I'd seen some buzz about this game on Twitter a couple weeks before I decided to buy it. I'd recently gotten a Steam Deck and having taken on a lot of work lately, wanted something easy on the hands to just chill out with and decided to pick this up. I don't regret it at all, there's a lot to like! But man this shit draaaaged and as much as I wanted to finish it initially, I didn't wanna fall victim to the ol' sunk cost fallacy, lmao.
Moonstone Island is a bit of everything. It's part farming sim, part card game, part vaguely Pokemon/Digimon-style virtual pet game. It's pretty surprising how, despite having so much going on mechanically - all of these different gameplay loops actually work pretty well together and never become as overencumbering as they might sound! My other big piece of praise - this game is gorgeous, absolutely beautiful pixel art all over; very evocative of classic top-down Zelda games like Minish Cap. As far as indie game visuals go, it's up there with the GOATs like Stardew Valley and Owlboy.
But SPEAKING of Stardew Valley, man this game wants to be Stardew Valley so hard. Taking inspiration from a source is one thing, and I don't wanna accuse the devs of anything as serious as plagiarism here but, like...the stuff this game takes from Stardew Valley is really hard to ignore. I'm not just talking mechanics; having romanceable NPCs who you give gifts to and go on dates with is one thing, but I'm saying this game has the exact same relationship mechanics as Stardew Valley down to a T. NPCs have rooms you can't enter until you're close enough with them, you get to talk with them a limited amount of times a day and give them gifts a limited amount of times a week - it works exactly the same to the point where this game even uses the same fuckin' UI elements. Like, the same "8 hearts in a row" thing, the same menus, it literally just works and operates the exact same way as Stardew Valley by every conceivable metric. Great artists steal, yes, but usually they innovate in some small way, they include some kind of small variation on the thing they're "taking inspiration" from and just don't lift them wholesale from said thing. It's really egregious and particularly frustrating because these are clearly competent devs with some original ideas. They're better than this and I hate how much we excuse artists just copying eachother so flagrantly by saying stuff like "all great artists steal" and "everything is inspired" etc. because that doesn't excuse such blatant imitation imo.
To a lesser extent, this game then also does the exact same thing with Slay the Spire, its card-battling mechanics are heavily inspired by it, taking mechanics and keywords from StS entirely and operating with the same "3 energy" system. There's at least a bit more innovation on the formula here, but it's still pretty blatant. Again, these are competent devs, they pull it off reasonably well and it's surprising how well they manage to make these styles gel together - but you gotta dock points for originality, man.
And even then, these styles only gel well together for so long! Moonstone's Island main objective is simply to make it through an in-game year. Well I'm mid-Fall (the 3rd of 4 seasons, 20+ hours in) and I feel like I have well and truly run out of things to do and it has all just become boring for me. The fishing is grindy and tedious, the farming is simplistic and super unnecessary, the dialogue, writing and characters are nothing to write home about. This isn't a bad game, but it feels a lot worse than it is because of what a time sink it is, how much it asks you to commit to a game that is ultimately a bit barebones in content, and doesn't have enough in it to make a year-long in-game playthrough feel worth it.
These devs could make some really good stuff, but I'd implore them to learn from this game. Just lifting mechanics and UI elements from other games isn't good enough. It isn't "taking inspiration", when it's done this blatantly, it just speaks to a lack of imagination. This game was fun and charming for a bit, and then playing it just became a chore.
Moonstone Island is a bit of everything. It's part farming sim, part card game, part vaguely Pokemon/Digimon-style virtual pet game. It's pretty surprising how, despite having so much going on mechanically - all of these different gameplay loops actually work pretty well together and never become as overencumbering as they might sound! My other big piece of praise - this game is gorgeous, absolutely beautiful pixel art all over; very evocative of classic top-down Zelda games like Minish Cap. As far as indie game visuals go, it's up there with the GOATs like Stardew Valley and Owlboy.
But SPEAKING of Stardew Valley, man this game wants to be Stardew Valley so hard. Taking inspiration from a source is one thing, and I don't wanna accuse the devs of anything as serious as plagiarism here but, like...the stuff this game takes from Stardew Valley is really hard to ignore. I'm not just talking mechanics; having romanceable NPCs who you give gifts to and go on dates with is one thing, but I'm saying this game has the exact same relationship mechanics as Stardew Valley down to a T. NPCs have rooms you can't enter until you're close enough with them, you get to talk with them a limited amount of times a day and give them gifts a limited amount of times a week - it works exactly the same to the point where this game even uses the same fuckin' UI elements. Like, the same "8 hearts in a row" thing, the same menus, it literally just works and operates the exact same way as Stardew Valley by every conceivable metric. Great artists steal, yes, but usually they innovate in some small way, they include some kind of small variation on the thing they're "taking inspiration" from and just don't lift them wholesale from said thing. It's really egregious and particularly frustrating because these are clearly competent devs with some original ideas. They're better than this and I hate how much we excuse artists just copying eachother so flagrantly by saying stuff like "all great artists steal" and "everything is inspired" etc. because that doesn't excuse such blatant imitation imo.
To a lesser extent, this game then also does the exact same thing with Slay the Spire, its card-battling mechanics are heavily inspired by it, taking mechanics and keywords from StS entirely and operating with the same "3 energy" system. There's at least a bit more innovation on the formula here, but it's still pretty blatant. Again, these are competent devs, they pull it off reasonably well and it's surprising how well they manage to make these styles gel together - but you gotta dock points for originality, man.
And even then, these styles only gel well together for so long! Moonstone's Island main objective is simply to make it through an in-game year. Well I'm mid-Fall (the 3rd of 4 seasons, 20+ hours in) and I feel like I have well and truly run out of things to do and it has all just become boring for me. The fishing is grindy and tedious, the farming is simplistic and super unnecessary, the dialogue, writing and characters are nothing to write home about. This isn't a bad game, but it feels a lot worse than it is because of what a time sink it is, how much it asks you to commit to a game that is ultimately a bit barebones in content, and doesn't have enough in it to make a year-long in-game playthrough feel worth it.
These devs could make some really good stuff, but I'd implore them to learn from this game. Just lifting mechanics and UI elements from other games isn't good enough. It isn't "taking inspiration", when it's done this blatantly, it just speaks to a lack of imagination. This game was fun and charming for a bit, and then playing it just became a chore.