Despite its standard difficulty being called “hard” (and hardest being “very hard”), it isn’t excessively challenging. With four main areas and one final dungeon, my progress was only diverted to deal with my obsessive trips back to town to sell a pack full of loot to buy better weapons to fly through the dungeons faster. Moonlighter is, as far as roguelikes go, a quick jaunt. There’s a sense of pride in clearing half my inventory with intelligent use of curses, and losing a well-planned layout is more of a tragedy than the lost profit. Other curses destroy adjacent items or turn them into a different artefact entirely. One item curse sends an item adjacent to the cursed one back to the shop immediately after being placed. On top of the usual inventory Tetris are the many item curses which dictate where in the bag they must be placed or effects they have on the items around them. With limited space in my bag, prioritizing which items are worth holding on to and bringing back to the shop is key. One of Moonlighter’s best systems is one that I initially wrote off as a gimmick: its inventory management. Discovering which items are most valuable entices me to hunt down precisely the monsters that drop them and adds higher stakes to properly managing my inventory while in the dungeon. The profit earned is a more enticing reward than ‘winning’ the interaction. The most satisfying moment is when, after backing down my price several times, a customer finally gives a good reaction and walks to the register. After finding an acceptable rate, I didn’t have much incentive to ever change it, typically selling each of my items at their most recent purchase price. My time was best spent pricing high and backing down until customers were willing to buy. I occasionally have to sprint out from behind the counter to waylay a shoplifter by slide tackling them before they can make off with my goods. As the short day changes from morning to night, I run about adjusting prices to customers’ taste, restocking, and standing at the register to press a button accepting each villager’s purchase. Villagers react to each item they examine, hinting whether the price is fair or outlandish. Customers come and go, examining the merchandise for fair prices. In the morning, I put my hard-earned haul on display and set the prices for each item before opening for the day. Running the shop is not so tedious as a chore but not quite demanding enough to pose a challenge. The depth and variety of combat upgrades are modest, another earnest but cursory exploration of dungeon-crawling. A retailer, hawker, and banker make up the rest of the possible Rynoka main square. The witch sells gear enchantments and consumable potions. The blacksmith upgrades weapons and armor with two possible upgrade paths for each item. One of Moonlighter’s best systems is one that I initially wrote off as a gimmick: its inventory management.īack in town, Will has the option to invest gold into Rynoka to bring various merchants in. The combat is all about moving around the room efficiently, easier to accomplish with analog sticks than keys in my opinion, and I get a flash of pride any time I manage to roll and dance circles around monsters without taking any damage. Moonlighter has keyboard support but recommends using a controller, a suggestion that I’ll echo for the sake of precision. A combination of ranged and melee enemies in a room means a bit more rolling or darting behind rocks and obstacles to dispatch sword-wielders first. I alternate between rolling away from attacks and darting in to poke an enemy to death with my spear. Each room takes a quick second of evaluation to determine who should be taken out first.

I say: You do you, Will! Live your passion and don’t let any old guy stuck in his ways tell you that you have to work in customer service the rest of your life!Ĭombat itself is fast but not frantic. Some town elder named Zenon predictably cautions Will against his heroic dreams, encouraging him to keep his nose down and make a living. Will, the protagonist and proprietor of Moonlighter, spends days tending his shop and nights exploring the town’s procedurally generated dungeons. Moonlighter is the unlikely intersection between roguelite dungeon crawler and shop simulation that many will recognize as inspired by Recettear, the 2010 indie game from Japan that originally popularized the combination. The permissive attitude fits with Moonlighter’s (relatively) short completion time, making for a quick dip into the roguelike genre rather than the usual swim through a riptide. Moonlighter uses this slap on the wrist style punishment often, admonishing me for my arrogance without making me feel too sorry for it. It’s a good profit for the current state of my shop.

I put those five remaining items on sale in my store the next morning, which nets me 20,000 gold.

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