Moonlight Peaks offers a cozy demo done so incredibly right

Every so often, a game comes along that stops me in my tracks and grabs my attention in a special way. You know the meme of the couple walking down the street, and his head is turned as he looks at the other woman walking past? That’s me when it comes to these games. I become obsessed, and they live in my head rent-free. Moonlight Peaks is one of these games, and I will gladly admit that I’m more excited over this cozy vampire afterlife-sim than I have been for anything else in a very long time. 

Moonlight Peaks is a farm-sim with a vampiric twist, with permanent nighttime gameplay and witchy elements galore. From crops such as Mandrake and Wolfsbane, to spells that can speed up your crop growth and help with watering, those magical vibes are spread through everything you do. It feels different from any other farming sim I’ve played, and trust me, I’ve played a lot, so that’s actually a really impressive feat. 

The demo for Moonlight Peaks has been available to play for a while, and, thanks to a backlog the length of my arm and other things taking precedence, I’ve only just gotten around to playing it. Which is a shame and a relief in equal measure, because now I don’t want to play anything else, and I’m currently 16 hours deep in a demo that doesn’t even let you leave the farm. I’ve played through the available 30-day preview twice, decorated my farm, and even got my four-year-old on the cozy game bandwagon, but more on that later. 

It takes a lot for a cozy game to stand out

There are endless options for cozy games to play if you’re into the genre, but many of them come and go with very little fanfare. With so many developers trying to reach the lofty heights of success garnered by Stardew Valley, and most not quite measuring up, it can feel like you’re wading through an endless sea of mediocre titles. At first glance, Moonlight Peaks could easily get lost in that sea. But if you take a chance and dive in, you’ll find something truly special. 

It’s the perfect combination of familiar mechanics beloved by cozy gamers everywhere. It’s got the bug catching, tree shaking, and fishing mechanics from Animal Crossing, as well as the farming mechanics of Stardew Valley. The graphics are reminiscent of Animal Crossing, too, but they lean towards the more dark and gothic side of aesthetics. 

Honestly, and I’m entirely aware that this is a very personal preference, but that dark and gloomy aesthetic is what really grabs me. I was what you may call a stereotypical goth and/or emo teenager, holed up in my room reading about vampires, werewolves, magic, and other depressing subject matter (not Twilight, before you even think it. You’d think it would be right up my Alley but… No. Just no). So, when my love of farming sims and my inner emo child are so brilliantly combined in Moonlight Peaks? Count me in. 

The demo is limited, but it doesn’t matter

The demo of Moonlight Peaks limits you to your farm, like a prisoner. It’s probably fair, considering you’re a random stranger who just showed up out of nowhere with zero explanation. Honestly, I can kind of respect the authenticity of that. Maybe the Mayor is looking into my background and making sure I’m not a deranged psycho. Good for him. 

Anyway… 

So you’re stuck on the farm, which you’d think would feel claustrophobic, but it never does. There’s so much to do, between clearing up the mess that the place is in when you arrive, setting up your farm, and decorating to your heart’s content. You’ll easily find yourself lost in the joy of making the place your own, and the nights tick away almost without notice. You can craft, make Potions, sell items in ‘Chester’ (you’re questionably sentient selling box), and purchase items from Yabbis, the giant multi-eyed frog on the pier. 

You start the demo with a full collection of sturdy tools, which is unlikely to be how the full game sends you out into the world. I’ve played a lot of farming sims in my time, good and bad, and all of them share one commonality – your first tools are always lackluster, and you need to upgrade them as you go. Sturdy doesn’t seem like a realistic starting point. Where do you go from there? Indestructible? 

Some quests feature as part of the demo, all of which require you to grow different types of crops and hand them off to Yabbis. They’re not too difficult to complete, but they do give you purpose, which is much appreciated. Some demos just throw you in with no aims, and those are the ones that rapidly lose my attention. Having something to strive towards keeps me coming back. 

How Moonlight Peaks became family bonding time

Around day 6 of the demo, my four-year-old daughter happened to see me playing. As you might expect, she immediately decided that she wanted to play with me, and being an epically cool mom, I conceded. I thought it would be short-lived, ending with her inevitable frustration when she couldn’t figure something out on her own. That’s how our gaming sessions usually end up. Apparently, Moonlight Peaks has proved to be the exception to this long-held rule of thumb. 

Days later, she still wants to play it whenever she can. For the most part, we’ve collaborated on the farm and worked together to get all of the jobs done. She has her own little garden on one side of the farm, while I have my cropland on the other side. I water my plants, she waters hers, and then she lives out the rest of each night foraging, fishing, and digging holes that I then have to go around and fill in before we go to sleep. 

She has, without warning, handed over all of our hard-earned money to Yabbis in return for various floral arrangements, which was something of a low point. She spent a very long time fishing, giggling to herself and quietly whispering “here, fishy fishy”, which was honestly a little creepy while somehow managing to be adorable in equal measure. She’s also become best friends with the various critters that roam the farm – she’s never too busy to pet them. 

We’ve also played together in local co-op, with me taking up the mantle as Hellkitten, the three-eyed farm cat. Hellkitten can’t do much outside of running around and jumping, pushing items along the ground, and meowing. In short, it’s a cat, but being in the game together is certainly something that helped with the bonding experience, even if I did prove to be almost entirely useless outside of making her follow me to where we needed to go. 

The demo isn’t perfect, but it’s a sign of good things to come

I could wax lyrical about how much I adore Moonlight Peaks and have high hopes for the full release when it comes at some point in 2026, but I would be doing myself a disservice if I allowed anyone reading to believe it’s the perfect demo. Nothing is perfect, and there are some things I’ve noticed while playing. They are, however, mildly irritating at best:

• The option to change the roof color of the house is there, but you can’t use it
• Items gathered from the drying rack mysteriously vanish into the cosmos
• Fishing noises are extraordinarily loud, but only sporadically
• Hellkitten has a talent for getting in the way when you’re trying to water crops

None of the things I mentioned are enough to truly cause an issue. Sure, losing crops to the drying rack demon is annoying, but crops in Herb Gardens grow within 2-3 days anyway, so it’s no big deal. Hellkitten runs away if it gets wet (yes, I feel guilty, but the cat doesn’t hold a grudge, so it’s fine), and the roof color doesn’t exactly matter in the grand scheme of things. The fishing noise issue is the most annoying, with no option to change audio settings, but there isn’t really any need to fish outside of the fourth quest anyway, so that’s easily dealt with.

There is a very long list of characters that will appear in the full release of Moonlight Peaks, and we meet two of them as part of the demo. There’s a town to explore, and a whole host of other features that players haven’t yet had the chance to experience. If this is just the demo, then there are buckets of potential when it comes to the full release, and I have high hopes that Little Chicken can deliver on them, judging from what we’ve already got.