Moonglow Bay Review (kaci.barfield)
You can't really play this on a PC without a controller. I'm going to buy it on the switch to see if the controls are better. This review is quite long so see below for a TLDR.
The game is super fun. I love the concept and the story (from the limited amount that I've played) seemed good. However, none of that matters when the controls are awful. Seriously, they're shocking. It feels like playing Finger Twister and having to search my keyboard to flip the journal pages (the default keys are L and J. How does this make sense?) Esc doesn't even take you to the menu where you save, I think its something stupid like enter or backspace? I changed it as soon as I realised.
The game seems allergic to reusing buttons. I'm sure theres some sort of programming reason for this but as a consumer it makes remembering everything a nightmare. The game throws a lot of buttons at you really quickly and I had a headache 50 minutes in (I played for 64 minutes total I think). I don't really understand why the cooking minigames don't use the space bar or the first interact button. They instead chose for the button to be the second interact. And the interact buttons are ridiculous without rebinding too. I changed all of mine to Q, E, R and C (I was hoping I wouldn't have to use C). There's also an extra tug while fishing using shift, though I couldn't reach the shift bar while fishing so I rebound that to TAB.
It's a good game, honestly, but you can tell it's not meant for a keyboard. I didn't look very hard into the descriptions but from what I could tell nowhere did it say this must be played with a controller. I wouldn't have bought it if that was the case.
It honestly makes me mad because I love the concept but the controls just make it unplayable. I got the game on sale for £6 but on the switch it's full price at £22.50, so I will admit that is probably tainting this review a bit. I would pay full price for it (and probably will) because it was a lot of fun. I'm just hoping that the controls are more harmonised. It works so much better to use the same buttons except for when you can't. Why they did this I truly don't understand.
I don't want this to come off as an insult to the developer, I just want them to workshop these dogshit controls. In my opinion there is no feature of a game that can ruin the players experience faster. It ruins the whole game so please fix it for everyone's sake.
TLDR: Amazing gameplay and concept but why are there so many stupid controls. It makes it unplayable. Maybe buy it on steam if you have a controller, but if not stick to a console, like the switch.