Moonlighter

INTRO:

The first Legend of Zelda really inspired a lot of indie games. For one, the first Binding of Isaac showed that the classic’s room-by-room gameplay can be used as the base of any gameplay formula. A lot of games have since tried to innovate on this, for better or worse.

Unfortunately, Moonlighter teeters into the “worse” category, with an entire segment of the gameplay being dedicated to a grind for numbers.

PREMISE:

The story seems quite promising. The game is set in a presumably fantastical world, but one that also has technology so advanced that it is indistinguishable from magic.

Rynoka is a town in such a world. Rynoka’s only claim of significance is that it is situated next to otherworldly dungeons. The town was originally built up to service the merchants who seek riches from the dungeons and the heroes who seek glory from them.

However, it has fallen on lean times. The dungeons had become rather dangerous, inflicting considerable casualties on those who delve into it. Where before it had spat out fools who are exhausted or near-dead, there had been those who did not return at all.

Thus, most of the dungeons had their entrances sealed, leaving only one that is still considered “safe” for merchants. The so-called heroes left, no longer seeing the challenge from the remaining dungeon. Fewer people would be harmed, but Rynoka’s economy is in the doldrums.

The only local merchant shop remaining is the eponymous Moonlighter. Will, the protagonist, is its sole proprietor. He has an obsession with the dungeons that had claimed so much from whatever and whomever he knew and knows. This is to the frustration of Zenon, a former merchant who was a friend of Will’s grandfather.

After yet one more botched dive into the dungeons, Zenon decided to give Will another reminder of how to be a proper merchant and make good use of his resources. Incidentally, this is when the player takes over Will.

If the player wishes to know more about the backstory and the rest of the world in the background, the player can visit Zenon at the campfire just outside the dungeons. (Zenon has set up there to watch for anyone that the dungeon spits out.) He is not easy to spot though, especially if the player did not pay attention or remember the prologue well and thus does not know that his campfire is there.

Zenon does not tell everything right from the start though. Rather, further stories are unlocked as the player beats more of the dungeons.

There are other bits of lore that the player can get from the encyclopedia of stuff that has been found in the dungeons. However, ultimately, the stuff and their descriptions do not matter much because they have little contribution to the gameplay besides being vendor trash and crafting materials.

THE DUNGEONS – OVERVIEW:

In the narrative, these dungeons are peculiar, because their layouts are never stable due to the near-random action of what is best described as interdimensional glue. In fact, the entrances to the dungeons are portals that are filled with this glue. Every person that enters any portal is sent to a unique dungeon that has been cobbled together for him/her. Of course, these are the game’s excuses for having the dungeons procedurally generated for each run.

In the base package of the game, there are four main dungeons. The Golem dungeon is initially open. The others become open after the player has progressed through the game. Each dungeon has its own set of enemies and loot. This is of course the game’s excuse for having biomes. All of them share certain basic designs, which will be described shortly.

DUNGEON LAYOUTS:

Each of the four dungeons is composed of three floors, with one additional floor for the “guardian” of the dungeon. Each floor is in turn composed of over a dozen rooms, each in turn always in a rectangular shape that is wider along the horizontal axis than it is along the vertical axis.

There is no consistent arrangement to the rooms, other than the rooms that are close to the exit to the next floor. Indeed, the room with the exit may be very close to the room with the entrance to the current floor. Incidentally, the player can purchase a potion that points the way to the exit, but it can be very expensive.

MINI-MAP:

There is a mini-map in the user interface that the player can use to keep track of the exploration of the current floor. The mini-map can also be expanded to show the entirety of the floor.

The mini-map shows the rooms that the player character has gone to, together with any exits that the rooms have and any secrets that the player has found. However, the player is not shown the actual appearance of each room, not unlike the first Legend of Zelda.

This limitation can be argued as a tradition of sorts set by that Nintendo game, but that limitation was technological. Modern-day coding could have worked around this by giving the player a screenshot of any room that the player wants to examine through the map. At least the map shows the presence of any enemies that the player has left behind, but it does not show the composition of enemies.

Of course, there is the argument that the gameplay is too fast-paced for this kind of carefulness. Besides, when the player is viewing the map, the gameplay is not paused; this is of consequence to another gameplay element later.

MOVEMENT:

Despite the appearance that the rooms are composed of squares, characters move about in free-form 2D. They will always be bounded by the boundaries of the room of course, including any pits, chasms, debris or rocks. The doorways also have collision boxes, which can be a problem if the player character happens to be trying to stay close to the outer edges of the room.

COLLISION BOXES FOR NON-PRESENT DOORWAYS:

That said, there may be a problem with the collision boxes for doorways, specifically those that are not present. Presumably, by default, each room would have four doorways. Where there are fewer doors, the developers resorted to disabling the cavity in the hitboxes for the non-present doorways. However, the collision boxes for their frames remained.

This becomes a problem when the player is trying to circuit around the room to avoid enemies and hazards, especially in the rooms of the Forest and Tech dungeons. The player character can run up against the collision boxes for the non-present doors and be halted. This can cost the player a precious second that could have been spent getting away from pursuers.

ROLLING:

Will has long learned how to do combat rolls (presumably due to training from his mother). He rolls so well that he can roll over chasms and pits; his roll is practically a jump. Starting the roll at the right location before a chasm or pit can take a while to get used to, but practicing until the player gets it consistently right is doable.

During actual combat, his rolls grant him invincibility frames. These frames appear to come into effect as soon as the roll starts, but the trailing end of the animation does not appear to have the frames.

The main setback about rolling is that the player cannot change the direction of the roll in mid-roll. Perhaps this is an understandable limitation, but there had been other similar games that give the player more control, such as those for the jumping in UnderMine (which is unfinished at this time of writing).

FALLING INTO PITS OR CHASMS:

By default, Will would not just fall into a pit or chasm by moving into them from somewhere else. There are invisible barriers that prevent Will from doing so. However, if the player character attempts to move into them for about two seconds, the game removes the barriers and he will fall into them. Thus, this system prevents the player character from easily falling into them by accident, but does not prevent deliberate attempts by the player to have him do so.

These limitations do not apply to rolls. If the trailing end of Will’s rolling is over a pit or chasm, even partially, he falls into it.

NO BOMBS:

Despite the game’s visual similarity to the first Legend of Zelda, there are no bombs to be had, and no secret rooms to bomb into either. Indeed, Will does not have any access to explosives. The interdimensional glue also binds the walls together; according to the narrative, they could not be dug away.

One would wonder how the game would implement the gameplay element of secret rooms. Apparently, the game would do so in rather easy ways.

SPARKLES & SECRET ROOMS:

In the base game, rooms with secrets always have holes in the floors. One square in the holes has sparkles emitting from it. This is an indication that there is a secret room just below this room. If the player character falls into any of the holes, the player character is transported to the secret room.

The secret room may be one of three things. The most common is the room with some random goodies; this is the least entertaining. One of the other two is a room with an obelisk and a would-be chest, posing as a risk versus reward challenge. The other one is a room with a book propped up on a rocky pedestal, daring the player to take it. Both will be mentioned later when other gameplay elements that are associated with them are described.

All of the secret rooms have ropes hanging from the floors above them, presumably left behind by Will when he fell. These let the player leave, though not always in the case of the room with the obelisk. Again, this will be described later.

HAZARDS & OBSTACLES:

In addition to the enemies in the room, there may be hazards and obstacles that the player has to be concerned with. The most common of these are rocks and debris that block movement of ground-moving characters and block (most) ranged attacks. These impede both the player character and enemies.

Then, there are pits and chasms, which Will can fall into if the player unwittingly misjudged his roll. Will can also be forced into the pit by enemies or the recoils from certain attacks that he can perform. If this happens, Will merely falls back onto the same room, not unlike what happens in Bastion.

There are also squares with hazards; these are usually goo puddles on the ground. The effect of the goo puddles depend on the type of dungeon that they occur in.

GOO PUDDLES:

The goo puddles in the dungeons are described in the narrative as the side effect of the dimension-bending properties of the dungeons.

The Golem dungeon has pink goo, which slow down the player character. The Forest dungeon’s goo is poisonous. The Desert dungeon’s goo sets people on fire. The Tech dungeon’s goo electrocutes people. In the case of the goo that inflicts damage, they inflict damage over time; the Tech dungeon’s goo is the worst.

None of the goo has any effects on the dungeon denizens. This can seem lopsided at times.

HEALING POOL:

The healing pool always occurs one or two rooms away from the floor with the entrance to the next floor. This lets the player give Will some refreshment after clearing the room with the entrance but before going to the next floor.

The healing occurs at a very fast rate, which is fortunate considering the Wanderer’s looming presence. However, each pool has a limited number of hitpoints that it can provide. The pools in the later dungeons have more reserves, but are still ultimately limited. Nevertheless, they are handy for when the player wants to conserve potions.

THE WANDERER:

The Wanderer is a creature that haunts the dungeons. Anyone who lingers in a floor for too long will eventually attract its attention. The Wanderer is invulnerable, and can kill the player character in one hit. This is, of course, the game’s mechanism for moving the player along.

The Wanderer comes in about several minutes. Considering that time does not pause when the map or inventory screen is brought up, the player must make decisions on where to go next or what to do with loot quickly. (Bringing up the main menu does pause the game though.) Moving into the next floor resets the timer.

Generally, the timer pauses when the player character is fighting mini-bosses (more on these later). However, if the Wanderer has been alerted, it will join the boss fight soon. The Wanderer will not appear in fights against the Guardians (more on these later too).

If the Wanderer has been alerted through having the timer run down, it will stop hounding the player character after he has moved to the next floor.

The secret room with a book on a pedestal poses a risk. Taking the book appears to have a small chance of immediately angering the Wanderer and starting its pursuit. It will even continue pursuing the player character into the next floor. Eventually, the player might have to either reach the final floor, or teleport out. (Leaving the dungeon, of course, resets the Wanderer.)

WEAPONS:

There are several types of weapons, all of whom that Will has been trained to use (presumably by his mother). Yet, for all his pre-existing skill, he starts with a “broom-spear” – which is really his broom. (Followers of indie games may recognize the reference to Anodyne’s protagonist.)

Soon after an embarrassing wipe-put, he was given a training sword and shield – a much better weapon. From here on, it is up to the player to decide what to arm him with. As is often the case in present-day games, the player character can only ever equip a limited number of weapons – two in this case.

There are not many weapon types. There are five, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Each weapon type has its own primary and secondary attacks. Knowing when to use either is important. This is especially so in the case of the secondary attacks, most of which require time to be charged.

There is the sword and shield, which is perhaps the most versatile because its secondary attack raises the shield. It slows Will down, but it renders him immune to almost any incoming attack from the front. However, he can only block several hits before he is staggered and pushed back, rendering him vulnerable for a couple of seconds. As for its primary attack, it is as one would expect from a sword in a Legend of Zelda-inspired game: a sweep that is several dozen degrees wide.

There is the spear. The spear’s primary attack is a forward thrust, with a narrow hitbox. It can hit multiple enemies in a row, something that can be done if the player can lure enemies about so that they come in a conga line. As for its secondary attack, it is a forward charge that renders Will invulnerable while he is charging. He also passes through all enemies, but will be stopped by obstacles.

Then, there is the big sword, simply named as such. The big sword is slow to swing, but has a wide sweep and inflicts more damage than other weapon types of the same grade (more on grades later). Its charged attack is an even more powerful swing.

Next, there are gloves. Instead of being a piece of armor, these gloves have spurs or other things that make them close combat implements that are not fit for holding any weapon. Thus, Will be using them to punch enemies. The secondary attack has him doing a charging punch.

Finally, there is the bow. In the base game, this is Will’s only ranged weapon. The secondary attack has him nocking the bow for full-draw, doing more damage. Indeed, it is expected that players who want a more versatile weapon loadout would likely bring the bow along.

WEAPON LINES & DISAPPOINTMENT:

The weapons are further differentiated into series. There is the regular series, which does the most damage but has no other properties. Understandably, there would be players that stick to these, if only because of their damage output.

The other series that is available in a regular playthrough is the “elemental” series. Each tier of this series inflicts a secondary effect upon each hit. This might seem great, but this happens on an RNG roll. Charged attacks has a higher chance of this happening.

More importantly, each tier does a different effect entirely. Weapon upgrades are needed to maintain competitiveness in terms of damage output, but trading for a different secondary effect makes the elemental series a hard sell.

CRAFTING AND UPGRADING:

Will only begins with the training sword and broom-spear. The player needs to craft the other weapons, as well as his armor. To do so, the player needs to collect loot from the dungeons.

Incidentally, the first grade of weapons and armor can be crafted using materials dropped by the denizens of the Golem dungeon, along with some of the more common crafting materials obtained from chests.

However, the upgrades require materials that are rarer. The gold costs also ramp up tremendously, though reaching the amounts needed is actually a lot easier than one would think.

Ultimately though, it is the player’s skill that would win the day, and not the gear. Still, there is the matter of not having high enough damage output that taking down enemies takes a long time, thus risking the arrival of the Wanderer. Therefore, the player should strive to go for upgrades anyway.

GRADES ACCORDING TO DUNGEON TYPES:

Due to their crafting requirements, the lowest and second-lowest grades of gear are associated with the Golem dungeon. The next grade is associated with the Forest dungeon, which is unlocked later, and so on. This is worth keeping in mind because the prices of the crafting are indirectly tied to the prices of the loot from their associated dungeons. There will be more elaboration on this later.

POTIONS:

There are not many types of potions to consume. There are, of course, healing potions. Like the weapons and armor, the healing potions are graded according to the dungeons that they are associated with. This is just as well, because their main ingredients are the remains of the slimes that are native to the dungeons.

Will can equip one stack of potions and only use these in battle. The player is prevented from accessing the inventory screen in order to replace the stack during combat. Therefore, the player will want to update the types of potions that are used, preferably to suit the amount of HPs that Will has.

However, there is a trick to replenishing potions during a fight, though it requires very specific circumstances. Certain enemies can knock items out of the player character's inventory, meaning that stacks of spare potions of the same type can be ejected. These can be collected to automatically refill the current stack. Still, the player should not expect to be able to do this often.

GOLD:

Gold is, of course, the currency resource in the gameplay. Peculiarly, none of the dungeons have any gold coins lying about, not even as loot. (There are golden wires in the Tech dungeon, but they do not count as currencies – they are probably more valuable in their wire form.)

Rather, gold is obtained from selling loot to customers or fulfilling requests (more on these later). In other words, gold is only ever obtained by performing the other major portion of the gameplay in Moonlighter: stocking and tending to the shop.

Gold is spent on upgrades for the shop or to bring in other businesses into the town. Gold is also the payment for the services of the other businesses.

MASSIVE INFLATION OF PRICES:

One of the distressing gameplay designs in Moonlighter is the rapidly escalating prices of things that can be purchased with gold. For example, weapon upgrades jump very quickly in costs.

Such designs have actually been implemented in tandem with the similarly escalating values of the goods that can obtained as loot from the dungeons. For example, the loot of a certain rarity in the next dungeon to be unlocked has a far higher price than that for loot of the same rarity in the previous dungeon.

The escalating values of the goods also mean that it is easier to get the money for upgrades for gear of lower rank, assuming that the player has already collected the materials for them. Of course, this means that the player has to risk higher-tier dungeons with under-levelled gear, but that would not be a problem for a skilled and meticulous player.

LOOTING SMART:

Experienced and/or observant players would eventually learn to be smarter about what loot to collect, in order to minimize waste of time and to optimize the would-be yields from each run.

Firstly, the player might want to keep an eye out for secret rooms. These usually have high-value items, such as the books about each dungeon. Secondly, the player will want to look for chests, because these contain high-value crafting materials. Thirdly, the player will want to avoid fighting any enemy if it is possible to simply pass by them to the next room. Besides, most of them yield materials that are common or of middling rarity.

STILL A GRIND:

This article has described ways to be more efficient in collecting loot from each run. Unfortunately, even if the player had been smart and skilled about doing so, the gameplay still involves grinding.

Of course, it would take a prudent player only one run to gather the materials necessary for a big sale. Still, this entails a lot of inventory management, and the player will likely have to dodge the Wanderer while doing so. Such a skilled player is simply trading time spent for more stress and tediousness.

STUN:

Some weapons can inflict the Stun de-buff on enemies when they are hit. This does not cancel their animations, but it does pause them. This can give the player some time to get away. However, in the base game package, only the magical weapons that are specifically imbued with Stun effects can do so.

DAMAGE OVER TIME DE-BUFFS:

The other de-buffs are underwhelming; they are practically damage-over-time effects. Poison does the least, fire a bit more and electricity does the most. Incidentally, the goo in the dungeons inflicts these kinds of de-buffs.

AMULETS:

“Amulets” are the catch-all term that is used to describe any piece of magical jewellery that the player may find in a dungeon. Most of them are actually rings rather than the usual necklaces or pendants that they tend to be in video games. (In actuality, amulets can be any piece of accoutrement that have been “charmed” or “enchanted” to do something.)

In the base game, an amulet usually grants some benefit while imparting a setback. For example, the Golem King amulet increases the health pool of the player character, but reduces his speed.

Unlike other items that can be equipped on Will, Amulets cannot be sold. The player can only ever have one of each type of amulet. Once the player has it, the player must find somewhere to stash it – or just drop it through inventory finagling, which will be described later.

ENEMY BEHAVIOURS - OVERVIEW:

There are too many types of enemies to conveniently categorize according to their capabilities. Even within the same type of dungeon, there can be considerable differences between the abilities of the denizens. Therefore, they are best described according to their behaviours instead.

CONTACT-DEPENDENT ENEMIES:

These enemies harm the player character upon contact. If they manage to catch up to the player character, multiples of such enemies can inflict a lot of damage.

Baby slimes are the most prominent examples of such enemies. They are consistent enemies across the many dungeons. Thanks to their small collision hitboxes, they can mass into considerable groups that can be very dangerous.

BIG SLIMES:

Among the enemies that the player would encounter in the dungeons, the big slimes are possibly the worst of them. This is because of their attack patterns.

When they are close enough to the player character, big slimes charge forward. If they connect, they trap the player character and prevent movement. If there are other enemies around, they are going to gang up on Will. There does not appear to be any consistent way to break out of being trapped by Big Slimes.

WIND-UP MELEES:

Some enemies have to wind-up their melee attacks, thus telegraphing their intent. There are some that are rather easy to deal with, because they attack where the player character was instead of where he is going. Some others are more difficult, because they direct their attacks towards where Will is and they are fast. An example of the difficult ones is the flying Graaf Generator, due to their fast dashes.

WIND-UP RANGED ATTACKS:

Some enemies have to charge up their ranged attacks. The actual attacks can vary, but most of them are directed at the player character. For example, one enemy in the Forest dungeon launches a spinning rotor made of blade-like leaves, which can change direction in mid-flight. For another example, one enemy in the Tech dungeon is practically a floating energy cannon, which has to charge up its beam attack.

TELEPORTERS:

Some enemies can teleport, like the sentient hand puppets in the Desert dungeon. They may pursue the player character, in which case they usually appear behind him. Otherwise, they put some distance between the player character, thus requiring the player to chase them.

FLYERS:

Flying enemies completely ignore obstacles and pits, expectedly. This can seem like an overwhelming advantage, especially if a room has flying enemies only. However, in rooms that have ground-moving enemies too, the player can use obstacles to separate the flyers from them and deal with the flyers first.

LOCKDOWNS:

All doorways are open by default; there will not be any locked doors awaiting keys. However, when the player character enters a room, there is a chance that the doorways are sealed. This is a certainty if the room happens to have a loot chest or a mini-boss. To lift the lockdown, the player needs to defeat all enemies in the room. This is easier said than done of course, especially if the room has hazards.

Some of the chest-related lockdowns are crueller. The chest is sitting on top of inter-dimensional goo that it will slowly sink into; the player must defeat enemies as soon as possible to lift the lockdown and rescue the chest.

MINI-BOSSES:

Some time after the release of the game, the developers implemented mini-bosses. These are in the rooms with the exits to the next floor, for the first two floors of any dungeon. Expectedly, the mini-bosses are more powerful than regular denizens and have similar thematic visual designs, but more importantly, they have different attack patterns.

Granted, many of these attack patterns are not difficult to deal with. For example, the Hexa construct of the Desert dungeon has an attack that has it landing on the ground while firing a revolving laser; this can be defeated by rolling into the Hexa on its south facing when the laser passes by.

Some are more difficult due to their erratic patterns. For example, the Mavu Tree has an attack that has it flinging (hard) fruit in random directions. There is no clear way to predict where the fruit would emerge from its sprite. The most that the player could do is have Will dodge them (or block them, if he has the sword and shield).

The only significant disappointment about the mini-bosses is that the second floor of any of the four dungeons has a “corrupted” version of those on the first floors. These are merely tougher and have slightly more complicated versions of the attack patterns that the regular mini-bosses have.

GUARDIANS:

The Guardians are the main bosses of the dungeons. They are expectedly powerful and tough creatures. Their main weakness is their huge size, and thus huge hitboxes; they are indeed very easy to hit.

All of them have attack patterns that they repeat, so the player can eventually learn to respond to them in the most efficient way. However, some of them have troublesome behaviours. The most frustrating example is the Desert Guardian sending off its segments in completely different directions before bouncing off each other or walls. Indeed, the Desert Guardian would be the most difficult boss for most players due to its constant movement and erratic patterns.

Each Guardian holds a key to the final portal entrance, for reasons that are only explained at the end of the base game. Each one also has to be defeated for the next dungeon to be reopened. The Guardians also are also guarding some high-grade goodies in a large chest behind them, though these are just bonuses from having defeated them.

INVENTORY MANAGEMENT:

For better or worse, inventory management is a major part of the gameplay.

Firstly, there is the storage back at the shop, which is also Will’s home. The goods that are to be sold in the shop must come from the storage, if not directly from Will’s backpack after he returns from the dungeons. There is a limit to the storage; it can be upgraded, but there will still be a ceiling limit anyway. Considering that there are four dungeons, each with its own set of loot, there can be a lot more types of items than there are space in storage.

Secondly, items can only be organized into stacks of limited size. For example, low-grade loot can be sorted into stacks of ten. Higher-grade loot can only be sorted into stacks of up to five units. Any extra items have to be sorted into their own stacks, thus taking up even more space.

Thirdly, weapons, armor, gear and eggs occupy one square each. (There will be more on eggs later.) Weapons and armor fetch high prices, whereas gear and eggs are rare finds. Deliberating whether to free up space for recently found valuable items or not can be a tough decision.

Fourth, there are Will’s belt and backpack. The belt cannot have more than five stacks, but they are guaranteed to stay with Will no matter what.

Will’s backpack cannot carry more than fifteen stacks. Therefore, the player must be wise on what to bring home in order to optimize the run. If Will is knocked out, everything in the backpack is lost.

If the player happens to holding any items around with the selection cursor, exiting the inventory screen causes them to be dropped. This is an alternative way to leave them out of the inventory instead of using the merchant mirror on them (more on this later).

ITEM CURSES:

Some of the items in the chests are not ‘regular’, i.e. they cannot be stacked with items that are seemingly of the same type. These have “curses”, which are depicted with labels and described with tooltips that mention the specifics of their curses. These curses introduce complications to the looting. Specifically, the complications make packing them in the inventory grid to be not a straightforward matter.

Some curses just make looting frustrating. Chief of these is the curse that destroys items that are adjacent to them when the player character returns home. The player has to place these in the squares at the edges of the inventory grid to prevent them from taking effect. Another troublesome curse is the one that requires the item be stored at these squares. (Incidentally, the belt and backpack count as separate grids, with regards to these curses.)

Some curses are useful. These include curses that remove other curses, or those that send adjacent items to receptacle chests back home when their items are placed into the inventory.

These curses do not activate while the items are still in the chests. This is fortunate, because the inventory management would have been a lot more tedious if they did.

Some curses only take effect when the player returns to town with them. For example, there is a curse that changes a stack of adjacent items into the same item as the cursed one. (However, in the case of stacks with different maximum amounts, the game truncates the conversion at the lower of the two.)

For another example, there is a curse that obscures the nature of an item until it is returned home. If this item comes in a stack, bringing one unit of that stack actually creates a separate item with an obscuration curse. (This is something that the game does not inform the player about.)

CRAZY PETE:

Crazy Pete is the colleague of Zenon and Will’s grandfather, as established by a specific dialogue option with Zenon. (Without having read this dialogue, it might have been easy to misinterpret Pete as Will’s grandfather from the NPCs’ remarks about the similarities between Pete and Will.)

Unlike the other people who go into the dungeons, Pete wants to know about the origins and nature of the dungeons. Considering what has been described about the dungeons and their dangers, this is incredibly fool-hardy. Still, he has managed to glean a lot about the dungeons, including a way to somehow enter the fifth portal. He disappeared afterwards.

Still, he left behind camps and notes on his observations about the dungeons. It is through these notes that the first few players of the game learned about how the dungeons’ layouts, secrets, loot and denizens are generated, if they have not observed so already.

The camps do not have anything else that is worthwhile. This is perhaps the main disappointment about them.

OBELISK CHALLENGE:

One of the secret rooms has the obelisk and its challenge. Interacting with the obelisk locks the secret room and spawns in hostile creatures. The player must eliminate all creatures in order to have the obelisk spawn a chest with goodies.

Interestingly, the player can interact with the obelisk again, which causes it to upgrade the chest and lock it again. Then it repeats the process of summoning enemies.

Eventually, the chest can be upgraded to the highest grade, which give pink runes to the chest. Pink chests give the best loot and are one of only two sources of amulets, so the player will want to get them wherever there is an opportunity to do so. Of course, the player will want to monitor the amount of time spent doing so, lest the Wanderer arrives at a bad time.

EGGS & FAMILIARS:

Months after the launch of the game, the game received an update that introduce familiars.

Familiars are practically miniature versions of the enemies that the player would find in the dungeons. In fact, they have similar sprites, only made smaller. They do not exactly look cute either.

Anyway, the player gets familiars by defeating at least ten enemies of the same species/model as these familiars. The tenth one drops an “egg”. This may be a literal egg, but in the case of the creatures in the Desert and Tech dungeons, they look like capsules.

Either way, the player will want to return the egg to the town. It will be placed into the backyard of the Moonlighter. After about a few in-game days, it will hatch into the familiar. The player does not need to do anything else but wait. There is also no way to influence their upbringing.

As for the familiars, they are unflinchingly loyal to Will. They will even follow him into the final dungeon. They are also indestructible; enemies will not target them and they are not affected by anything harmful.

Some familiars can attack and damage enemies, but they do very little damage. Their main value is the benefit that they can impart to Will. For example, the Recharger familiar turns the corpses of enemies into potions. This is convenient, at least when exploring dungeons and not fighting bosses. Unfortunately, the occurrence of these benefits happens according to undisclosed RNG rolls, so the player should not rely on them too much.

The player can only have one familiar at a time. Therefore, the player will want to be wise about which to use. Returning to the example of the Recharger familiar, it would not be of much use in boss fights, especially those that do not spawn minions.

PENDANT:

The reason that Will could not equip any necklaces is because he already has one: a pendant that he has inherited from his (deceased) parents. This pendant allows him to leave almost any dungeon at almost any time – as long as he has the money to feed it. (This is the only indication that he might have been bringing gold into the dungeons, though the pendant could be getting the gold from somewhere else.)

The pendant has greater cost when the player character is in deeper floors, and exponentially higher costs in the later dungeons. Not unlike how crafting costs are tied to the escalating values of loot, these have been tied to the loot values. Obviously, if the player does not have enough gold, the pendant cannot be used.

The use of the pendant is not immediate. The player needs to hold down the control input to trigger it, though there are no means for enemies to interrupt its use. After it has been fully charged, the cost to use it will be paid and the player character will be sent back to town.

MERCHANT EMBLEM:

The so-called “merchant emblem” also feeds on money, but it happens to be more voracious than the pendant. The emblem also cannot be used during combat.

Using the emblem creates a portal that locks down the current room and creates a twin portal back at the town square, to the west of the shop. The presence of the portals appears to be reliably preserved in the game-save, which can be observed if the player has no issue with backing up and restoring game-saves.

The player does not need to use the portal immediately after it has been created in the dungeon. The player can mill about to collect some more loot before returning to town.

Returning to the dungeon afterwards returns the player to the same dungeon floor. As a bonus (due to a design oversight, perhaps), the entire map of the floor is revealed to the player, together with the locations of any rooms with chests. However, all enemies are respawned, including the mini-boss of the floor (if any). Any chests that had already been opened and looted earlier yields nothing; the game will note their looting in the game-save.

MERCHANT MIRROR:

The “merchant mirror” is another peculiar inter-dimensional relic that Will receives. The mirror can convert almost any item into gold, albeit at a fraction of its base value. The mirror can only be used during the dungeon.

It should be obvious that it is meant to lighten the player character’s load so that more valuable things that can be collected instead. Other than that, the player is using the mirror to gather enough gold to use either the emblem or the pendant to return home.

PASSAGE OF TIME:

Moving about in town or milling about outside the dungeons does not cause in-game time to pass. However, entering and then exiting the dungeons (for whatever reason and through whatever means) will forward time by half a day, e.g. daytime to night of the same day, or night of the previous day to the daytime of the next day.

Having Will go to sleep at the “Home” section at the back of the shop also advances time. Tending to the shop until the end of the shift also does that.

The passage of time is important to keep in mind because of several things. Firstly, the shop can only be opened for business during the day. Secondly, only two vendors are available during the night, and the options to bring the other vendors into town are only available during the day. Thirdly, the dungeons yield better loot during the night-time. (The better loot are often found in chests, so this also means that the player character would be locked into rooms more often during a night-time dive.)

Thus, this passage of time would funnel the player into tending the shop by the day, and dungeon-diving at night. By the way, Will does not need to actually sleep, which is amusing and convenient.

GAME-SAVES:

If it is not apparent already, this game is a rogue-lite. The player only ever has just one game-save for each playthrough, and it uses auto-saving. The update of the auto-save only happens at specific moments, and the game-saves would update to certain points. The game does not document when the updates occur and what is saved, so the player would have to make observations of his/her own.

After Will sleeps, the game-save updates to the point just after Will wakes up. If the player quits the game and continues the game-save, the player continues at the same time of the day on the same date as this point.

When Will dives into a dungeon, the game-save updates to the point just before Will enters the dungeon. If the player quits the game and continues the game-save, the player continues the playthrough at the same time of the day on the same date as before Will dove into the dungeon. His equipment will be exactly how the player set it before he dove into the dungeon.

After Will exits a dungeon, the game-save updates to the point after Will exited it. This means a failure will have advanced time and the player has wasted half a day.

After a work-day has ended (more on shop-keeping shortly), the game-save updates to just after the work-day has ended.

Whenever the player continues the game-save, Will always wakes up from his bed. He is considered to have slept, even if the player had not have him sleep prior to quitting the game in the previous play session. This is important to keep in mind after the player has upgraded the bed, because any benefits from his bed are only applied if he appears to be rising from bed.

No game-save update will ever happen within the dungeons. Continuing a game-save will never put the player character in a dungeon.

SHOP-KEEPING - OVERVIEW:

All of which that has been described thus far would not surprise a long-time follower of indie games, at least not in a pleasant way. The only thing worthy of note in the dungeon-delving is the inventory management, and even then, quite a lot of it is a chore due to the cumbersome curses.

Thus, the shop-keeping part of the gameplay would appear to be an innovation. Usually, the protagonist is selling vendor trash to vendors. The player does not exactly do this in this game.

Rather, the player sells vendor trash to travelling merchants, and second-hand equipment to adventurers.

Granted, there is an attempt to develop a system around this, like having different types of customers and upgrades to the shop’s interior that expands the player’s options. Unfortunately, the player would still be selling unwanted stuff to raise cash.

Going to the back of the shop to get more stock does not pause in-game time. However, checking the chests for stock does, which is convenient.

SLOWER DEFAULT MOVEMENT:

In his shop, Will is walking instead of running. This can be a problem, especially if the player is having Will restock the tables with stuff or having him go to the back of the shop for more things.

Of course, there is the argument that he is not running around because of decorum as a shopkeeper. Yet, such an argument would not explain his ability to do combat rolls in the shop anyway. The combat rolls are needed for one purpose that is described later, but the player is likely to just have Will roll about the place anyway if only because he rolls faster than he walks.

TABLES:

Whatever that the player intends to sell has to be placed on top of the tables. Each table can support one stack of items. There are four tables initially; upgrading the shop installs more.

Incidentally, the number of tables is a factor in the rate of sales happening. This is because customers will only purchase whatever that is on display; anything that is in storage cannot be sold.

The next thing that the player has to do after placing items on display is to set their prices. The ones that are not given prices are considered as invalid objects and will not be examined by customers.

SETTING PRICES:

Each type of goods actually has base prices. However, the player is not shown the base prices of any goods; the player has to guess them. Through the customers’ responses, the player should jigger the prices until the player gets the right price that can satisfy the customers.

Ostensibly, that is what the player should do. At this time of writing though, there are wikis for the game that provide convenient data.

Interacting with the tables and setting prices pauses in-game time. This is convenient, because this lets the player jigger prices just in time before customers examine the goods.

POPULARITY:

The popularity of an item is a factor of pricing and the customer’s response. The popularity of an item is “neutral” by default, i.e. there is no effect. The popularity of a type of goods is randomized each day, with considerable probability of it being neutral.

If it is not neutral, the player might want to adjust the price accordingly. Low popularity goods would have to be priced lower in order for them to sell, whereas high popularity goods should be priced higher for better profits.

Popularity does not have any effect whatsoever on whether a type of goods would be considered for purchase or not.

CUSTOMER RESPONSES:

When potential customers come in, they mill about before eventually going over to the goods. They examine the prices of the goods and make their responses according to a database that is not visible to the player.

There is an entry for each type of goods in this database. For each entry, there are price ranges for that type of goods. Each range in turn is associated with one of five reactions that the customers would have towards the price that the player has set for the type of goods. Every reaction is conveniently depicted with a face bubble showing their expressions, which then lead to what they would do.

The optimal responses are a smile (when the price is right), or a slight frown (when the price is slightly over the right one). In either case, they decide to purchase the object, which is what the player would like anyway.

One of the undesirable responses is the beaming smile with sparkling eyes. This means that the goods have been under-priced. They will buy it anyway, but the player has to make the sell at the non-optimal price. Obviously, this is the player’s cue to ramp up prices.

The other undesirable response is an expression of significant exasperation. This will not lead to a sale, but the customer’s enthusiasm to consider another purchase is not diminished significantly; the customer will still consider the player’s other offerings.

The definitely unwanted response is that of a fuming face. This happens if the offering is overpriced. This diminishes the customer’s eagerness to make a purchase, possibly even causing him/her to walk out immediately. It also appears to cause the popularity of an item to dip.

Since there are few, if any, benefits to be had from getting anything other than desired responses, the player will want to reach prices that evince desired responses as soon as possible. After all, any time that had been spent only to gain non-optimal sales is just wasted time. Again, at this time of writing, the player could just look at wikis and guides to know about the best prices.

SIMPLIFIED CUSTOMER ECONOMICS:

The customers may vary in their behaviours, but they have one thing in common: they always have enough money to buy whatever they want to buy. This can seem a bit silly to anyone who is aware of scarcity factors in economics. Furthermore, customers will only ever buy just one thing each, and if it is a stack of items, they will buy the entire stack.

TYPES OF CUSTOMERS:

Thus, there are not a lot of differences between the customers. Still, there are some, which are often depicted by the thought bubbles that conveniently appear over their heads when they enter the shop.

Those who do not have thought bubbles are regular customers who would buy anything except equipment and potions. The differences in their looks do not matter at all; they move at the same speed and have no particular preferences.

The ones who have thought bubbles with icons for gear are the so-called Heroes; they also happen to have very different sprites. They are interested in purchasing equipment and potions, and only these. Without access to a wiki, getting prices right for these items can be difficult, because there are not a lot of them that can be found as loot. (Crafting gear for sale is generally a loss-making plan, by the way.)

Then, there are rich customers, who have thought bubbles with an icon for a top-hatted moustachioed gentleman. Their purchases are random, but they will pay any price. Watching which item that such a customer would go to check out is something that the player might want to learn, specifically to rip off these rich people.

Occasionally, customers may give tips in addition to the payments. The player should not expect these to be reliable sources of additional income though, because they happen at the roll of RNGs.

THIEVES:

Some people who enter the shop do not intend to pay for anything. The game will mark them as thieves, but they cannot be dealt with until they have been caught red-handed.

After a thief has picked up an item, he/she will move at greater speed towards the door. This is the moment when the player would want Will to roll into the thief. This starts a comical brawl that lasts a couple of seconds, but one that Will always wins. The thief runs out, the item is returned to Will’s possession, and the player can put it back on the table.

After the player has upgraded the shop to its third tier, the player gains showcase boxes. These somehow increase the popularity of the item that is in the boxes (and the items of the same type that are on tables). Therefore, the player can price these goods higher. More importantly, the item that is in a showcase somehow cannot be stolen. (Customers can remove them from the showcases readily though.)

In practice, the thieves are just there to be hassles. There is no net positive reward for dealing with them.

WORK DAYS:

When the player opens the shop, the player is on a timer. In real time, the work-day for the shopkeeping has a duration of slightly more than five minutes, not counting pauses.

Therefore, the player will want to maximize the number of sales during the work-day, mainly to make sure that the shop’s storage does not get choked with surplus stock. Optimizing the number of sales means making sure that there are enough tables to catch the attention of incoming customers and restocking the tables after sales.

Here is a gameplay tip to save time spent on moving around: the sales counter (the counter with the cash register) can be operated from both sides.

CUSTOMER REQUESTS:

After having reached the second upgrade for the shop, the player can begin getting “customer requests”.

Some customers appear early in the day and go straight to the counter, specifically the side of the register that is not used to check out. Rather, this side is where the customer makes requests for specific items. However, they do not require these items immediately.

Alternatively, the customers may ask for the elimination and observation of specific dungeon denizens. These creatures drop research notes that the player character has to collect.

The customer wants the request done by a later date; the date will be marked on the in-game calendar. On that day, the customer returns, expecting to be given the requested items. The items are given to them through interaction with the other side of the counter, instead of the side where customers check out. Incidentally, this is the only gameplay feature where the in-game calendar is useful.

In practice, there is ultimately no good reason to partake in fulfilment of requests. Sure, the pay-offs are considerably more than the base price of the requested items, but the items requested are random and may be from earlier dungeons, in which case the pay-offs are not a lot.

VENDORS:

Will and the Moonlighter shop are there to sell stuff from the dungeons. They do not do anything else. Therefore, to diversify the services in the town, the player has to spend money to bring in other vendors.

Two of them are very much required: the blacksmith and the witch. The blacksmith provides the crafting and upgrading of equipment. The witch brews potions, with discounts given if the player also gives ingredients to her. She also enchants armor and weapons.

The other three vendors are optional; they also happen to have higher set-up costs. The retailer sells materials that the player has already found from the dungeons, with the exception of slime and magic crystals. (It is also worth noting that the retailer is technically a competitor to the Moonlighter.) The hawker sells furniture and décor for the shop, which alters its probabilities for tips from sales, the occurrence of thieves and such other matters that relate to shop-tending.

The banker is perhaps the least of the vendors, because his gameplay mechanism is dependent on RNG rolls. He is also not available every day. Rather, he is busy for most of the week. When he is available, the player gives him money for his “investment schemes”. In the next week, he informs the player whether the scheme has generated profit or incurred loss. The outcome is of course decided by an RNG roll.

There are two significant disappointments about the vendors. Firstly, they are underwhelming characters. For characters that have considerable official artwork that is dedicated to them, they have very few lines and contributions to the story. Secondly, they do not do much in terms of gameplay.

SHOP ASSISTANT:

A shop assistant can be hired after the shop has been upgraded three times. The NPC is meant to help run the shop for Will during the day while he goes to the dungeons. The NPC is guaranteed to sell anything that the player has stashed into a chest next to the NPC at prices that the player has last set. The NPC takes 30% of the proceeds. However, the shop assistant will not account for tips (which she presumably take in their entirety) or the fulfilment of requests.

The shop assistant is also there when Will is tending to the shop; she works pro bono in this case. However, she only helps to catch thieves and does nothing else.

NEW GAME PLUS:

After defeating the last enemy of the last dungeon, the player unlocks the New Game Plus mode. Everything essentially has higher numbers in this game mode, which can seem underwhelming. However, the player does gain access to “Pirate”-series weapons, which are more powerful than weapons of the regular series.

VISUAL DESIGNS:

The pixel-art of the game is the most obvious visual design that the player would notice from the get-go. This is, of course, nothing really new; plenty of indie games have gone this route. However, the graphics designers have included visual effects that have been seen in some of the prettier pixel-art games. There are changes to saturation to simulate lighting, layers of decals to simulate particle effects and such other flourishes to give the impression that the game was not cheaply made.

Then there is Will. Followers of indie games would recognize semblances of The Kid from Bastion and perhaps more importantly, Young from Anodyne. Of course, with Will entering the indie game scene, such visual designs for an indie game protagonist gets a little bit more worn.

(Will is of course one of those video game protagonists that do not make many expressions, even if the player wants him to. Indeed, if there had been any expressions, they are in the promotional material for the game.)

Although everything looks pixelated, there are enough details for the player to make out things like Will’s gear. More importantly, there are enough distinct frames to depict what actions that characters are doing. Indeed, just about every enemy telegraphs what he/it would do just before doing it. This is convenient, because it lets the player avoid attacks.

In addition to the telegraphs, there are a lot of particle effects to depict other things happening in combat. For example, some enemies emit particle effects, showing where they will attack.

If there are any visual designs that would disappoint, these are the designs for the many NPCs in the town. Most of them are just there for aesthetic purposes, showing the “changes” in the town of Rynoka as Will tromped through the dungeons. They may have different sprites, but they are all animated in the same way.

There is also the matter of the promotional blurb for the game. The blurb highlighted the act of “meeting” these NPCs, suggesting that they are more than just ancillary characters. Ultimately, they are just window dressing.

Last and perhaps least, there are detailed pieces of art for the portraits of the characters during (one-sided) conversations and the cutscenes. The style of the artwork is also seen in the promotional material. Some of the characters that are important to the story gets the artwork, but the vendors also get a considerable amount of artwork, even though they matter little to the story.

SOUND DESIGNS:

The first thing that the player hears is the music, which is the best sound design of the game. There are many tracks, each for a different occasion. There are also remixed versions of the one that plays during the scenes in the town, specifically for when the player character talks to the shopkeepers. As for the music itself, piano (or the electronic facsimile of it) is prominent in the tracks.

There are very few voice-overs, not even for grunts and groans; dialogue is presented with speech bubbles. There is some voice-over for the narrator, who is presumably Zenon, but these are sparse and only ever audible in the pre-rendered cutscenes.

The sound effects are mostly for the dungeon-delving part of the game; the only noises that the player would hear at the town are doors closing. As for the sound effects, they comprise of the usual sounds that can be readily associated with medieval fantastical settings, like swords swishing through the air, the impact of weapons on things, and, of course, the zings and warbles of magic. There are other things, thanks to the presence of sci-fi elements such as those in the Tech dungeon. Most of the sound effects are of significance to gameplay, because they are audio cues to what enemies intend to do.

CONCLUSION:

At this time of writing, the latest version of the game seems stable – which is a far cry from how the game was at launch, when there were many bugs that can damage playthroughs. Therefore, it is fortunate that the developers have put effort into making corrections.

Yet, they could not correct the fact that the gameplay is dependent on grinds. Of course, there is the matter of the game had received quite a lot of free content updates (as well as the aforementioned bug fixes). Yet, none of them addresses the issues with the core of the gameplay.

Moonlighter is strictly for those who have no issues with grinds. For anyone else, it is another one of those games where reaching a number is a frequent goal.