Disclosure notice: In the time since the publication of this article, Nintendo Life staffer Kate Gray has contributed writing to Moonstone Island. She has had no involvement in our coverage since joining the project, and we won't be reviewing the game.
Take the farming and house decorating of Stardew Valley, the dungeon crawling of Minish Cap, and combine it with RPG deckbuilding combat in a beautifully-rendered top-down pixel world, and you have Moonstone Island — a game that's very quickly shot up on our "ones to watch" list.
You are an alchemist-in-training, spending a year in the wilderness to master your arcane techniques, and to figure out how to restore Moonstone Island, and the town, to their former glory. You travel around by balloon, broom, and glider to access over 120 procedurally-generated sky islands, populated by monsters to fight and dungeons to explore. You can even set up your home on any one of the islands, in any one of the biomes!
Moonstone Island has a ton of the features that farming sim lovers crave: You can fall in love with locals, farm your own land, decorate your little house, and craft a number of recipes for potions to help you out on your journey, or furniture to adorn your house.
The thing that sets Moonstone Island apart from farm sims is its combat — you will be able to befriend wild spirits to fight alongside you in card-based battles, and you can adjust the deck as you go, upgrading and optimising along the way.
Moonstone Island hasn't been confirmed for a particular release date yet, other than "soon" — but it is planned for the Nintendo Switch!
You can also wishlist the game on Steam (which helps the devs get better visibility — and maybe a publisher!), and follow the game on Twitter for the latest updates.
Has Moonstone Island made its way onto your wishlist? Let us know in the comments!
Comments 27
Stardew Valley meets Slay the Spire? Or it is not about that?
They had me with the flying broom.
No eShop this is 2022 can we not have both options?????
Getting a bit of an Ever Oasis vibe, as well. That was an under appreciated 3DS masterpiece. Zelda plus a cute sim is a match made in heaven.
Wow I can’t wait to play this!! Wish list on steam? More like want meow!! 😍
I need another deckbuilding obsession like I need a hole in the head, but I'll be watching this. Looks like a lot of fun.
Very cute looking but I've never found a deck-building game I liked, so not sure about this one.
You have me at deck building!
This may be one of few card battle RPGs that I would enjoy. The others include DBZ: Legend of the Saiyans, Baten Kaitos, and Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories.
@abdias Sixty-nine percent of all indie games are ripoffs of either Stardew Valley or Slay the Spire, so it's about time that somebody combined them.
Oh man this looks sweet! Can't wait to cruise around on my lil broom! ~Nyoooooooom
Typical format. Compare said game to a Nintendo game. Fool your supporters then review the game poorly in the near future.
@Specter_of-the_OLED you must try Monster Train then. As early as this weekend if you credit card allows you. If you don't like it, sue me.
It looks great, but you lost me at deckbuilder :/
Pixel art, deck building, procedurally generated, female protagonist- it’s hitting almost all the trends. Only things missing are “-roidvania” or “rogue” suffixes or prefixes. Can’t wait to not buy yet another pixel-art top-down zelda-like deckbuilding local-coop-shopping micro-brewed organic-like visual-aural experience.
@kategray what’s deckbuilding? Haven’t heard of this genre
Classic Amiga game Moonstone on Switch?!? keeps reading headline Awwww.
I like what I see! I'll get this one!
Man it looks like that AND it has farming mechanics? Why does it have to have cards shoehorned in that’s brutal.
@FishyS Try Inscryption on Steam. One in a million kind of experience.
@abdias I hear good things about Monster Train. I just finished Inscryption and was blown away.
@ChakraStomps inscryption is more story based, while Monster Train has just a background story for an extremely satisfying game mechanic.
@GannonBanned games like Hearthstone, Magic: The Gathering, Slay The Spire and so on are strategy card games which allow you to build a "deck" to do battle with.
Some games (like the first two) have persistent decks, which is to say that you keep the deck between games; others (like Slay The Spire, Inscryption, and Dicey Dungeons) will make you start from scratch and "build" your deck as you go, out of options you'll get along the way.
I'm a fan of the roguelike builder — the second variety — because I like thinking on my feet
Wow very interesting, I'll be looking forward to hearing more.
@KateGray ohhhh like CARD decks lol - that makes sense, thank you!
@GannonBanned I can almost guarantee that someone, somewhere, has made a dad simulator that involves the other kind of deck-building
@KateGray that’s what I assumed at first - like putting together a nice yard or something banal and I was like “Zelda inspired? What?” So thanks for putting those missing pieces together haha
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