Moonlighter

If you like rogue like or dungeon runner games and are a little bit autistic like me (there is a lot of min maxing in both pricing and getting your loot out of the dungeon) then this game is amazing!
Running your own shop with loot that you fought for in the dungeon ticks all my boxes. 10/10 would recommend

Phenomenal indie game with a light difficulty progression. Excited to see where they develop the mechanics in the sequel.

while interesting for the first 10hrs, the game loop is boring as hell. Can't imagine much will change for ML2

Monsters Are Just Unsold Merchandise


Story: 7/10

The story isn’t the main focus of Moonlighter—it acts more as a background narrative. You play as Will, a 17-year-old orphan who collects artifacts and items from nearby dungeons to sell at his family’s shop, the Moonlighter. Despite warnings, Will sets out to collect four special keys to unlock a mysterious fifth door and uncover the secrets that lie beyond.


Gameplay: 10/10

Moonlighter is a roguelike game, complete with all the familiar elements of the genre. Combat is fun and fair, though sometimes punishing if you're unprepared. There are five main weapon types, and players can equip two at a time. Builds can vary thanks to different armor sets—some focused on mobility, others on tanking. There are also two amulet slots, which provide stat boosts or other helpful effects.

The game features a total of four dungeons (five if you include the DLC). Each dungeon contains two mini-bosses and one final boss. After each run, players return to the Moonlighter shop to sell their loot. You set the prices, and customers will react with one of four expressions based on how fair they think your pricing is.

You can upgrade your shop and construct additional buildings to help with crafting, enchanting, or other useful services. Game progression is satisfying, and acquiring materials for upgrades is relatively easy and rewarding.


Verdict: 10/10

This is a solid game. If you’re looking for a roguelike RPG where you can dive into dungeons, slay monsters, and run your own shop, Moonlighter is for you. It delivers all the essential roguelike elements with satisfying gameplay and fun boss fights. Can't wait for Moonlighter 2!

Has a great gameplay loop, but it's one of those games where if you don't play it for a while you lose interest in ever opening it again imo.

at the surface it looks very simple, but specially with the dlc it has a deep gameplay loop which will entertain you for hours.

combat due to the topdown screen can be a bit of a challenge and off-putting as diagonal combat is not possible. this was a negative in my book, but still enjoyed and managed to get 100% achievements

With the second game coming out, I wanted to beat the first one beforehand as I love the shop keeping element. I really liked the shop keeping. Finding the right price between ripping people off and accidentally selling expensive items for cheap is really fun. While the combat is fairly simple, there are many items to choose from so you'll surely be able to find the right style for you. I love the art style. A very pretty game. Very happy I went back to beat it, had a great time.

Fun game. Especially the dungeoning part and the boss fights with variety of weapons. Though it gets grindy towards the end. Unfortunately the shop gameplay is not as fun even though it's almost half of the game and inventory management system gets a little bit annoying after a while with moving the selection cursor all over the place trying to move items.

Despite all, it still presents a fun time, just a little bit rough around the edges that's all.

nice mix of shopkeeping and adventuring. You run a store during the day and explore dangerous dungeons at night to get items to sell. It's fun to discover prices and upgrade your shop and gear. The combat is okay, and going through dungeons can get a bit repetitive. But overall, it's a charming game with a cool idea that works well.

fun mix of old tv game graphics and 3d screen.

In terms of gameplay, Moonlighter is a representative of the genre so beloved by indie craftsmen as Roguelite. There are dungeons with rooms made in the style of the first Zelda on NES.Also, while wandering around the subways, you will come across cursed items that limit your ability to fiddle with your inventory.The game controls are not very convenient. And unfortunately there is not enough content. And although I will praise the developers for their efforts, it could not captivate me for long.Verdict: Moonlighter is a cool game for a couple of evenings. But unfortunately it gets boring very quickly and does not bring anything new to the gaming industry.

If you intend to play this game with mouse and keyboard. Don't bother. Probably the worst control scheme i've seen in a while.

This is a solid purchase especially on sale. I have played through the base campaign twice, once on ps4 and once on pc, and the dlc once on pc. The gameplay loop of finding loot in the dungeon and leaving without dying so you can sell it and progress is simple but a lot of fun. What really shines is the inventory management. There are curses one items in the dungeon like "will destroy the item to the left upon going back to town" that challenge you to organize your items in a way that bypasses the curses. So, if that curse is going to destroy the item to the left put it on the far left of your inventory so no item can be caught by the curse.
Other than that, the combat is decent. There are some fun weapons to try and it's not too difficult to switch over to a different weapon mid-playthrough. The enemies require you to approach them differently which makes for some varied gameplay. The story is basically nonexistent for most of the game, but it's enough to give your character a reason to keep going.
I definitely recommend giving this a try, especially if you play it on steam deck!

Get it on sale.

Very interesting concept with incredibly basic implementation. Also occasional game-breaking bugs and no way to manually save the game.

The only reason I recommend this game at all is because of its uniqueness and that it can be purchased on sale for only $3.

Hopefully some other game studio will develop this concept of an adventurer running a shop.

I don´t know how to feel about Moonlighter. The main gameplay loop consists of going into a dungeon where you kill monsters and progress further. After you complete the dungeon or escape, you will try to sell all the stuff that you gathered in your little shop. On paper it sounds fun, but I found some things in this game that just made me upset.

The first problem I had with this game was the combat. I thing that the movement and actions that the character does are extremely slow and not really fluent. It feels like there is very big cooldown after attack co you can´t roll immediately. I understand why the devs did it, because then the game would be much easier. But for me it ruined the thrill of battling in the dungeon. Later in the game I found my self just rushing through the floors, so I can get to the boss. Because that was the only intense moment in the dungeon. Everything in the dungeon is a little slower than I would want. Sometimes even the boss wasn´t any challenge because of the speed of the game.

The second problem was the progression system. Only way to progress in this game is by grinding the materials in the dungeons and then selling them so you can upgrade. Yeah what else should I expect from this game right? But I feel like that this would not be such a problem if the dungeons were more fun.

Also the story is nothing special and the dialogs are not interesting.

I really like the shop management part. The selling system is very fun and complex. For every item that you have you decide what it will cost and you hope that you guessed the right price. When someone wants to buy it, they make expression if they like the price and how much they like it or not. Based on that you try to modify the price so that its worth it for you and for the customers. Because if you sell overpriced stuff then no one will buy from you. Sometimes you can up the price a little bit on item that has a high demand and you will get away with it. However if the customers start to hate your price on some items, then you need to lower the price a lot or put it on big sale. This way running the shop every day makes it an enjoying and very interactive experience that I was always looking forward to.

As for the graphics and overall style of the game. I feel like its alright. The pixel art is pleasant to look at and the soundtrack is sometimes good and sometimes not so much. I haven't found anything to hate but also to love about it.

My conclusion is. If you are looking for a game that is grindy, slow, not so challenging and has fun shop management mechanics. Then this game is for you. But I was not able to stick to this game till the end because of it. Maybe one day I will come back to this game and finish what I started but who knows.

You can see my other reviews here Backloggd

realy simple but at the same time very good game with precious pixel art and dungeon exploration

It's Recettear but worse and with NES-legend of zelda combat.

That alone wouldn't warrant a negative review even if I'm not done playing, but the lack of mouse controls for the interface and dealing with the shitty menu navigation sure is. You have a limited backpack inventory for things you go into the dungeon for, but a max stack of 10, and some items have certain conditions for being packed, like being in the top or bottom row, or destroying an item in a direction, and so on. Honestly the entire inventory-juggling is annoying and I think it hurts the experience.

A very intriguing gameplay loop on paper, but ultimately feels like missed opportunities on multiple fronts.

Wide as an ocean, as shallow as a puddle. Shop management is barely meaningful beyond the initial price discovery phase, combat is shallow, feels clunky and repetitive. Monster / gear variety is disappointing.

Initial runs were kept interesting by figuring out how everything ticks, but the excitement quickly subsides as you realise - that's it? Not a great feeling from a roguelite.

The menu bug for this game is almost game breaking for me. You can look it up, it's not hard to find. You have to restart the game in order to purchase upgrades or items from vendors. I did a look online and it appears this is a common bug for which there hasnt been any fixes for (from what I can see). I cant recommend this game being this bug has yet to be fixed

Feels a bit stiff (that's what she said) to play, but all in all a great shop keeping/ dungeon exploring game. I'd recommend it.

I would not recommend this game at full price but it has great discount value at sales. So, this review is for the discounted price. As a rogue-lite, game is pretty simple and honestly, a bit repetitive. However, selling items at the shop is a great idea and makes game much more enjoyable. I would expect more upgrades or features to the store but there isn’t much. Still, the shop aspect is decent and was the most important part of the game for me. Other than that, art style with simple aesthetics suits well to the game’s atmosphere. There isn’t much for story or NPCs but I would not expect much from a rogue-lite. The most important part for a rogue-lite would be the gameplay. Play style, items and upgrades are a bit straight forward, they are pretty simple and a bit clunky at the same time. Therefore, it is not great but not that bad. Game has some questionable choices like bosses that can be killed once, armors that gives speed (it does not give much speed) instead of higher armor rating, useless weapons types, etc. Because of these reasons, I think this is a great game for its discounted price and a mediocre game for the full price.

I accidentally bound "down" key to "exit" action and can't go down in the menu whatsoever afterwards.

This doesn't make sense, there should be a universal menu control v.s. in-game control, now I can't go down at all in the menu to do anything or change any settings??? And I can't loop to a lower option by "up" action neither... It also didn't go back to default after I reinstalled the game

This is very frustrating!!! I really look forward to playing the game but this is very bad UI design. Will change my review after this is fixed.

(Edit: I solved it by overwriting the cloud save, but again this is a bad design)

It doesn't matter how good this game is: the default controls are atrocious and trying to remap them cause extremely weird side-effects and mess-ups. .No reason a game in 2025 should be this much of a pain in the ass to play. If they somehow fix the control remapping on controller, maybe It'll be worth a play but as it is, it's just awful.

Also the "guess which price to sell your items" system is fun on paper, horrible in-game. I'm not trying to file in for my fricking taxes here this is insane.

Terrible DLC

It's really cool and awesome how frequently the DLC throws unreactable, high damaging moves at you. Both bosses and enemies are guilty of this, and it results in an extremely frustrating game experience. The base game is alright, but the DLC is awful, would not recommend

Moonlighter is an excellent Rogue-lite with an added shop to run which also shares Rogue-lite elements. However, the game never allows the player to farm items and money with ease to make boss fights too easy. In fact Moon Lighter's bosses are a solid challenge without making you want to pull out your hair (almost too easy for those of us who want to suffer haha). The enemies have a great deal of variation and are generally all really well designed. At the end of the day its a solid 8/10 at the very least. It only loses points because once you understand the cycle, it's kind of rinse and repeat for over half the game. But its all quality content which is unique. I am very excited for Moon Lighter 2.

OK! Well, Moonlighter is basically an updated version of Recettear, a game where you basically grind dungeons to collect items, that you will sell later in the shop that was passed unto you by your family, while trying to figure out the truth behind the dungeons and the creatures that lurk within.

I reccomend this game for all who like simple fighting mechanics, lovely pixel art and just enough challenge that is not that easy but also not that hard. A game for all ages that can be played both casually and hardcoreish if you want to get all achievements.

The few downsides for me where:
> the lack of depth in the lore, with very shallow conversations and explanations.
> NPCs are truly NPCs: except for the very few main ones, they offer no extra quests or lore, and it's common to find repeated dialogue in different NPCs, so basically the city gets crowded with parrots... also the "stormtroopers" and bad guys didn't convince me at all about their motivations.
> power spike was crazy, most of the early game was a bit hard in terms of gold and damage, and suddenly when you reach the third dungeon you're easily rich and things start to be forever chill, things only got kinda hard again at the DLC.

Overall it was a good experience, a solid 6/10.
Good art, good/simple fighting with cool weapon choices, running the store was fun for me, but the game will NOT bring you a memorable lore or anything too intense, and I also ran into quite a few bugs, even though the game has been out for quite a while. Played slow paced and beaten it in about 30 hours.

Can get a bit grindy with only 6 dungeons/bosses (including dlc) but it kept me busy for 70 hours.

I was genuinely enjoying this game, it's a cute roguelite that prioritizes inventory management quite well.... until, spoiler; you meet the green monster. This irritatingly persistent goblin of goo is supposed to serve as a means of time management, which I can understand to a degree; The devs clearly did not want players to stand around forever sorting their Inventory. This to me is already flawed logic, considering there are already many mechanics in the game to deter hoarding so you're forced to take only what you need.

To describe this abominable feature and what it does, After some time passes on each floor of the dungeon, the green monster spawns and begins following you through rooms. It cannot be killed, deals roughly 15,000 damage to you (which results in instant death) if it hits you, destroys any items and chests that cross it's path, and will come to you in a new room regardless of it's design, shape, or clear status- meaning an immortal monster will make it even more difficult to clear an already challenging room if you take too long, and it will take loot drops/chests with it, making it virtually fruitless to want to go any further on that floor.

I don't hate inventory management in games, I am definitely a hoarder when I play video games, and it challenges me to go against my nature and leave some stuff behind. HOWEVER, when the pacing mechanic in a game so centered around Inventory management (inventory management which does, in fact, take time) doesn't have a live timer on the HUD for when it will appear THE MOMENT you enter a new floor, will not go away regardless of your difficulty setting, and not only discourages but actively punishes the player for taking what the developers believe is "too long" on a floor; it single-handedly spoils all of the great mechanics and gameplay features the game has to offer, all because you should be going slightly faster.

My greatest quarrel with this feature though... is that there are so, many, ways to ENCOURAGE players to go faster rather than punish them for going too slow. Loot quality/quantity from enemy and/or boss drops decreasing the longer you take, increased difficulty of enemies after passing a set time threshold the player can see, rare boss-only drops you can only get reaching it fast enough, special rooms that close indefinitely for that floor if you take too long to finish the floor, etc. What's the common denominator in all of my examples? The player is given something to STRIVE FOR rather than RUN FROM. THERE IS A TIME AND PLACE for escaping doom in certain games, this is not one of them.

An abhorrent feature, which some players will adapt to, still takes away from the best parts of the game no matter how you turn it, was inconsiderately added in a way that becomes more of a nuisance and less of a challenge; and yet they still have the gall to advertise a sequel on their main menu. I wish the developers the best of luck, but all I know is I am thankful that I bought this game at a discount.

Graphics are nice, but combat feels stiff and sluggish, enemies can attack from any direction but you can only attack in the 4 cardinal ones. The game constantly stops you early on so you can watch the slowest NPC walk across the screen or listen to them ramble on about the standard boring story. If you're looking for your next rogue-lite game, look elsewhere.

It's tough to manage money in this game. I spent so much in town portals just to get more loot out of the dungeons. Upgrades are expensive as well.

VERY GOOD GAME!!

love all the mechanics, it's a fun simple dungeon crawler, and the shop mechanics are really cool. It's got an interesting storyline as well, and every loose end gets tied up thats directly related to the main story line. The other characters are fun, and the art style is really endearing. There's not much information provided on some of the end game stuff that happens is left unanswered so I'm hoping in the sequel we get more info on that sort of thing. Very excited for the sequel and totally love this game.

very charming store management game, with very robust dungeon crawling and combat.

a very interesting concept and some nice artwork and mechanics to go with it, but the concept doesn't evolve further and gets very repetitive. Fun to play for a little while though.

One of the most boring and repetitive games I've ever played in my life. It was hyped up to me, and it let my down so heavily I'm still trying to understand what people saw in it.

Such a fun game! Rarely do I beat games and then revisit it, but here I am doing just that! Beat it a couple years ago and I just want to experience it again. It was so much fun! I loved the store management just as much as the combat

Moonlighter represents a unique take on the traditional dungeon-crawler sub-genre of gaming by expanding the scope of the player to dabble in mercantile ventures. It stands out from its ability to encourage players to revisit previously cleared dungeons that offer useful loot and equipment. Overall, I can't wait to see Will's story in the upcoming sequel.

Fun for a few hours. There are some very fun mechanics, but overall, it's lacking. Really, this game makes me sad they didn't expand upon it more. It's so close to being so spectacular, but let me explain:

- Combat is knee deep at most. It never advances past dodging and swinging your weapon / shooting a bow. While this would be mostly fine, it's not helped by the fact you can't aim your attack: you can only attack in the direction you're facing. This makes the combat extremely clunky at best, and infuriating at worst.
- Enemies are varied, but shallow. While the enemy variety is good, both in visuals and attacks, the shallow combat really harms them. Fundamentally, there are only a few kinds of enemies with remixed attacks, skins, and combos. While this is _fine_ it's not great.
- Bosses are actual garbage. Every single one boils down to face tanking, or dying to impossibly poorly telegraphed attacks (stone golem teleport and trees nuts are just two examples). Combined with the handful of largely similar weapons, this is exhausting as well, and feels REALLY shit when you die to "oh, guess I don't have enough health. Let me just run that almost identical dungeon for the 100th time"
- Prices finding is a very fun idea, but in practice is just annoying. Having to guess prices based on customer reactions is a really fun, clever idea I really wish was fleshed out more. But the prices always being the same except for the +/- 20% for high and low demand completely invalidates the mechanic to being annoying.
- Inventory management is great. I really, really enjoy the various curses and trying to line them up, it's very fun. However, having 100 different items that are just sell junk is pointless and annoying. It makes the game feel more full, but doesn't contribute to anything other than worrying about what you should sell.
- Story is almost completely absent. While this isn't inherently a problem (look at stardew valley), the lack of meaningful characters and dialog sucks. The art is so good, the world is so lively, and it feels like there is so much to do. But other than a few sign posts with legs as merchants, there isn't anyone to inhabit this world. The fucking _builder_ has more character than the blacksmith and alchemist you interact with regularly. Seriously, wtf???

I really love the graphics and controls of this game. It's a bit annoying to lose items and start over when I lose, but it makes the game quite challenging

I have a bit of history with this game. I initally got it for Switch back in 2019-2020 made it to the desert dungeon and dropped it.
Replaying it on the Steam deck made me remember why. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy the “economy parsing” of this game. I just think that it overstays its welcome a bit.

After some shop upgrades, more systems are introduced. Townsfolk requesting certain items for a higher price, an attendant that can take over the shop for you while taking 30% profit, glass cases that can preserve an items popularity. It’s convoluted and saturated. Items from previous dungeons also become irrelevant due to the price jump in materials gathered in the latest unlocked dungeon. With such a restricted inventory, it doesn’t make sense to have an attendant take over the shop for you. You dont end up with enough sellable materials to make it worth it. Especially wiht how you can extend the time the shop is open with decorations. The mechanics are fighting with themselves to stay relevant and make the town feel lived in and valuble.

Dungeon runs are fun. Item curses that can send items back home, transform items, or erase curses are a cool concept. I enjoyed that. Enemies are well designed, learning patterns and how to deal with each was a nice challenge.

In conclusion, I enjoy this game a lot. Its core features are GOOD, the bloat however is not. It’s overwhelming and uneccisary.

I really wish they made the economy more complex. near the end of the game i was completely ignoring ALL of the shopping mechanics to just bum rush the bosses. It WORKED. which speaks to how it eventually becomes obselete. which isn't really a problem, more a nitpick

Pretty solid time all around. I'm a big fan of rouguelites and games where you run a shop so the premise had me very interested. However, while both parts are good, I feel like they could've been better. I will now go into further detail on both aspects. A note though, while I will criticize them a lot, I still overall had a good time with them; wasn't outstanding, but wasn't bad either.

Roguelite Aspect: The combat in this game is pretty simple. The only two things you can do in combat are attack and roll. It's not a very complex or satisfying combat system, but it got the job done. It was mildly difficult at times and it was satisfying to upgrade my gear and be able to kill enemies in less hits or tank more damage. I would've preferred having some way of making my character stronger, but the equipment was a decent enough substitute. I will say though, having three types for each of the armors was stupid. The only difference in speed is so negligible between the armors that you should always go with the armor that gives you more health. At the very least, each of the weapons functions differently enough to encourage different playstyles, but that's the only thing in the game where you can choose how you fight. I enjoy killing baddies up close enough that the combat never felt like it got tedious, but I could see that being the case for other players.

Shop Aspect: The shop was also incredibly simple. You put out items to sell and wait for people to grab them and walk to the register. It is as simple as store simulators get. However, I quite enjoyed slowly honing in on what was the exact highest price I could get away with selling an item at, which had me actively engaging in the store each day. Given how few people have the achievement for overcharging customers, it seems most were either fine with selling things for cheap, or just used a guide. If so, I could see most people seeing the shop as a mundane experience, and given that you can hire a lady to run your shop for you for a whopping 30% of the profits, it seems the developers also thought the shop would be something players would want to skip. It makes me sad to see, especially when there is fun to be had in the shop. So while I did enjoy the store aspect, I can see why others didn't, and I wish the developers put more effort into it.

As for the other aspects of the game, they range from meh to great. Firstly the NPCs are boring and their dialogue serves no purpose, clearly there were lore ideas with these NPCs, but they didn't really do anything with them. The pets are fine, but most don't really do much for you. I had the slime always equipped since stunning enemies are broken in every game. Again though, it's weird how such a small inclusion is listed as a selling point. I will say, I do quite like the art, I think it's very pretty. However, the art does look like traditional art being converted into pixel art, as if pixel art was something they settled on rather than being a deliberate artistic decision, which especially seems true since the second game doesn't even use pixel art.

Overall, if you like roguelites and store simulators, then you'll probably have a decent time with this game, just don't expect anything spectacular. 7/10

It's a good game to play, I'd recommend. You can't attack in an angle, so that's where the clunky fighting people keep mentioning comes from. I got annoyed finding the best price for items, so I just wikied the right one...

Money management isn't bad. If you sell all your items at the right price, the equipment/weapon purchasing is reasonable.

Give it a shot. The price is affordable on discount.

subpar combat mechanics. boring merchant phase.

Solid game. Entertaining game play, nice variety of weapons, shop aspect of the game is nice

Cannot sing this game's praises enough. From the pixel art, to the soundtrack, to the game play, it hits all the buttons for me and I've barely started!

Who’s excited for the second one?! ME!! I absolutely loved this game—I even played it on my lunch break because I just couldn’t put it down!

I wanted to like this game, but it is not a good design. I'm really disappointed. I would refund, but I didn't realize the bad elements until just over the 2h mark.

The combat and movement are extremely janky and on the slow side. The dodge roll is ok, I'll give them that... but the problem is mainly the dungeon design.

You lose all your loot if you die except for one row of slots. In a dungeon, you can either beat it and escape, or you can pendant recall to the town. The problem is that, at the beginning, you don't have weapons and potions to make it through the dungeon really... and the pendant costs 200g to use, which means all your cash is tied up doing that. It basically means the whole early game is just a loop of getting very little done, because you are either dying and losing 90% of your loot, which means you earn nothing, or else you are paying 200g per recall which means even if you escaped with loot, you lost all the money you made.

It's a really poor design, I really don't like this game, and I'm tossing it on the garbage heap since I cannot refund at this point.

Interesting at first but the balance between the dungeons and waiting at the shop is not well balanced. Not really my thing waiting at the counter for customers to buy things and reshelve the store. Not so many upgrades and customization of your character is limited. Controls are not great but OK. Gets boring fast.

I love this game.
you can make a lot of money really quickly and killing stuff is fun

This type of game could already be a separate niche genre - where you get some kind of shop as inheritance or whatever and go on with developing it along with hunting for stuff to sell in it. Shoppe Keep, Cuisineer, Moonlighter would all be representatives of this sub-genre. And such general direction of gameplay is quite to my liking.

What you do could be separated into two parts - dungeon crawling to get bunch of loot from defeating foes and finding treasures and selling things in your shop situated in city hub, that also contains some vendors and upgrades for both combat and trade. This loop of adventuring in dungeons and selling stuff to get better at both and be able to go further in your expeditions is rather engaging.

Graphic design is pixel stylised one. Audio is decently fitting. Plot's simplistic to not bother you much distracting from core gameplay.