Ever since pleasant Japanese hack n’ slash/storekeeping sim hybrid Recettear proved that such a factor was even potential, I’ve cherished the thought of taking part in as an RPG shopkeeper. Clearly they’re probably the most highly effective class round – how else do you get a number of god-slaying swords in inventory? Today one more sport on this small but charming sub-genre was launched. In Moonlighter, you run your loved ones’s tools retailer by day, plunder the dungeons for loot and extra inventory by evening – It nearly makes working two jobs sound bearable.
As with Recettear, Moonlighter is a sport of two halves. By day you wander the village, shopping for and promoting gear as wanted and tending to the shop itself, stocking cabinets and attempting to show as a lot revenue as potential. Each villager has their listing of likes, dislikes and particular gadgets they wish to see stocked, so chattering to the locals helps. By evening, the sport turns right into a Zelda-meets-roguelike procedurally generated dungeon crawl. Fight bosses, unlock new dungeon areas, seize loot to promote to the locals or improve your self with.
Unlike Recettear, the place the dungeons solely turned the main target of the sport within the second main story arc, the dungeon crawling in Moonlighter is much more concerned and makes up the lion’s share of the sport. Rather than blaze by means of enemies at a thousand miles an hour, you’ve acquired to be a bit extra methodical in fight, and do numerous cautious choosing and selecting of what you loot to fill your backpack with. You can solely haul a lot again out with you after a dungeon run, so that you’ve additionally acquired to weigh up what you herald as tools for your self to deliver into the sector.
While I’m undecided if anybody at Fort RPS has had an opportunity to monkey round a bit with Moonlighter, response to the sport does appear broadly constructive, though it does have some gaps in its inventory, together with a scarcity of native mouse assist and restricted assist for gamepads outdoors of generic XInput units. No difficulty in the event you’ve acquired an Xbox controller handy, however might be an issue in any other case. Beyond that, there’s some studies of bugs and steadiness points, however past that folk appear proud of the sport.
Moonlighter is out now on Steam, GOG and Humble, priced at £15.49/$20.
