izigame.me

Moonstone Island is game that makes me wish Steam had a "Neutral" rating option for review. But since the question is, "Would you recommend this game?" my current answer for Moonstone Island is a solid no at this current time which leads to my choice of giving the game a negative review.
So now to answer the question of why I wouldn't recommend the game.
I would describe Moonstone Island as very ambitious. Studio Supersoft clearly tried to include many different ideas into Moonstone Island but like with most Jack-of-All-Trades approaches they have failed to really find mastery with any particular element in their game.
Life-Sim
- The villagers aren't unlikable but they don't often really feel alive. It feels like a solid starting point for a game in this genre but doesn't execute past being the bare minimum most of the time. The date mechanic is nice and helps flesh out your chosen romantic partner's character. Some villagers are very forgettable like Cleo who I had to look up their name as part of writing this review.
Creature Collector
- Probably Moonstone Island's most fleshed out axis of gameplay. That being said "Creature Collector" is the wrong way to describe Moonstone Island. This game is fundamentally a deck builder. Do not go into this game expecting to catch "Pokemon" and each Pokemon feel like it's own individual unique entity. Each "Spirit" (This game's equivalent to a pokemon) has a deck of cards that they represent and when you are in battle with other spirits you draw from a combined deck of cards for each spirit you have active on your team, up to 3 spirits. There are only 3 things that make each spirit truly unique from other spirits; it's passive, it's type and it's weaknesses to cards of other types. The issue here is that most of the passives are inconsequential with eachother and, as far as I can tell, no spirit has any cards that are unique to that spirit. By this I mean, if you have an Earth type spirit, it has access to all the same cards as EVERY other earth type spirit, which makes all earth type spirit feel almost entirely the same outside of their appearance and passive. Moonstone island also somewhat punishes player for actively collecting spirits due to the fact that unless you spend the tedious time to feed your excess collected spirits every day they will run away. There is an expensive recipe that you unlock early into the game that does ultimately remove that tax but it feels antithetical to a "Creature Collector" game to punish players for collecting creatures.
Exploration
- One of the other pillars of the game play loop in Moonstone Island that helps differentiate it from other farm-sim titles is Exploration. This feels relatively fresh for the first 5 hours of game play but eventually the vignette falls and the realization will set in that aside from their shape every island in the game is the same except for the biome they represent out of the 4-5 different types of biomes. That is unless have a randomly assigned dungeon on them.
- Dungeons are just fine. They reward the player's exploration efforts with small amount loot but the main draw being a permanent stamina upgrade. I wish dungeons were more visually distinct from each other based on the biome that they are located in, it's mildly nonsensical to have to cross a river of magma in order to access a dungeon on a fire island only to be greeted by a grassy stone ruin once you enter it.
Farm-Sim
- Moonstone Island's farming is just kinda there . It's a feature that feels like it exists because there is an expectation for it for the genre but it really doesn't add much to the game play loop outside of generating income for the player or getting food buffs to feed your spirits. The clunky controls also contribute to it feeling like an under developed system. I feel like the devs recognized this because you start the game with access to sprinklers which automate that majority of effort required to farm in the game. There are some crops in the late game that give a lot of EXP to your spirits when you feed them but that feels more like an answer to the frustratingly low amount of EXP you get from actually battling other spirits.
Miscellaneous
- The UX in this game is passable most of the time but occasionally is atrocious. You will run into this the most with the inventory management and any attempt to do larger scale farming efforts. Want to plant a large field of crops? Enjoy spamming right-click/space hundreds of times to buy each seed individually since there is no bulk purchasing option. Want to quickly move a stack of items into a chest? You have to drag and drop it, right clicking only puts in 1 at a time but thankfully you can hold down right click in this rare instance.
- Fishing exists in this game but it feels like it's been tacked on solely due to genre expectations.
- There are character level-up RPG-like elements in the game that really don't need to exist. Very few of the passives feel like anything other than a small incremental numbers boost and some exist just to slow down the game play loop. You cannot tame higher level spirits that you encounter in the wild until you unlock certain passives that let you tame those higher level spirits.
- Progressing through the temples (the game's equivalent to a story/campaign/gyms) is blocked by progressing through the seasons. This forces the player to not rush through the game but in turn forces the player to pay attention to all of the other mediocre game play & game design. You'll eventually run out of things that feel worthwhile to do in the game so that the only way to feel like you are progressing is to sleep until the next season so that you can continue to progress the game.
- The game occasionally really chugs when exploring certain islands.
- I've had the occasional bug that would black screen the game and force me to close out the game and lose some progress in order to resolve the issue.
Moonstone Island feels like an early access game that had it's full release come preemptively. I suspect that with another year or two of development Studio Supersoft can make Moonstone Island a standout from other similar indie titles but currently just feels like it's trying to be nothing more than barely adequate to answer it's initial moonshot ambitions.