhaps even a few treasures hidden in the depths of these caverns. You hack, slash and grind for loot until your bag is full, and then return to town—or until you’re forcefully ejected by depleting all your health during your dungeon crawls.

Perhaps Moonlighter’s oddest revelation is that Will is, at heart, an adventurer who abhors routine and yearns to be more than just a small-town hero. But it’s in this predictable, comforting cycle that the game shines. If you enjoy the grind of pastoral games, Moonlighter may just be the balm you need.