Moonstone Island (2023) [PC]

That’s what alchemists do. They show that, when we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too.

-Paulo Coelho

Let me ask you a few questions real quick.

Do you like farming and life sims like Stardew Valley?

How about monster collecting games like Pokémon?

Do you enjoy card-based combat like Slay the Spire?

If you answered yes to all three of these, then my friend, have I got a game for you. Allow me to introduce you to Moonstone Island.

A labor of love by indie team Studio Supersoft, Moonstone Island is a strange amalgam of many different gameplay styles and genres. What gamer among us hasn’t said, “It’d be fun to play a game that’s X mixed with Y?” Sometimes, we get what we ask for, and sometimes, it’s not exactly up to par. Some flavors just don’t mix, after all, and sometimes the devs just don’t quite get it right even if they do. However, for all the elements Studio Supersoft has included in their flagship game, they’ve made a genuinely cohesive game where everything works together without being overwhelming.

The 8-bit Review

Visuals: 9/10

The devs at Studio Supersoft clearly put a lot of time and care into the look and atmosphere of Moonstone Island. It’s a bright, cheery game, filled with colors so that even the gray seems to pop. No two elements look the same, either. No recoloring a sprite and calling it a different spirit here, though there are recolors in the rare “Holographic” forms. Various biomes and the four seasons also give some variety to the visuals. All in all, it’s a beautiful game that you’ll be happy to spend hours looking at.

Audio: 8/10

A visually bright and cheerful game needs equally bright and cheerful music and sounds, and Moonstone Island supplies. The daytime music is airy and upbeat, the hope of a sunny day. Rainy day music, on the other hand, is almost nonexistent, letting you hear the patter of rain on the grass and your feet on the cobblestones and the twitter of birdsong. The dungeons are windy and mysterious, setting the tone for these strange subterranean areas. Even the combat music is lighthearted, letting you know this isn’t serious, it’s okay if you lose. It’s all music and sounds you won’t get tired of listening to, exactly what games should aim for.

Gameplay: 7/10

You can probably guess from the initial questions I asked, but there is a LOT to the gameplay. Each element has its place and purpose, but how well do they work compared to their predecessors? Let’s take a look at them one at a time.

Creature Collecting

As an avid Pokémon player from the Red/Blue generation, this is the big one for me. First off, like the Pokémon games, you start off with one of three spirits that your father has collected for you, each a different element. Your first choice is important. There’s a strength chart, after all. Do you go for the electric Capacibee, the earth Anklyo, or the fire Sheemp? Pick whichever one you want, none of them provide a definitive leg up over the early game monsters.

Once you’ve picked your starter, it’s time to start taming. The Spirits you can capture wander on the overworld, waiting to get into a fight. In combat, you can toss certain flowers at the Spirits you want. Reach a high enough level of trust with the flowers, and they may just join your party. At first, you can only hold three Spirits in the medallion your parents gave you. Eventually, you unlock the Spirit Barn, where you can store more Spirits and hatch eggs. A recent update gave players the ability to store even more spirits at the local science center, so feel free to recruit to your heart’s content.

Additionally, each Spirit that you recruit isn’t a cookie cutter variety of the same type. Some of them have stat boosts right out the gate, giving them more health, attack, defense, or speed. While there’s only around 70 types of spirits in the game, the largest Spirit Barn can hold 240, giving you space not only for your Holo Spirits, but for the different stat boosts and card combos as well. While only three can fight with you, you can pick whatever variety of abilities and stats you want to match the fight you’re facing.

A final minor note, kudos to the devs for not giving their creatures a “-mon” name. Sure, “Spirits” isn’t exactly original, but nothing says “Poké-copycat” like slapping “-mon” onto your critters. It’s always been a pet peeve of mine, so I appreciate Moonstone Island going in a different direction.

Farming and Life Sim

In some ways, Moonstone Island goes above and beyond for the sim elements, and in other ways, it feels tacked on. For example, the crafting elements are rich beyond belief. With all the different crafting stations, there’s nearly 250 items you can make, from potions (you ARE an alchemist, after all) to decorations to magical items. For planting, there’s fourteen crops in each season that all give different effects and stat boosts. It’s worth it to try and collect and grow them all. Improve your gear, expand your house, build up your skill tree, and decorate however you like. The world is your oyster.

When it comes to building relationships with townsfolk, though, the game falls a little flat. Moonstone Island is not a large community. Only ten other people live there, not counting the Magic Man and his wandering chicken hut. Everyone’s romanceable, so no one has any connections with each other beyond friendship. They all look young too, even if dialogue suggests they’re older. It lacks the feeling of a town that’s been established for a while. Perhaps it hasn’t, but it doesn’t feel like it’s a growing community either. No children, no elderly, no families. It’s just here. There’s nothing wrong with the characters, but it feels like the town is there because it must be for the game to work.

Card game

This is the one element I’m not able to easily compare to the others in the genre. I enjoy watching people play things like Slay the Spire or Monster Train, but I rarely pick them up myself. I’m not much of a strategist or deck builder. That said, the card combat system generally works for me. It’s a simple setup: each monster has their own deck, and as they level up, you get more cards of your choice. The three spirits you bring into battle provide their specific decks in combat. With certain items, you can also upgrade cards for more oomph, add more cards to a Spirit’s deck, or remove a card that isn’t working for you.

Once you start a fight, you get three energy points to use per turn, but can get more through certain Spirit types and their cards. Each card costs a certain number of points to use. The more powerful the card, the more energy it takes. If one of your spirits is stunned or KOed, their cards can’t be used, but will still be pulled, so try to keep everyone standing.

All told, even someone like me with little card battler experience can easily pick up the basic gameplay system, even if the nuances and tactics are a bit beyond my capabilities.

Narrative: 7/10

If you’ve seen Kiki’s Delivery Service, you’re familiar with the story. You, little alchemist, are off on an adventure to make it on your own. Your parents see you off to find your own sky island community. On a late, windy night, you crash into the outskirts of Moonstone Island. Luckily for you, you crashed on inhabited lands, and they don’t have a resident alchemist. Great! Objective one completed! Now all you have to do is survive for a year. There’s Spirits to tame, four temples to conquer, and a strange man in a walking house wants you to collect mirror shards he hid in a bunch of dungeons.

Like other life sims, for me, the story of Moonstone Island takes a backseat to the other major elements, especially the simple act of exploring the world. With a hundred islands and thirty dungeons, all filled with Spirits and treasures to collect, I didn’t find myself spending too much time with the characters. Perhaps a side effect of playing more Pokemon than farming sims. In any case, there is a story in Moonstone Island, but it didn’t take center stage for me.

Challenge: 8/10

For all of its elements, the game finds a good balance in the difficulty. Since you can freely roam the skies with your vehicle of choice (be it balloon, broom, or glider, or good old fashioned walking on pathways you can build anywhere), it’s easy to find yourself on an island with Spirits higher than your Spirits’ level. This is not a game where you can coast through a higher level encounter, either, so take care while exploring. I’ve had several times so far where I got cocky and accepted defeat for my hubris. It never felt unfair, though. My defeats are earned.

Replayability: 10/10

There’s no question about the replayability of Moonstone Island. This is a game you’ll be able to come back to again and again. You’ve got a wide variety of Spirits to tame, and with a party of three, you can mix and match to try new moves and new spirits. Challenge yourself with a difficult playthrough of some kind akin to Nuzlocke runs if you like, or take it easy. Plus, each new game is procedurally generated on start. The maps are all mixed up, so no two playthroughs will ever be the same. If you wanted to, you could play only this game for the rest of your life and never experience it the same way twice.

Uniqueness: 10/10

Simply put, there’s nothing quite like this out there. It’s taken elements from a large variety of beloved genres that by all rights probably shouldn’t work so well together. Each element has a long and storied history in gaming. We know they all work on their own, but combining them seems risky at best, and a monumental task. The success of Moonstone Island in putting them all together is nothing short of unbelievable skill from a talented team.

Personal: 8/10

I wouldn’t call Moonstone Island my game of the year, but I have a deep respect for the developers for making the whole game work. As I said, it’s a gamble whether the “X plus Y” game you’ve wanted will actually be good. It takes a great understanding of how all the individual elements work to be able to combine them. There’s a reason I called it a labor of love. You can tell Studio Supersoft loves the game, the world, and the inspirational genres. They’re also continuing to update with quality of life changes that keep making the game better. I look forward to seeing what they do next, both in Moonstone Island, and their next game.

Special thanks to Raw Fury and Studio Supersoft for providing us with a copy of this game for this critique.

Aggregate score: 8.3

Maggie Maxwell spends most of her days buried in her fiction writing, only coming up for air to dive into the escapism of video games, cartoons, or movies. She can usually be found on Twitter as @wanderingquille and @MaxNChachi or streaming on Twitch with her husband, also as MaxNChachi.