Moonstone Island Review (Nintendo Switch OLED)

For this Moonstone Island Review, we play a creature-collecting life-sim set in an open world with 100 islands to explore. Make friends, brew potions, collect Spirits, and test your strength in card-based encounters to complete your Alchemy training!

Moonstone Island Review Pros:

• Fantastic modern pixel art graphics.
• 713MB download size.
• Survival gameplay.
• Opening tutorial for how to grow plants.
• Harvest plants with a Scythe to get seeds from them.
• Plants have to have a hoe to dig the ground, plant seeds then water.
• Choose one of three starting Spirits – Capacibee (electric), Sheemp (fire), and Ankylo (Earth).
• Turn-based combat is where you play cards to do attacks/items/defense.
• Making an enemy spirit dizzy makes them miss a turn so you can deal more damage.
• Plants can be used for Spirits, healing you, or replenishing stamina.
• Combat has a fast mode button.
• Card casting and item usage are all governed by X amount of energy per round.
• Earn EXP from fighting and level up your spirit by entering the medallion and picking one of the upgrades and a new card.
• Spirits can be tamed so you have them fight for you.
• Quest progress and completion pop-ups.
• Your medallion houses three Spirits and you can enter it to level up and manage your spirits.
• A spirit barn can be built to store additional Spirits.
• The monster-catching side of things is very much a Pokemon game.
• The story is about you leaving home to become an Alchemist.
• Handy weapon/equipment wheel for fast selection.
• Full crafting system and some can be done from the menu.
• Save when you want.
• Day and night cycle.
• The map fills in as you explore.
• Mail is a way to stay in contact with people so you can use mailboxes to read and send mail.
• Zed is a guy you can turn in spirit research for Rewards.
• You can romance anyone you meet.
• Procedurally generated world.
• Friendship meters build or lower with your interactions amd choices.
• Items harvested pop up on the screen as you collect them.
• The workshop in town lets you buy recipes, items, etc.
• Warp whistles can be played to send you home.
• Craft a new house so you can move to a different island.
• Your energy bar goes down as you do actions and running out causes you to fall asleep wherever you are.
• Has a huge sense of adventure and exploration.
• The end-of-day breakdown shows dungeons cleared, Spirits discovered, Spirits tamed, and spirits Banished.
• You get given a hone tent at the start and you can place it where you want.
• Central storage chest.
• Every menu or item shows text info on it.
• The journal hoses all your missions and whilst there can be a lot of them, you can do them in any order.
• Play how you want.
• The farming aspect is like Stardew Valley.
• Multiple choice encounters.
• Uses tools to cut down grass, chips down trees, etc.
• Mini map amd big map options.
• Pick up resources and flowers on the ground.
• A balloon can be crafted and with that, you can float off of cliffs to distant lands with minimal control.
• Seasons change and this affects what Spirits can appear and seeds/flowers need certain seasons.
• If you die in battle then you get resurrected from a magic man.
• You see Spirits in the world.
• The magic man can appear and wells cards and talismans.
• Buy and sell items/equipment at the shops.
• Memorable characters.
• Find treasure maps.
• Your spirits will follow you around the world.
• When taming a spirit they start moving closer to you until you get them or they resist.
• Caught Spirits can be renamed.
• The relationship menu shows every encountered character, your current friendship level, if you have given them presents, and then any date you have organized.
• Game settings – always sprint, screenshake, rumble, spirit spawn rate, fishing mini-game difficulty, day length, and battle difficulty.
• A charming game with a lot of character.
• Different biomes each with unique Spirits.
• Dungeons play a huge part.
• You get a warning if you find an island with high-powered Spirits.
• The style and color palette is very Link to the past.
• It’s a game that just eats your time.

Moonstone Island Review Cons:

• So much to take in.
• No touchscreen support.
• Cannot rebind controls.
• Initially, it takes a while to generate the game world.
• A pain having to enter the medallion just to heal up your Spirits.
• Kind of teaches you a few basics and then just leaves the world open to you.
• The taming system feels like luck more than anything as you don’t get good feedback on it.
• Stamina doesn’t last long early on.
• Flying around on the balloon can be a long stressful trip as you are flying blind.
• Early on you don’t get to see a lot of everything like dungeons.
• The day and night cycle is quite short.
• Having Spirits follow you is fine but they are the same as the enemy obviously so knowing who is yours and who is aggressive is annoying.
• So much going on it can be hard to nail down what you want to do.
• When passing out or dying you still have to watch the same cutscenes play out.

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Moonstone Island:

Official website.

Developer: Studio Supersoft

Publisher: Raw Fury

Store Links –

Nintendo