Fans of farming sims might’ve had an eye on Moonstone Island, the recent release featuring creature collecting, deckbuilding, and, naturally, farming. In many ways, Moonstone Island is Stardew Valley meets Pokemon, but it's also more than that. It certainly contains those elements, but calling the game a farming sim doesn’t sit quite right with its developers.
The idea of a game that incorporates farming into another genre isn’t unique. Not long before Moonstone Island was released, FloraMancer: Seeds and Spells brought the mechanics and philosophy of the farming game into an action roguelike in a very similar way. Games like these are arguably an outgrowth of the balance struck in games like Rune Factory. Game ZXC recently spoke with Moonstone Island creator Sandy Spink about the approach to this balance, but also how the title is not a "Stardew Clone."
How FloraMancer Cross-Breeds Farm Sims and Action Games
FloraMancer's unique blend of action and farming games comes from a fairly common discussion for gamer couples, explains its developer.
For Moonstone Island, the better way to think of the game might be a creature collector with farming enhancing that genre’s formula. It positions itself closer to Pokemon than Story of Seasons. This is much like Harvestella, the 2022 Square-Enix title that used farming mechanics to enhance the classic JRPG formula the studio is known for to enrich a game more akin to Final Fantasy.
Spink thinks there’s an increasing appreciation of what farming sims can add thematically to other games, meaning it could be something fans see cross over into different genres. One common mechanic mentioned, after all, the value of day and night mechanics in setting the pace of a story or adventure.
“I think farming ties into that nicely, where it gives you this feeling of progress, almost like a very slow loading bar where the next day you see the crops a little bit taller, you see it sprouting, and then you see it ready to harvest … It's saying there's time, nothing is instant, you're going to have to wait for this to grow anyway, so why not just go and have a nice chill time and do something else for a bit?”
He said the feeling of classic farming sims like Harvest Moon were able to instill a feeling in him that the game was always progressing forward. Sometimes, that helped him stop and smell the roses, while other times the steady drumbeat of time was a motivation to make the most of each day. Those effects on pacing were elements he wanted to emulate in Moonstone Island. Slow gratification is a key element of a farming sim’s pacing, and it was something that he felt the creature collector genre also benefits greatly from.
Spink was actually a bit surprised that Moonstone Island is being received so well, despite being lumped with other games with a tighter focus on their farming sim aspects. Spink had worried, he explained, that his game would be dismissed as a Stardew Valley clone when Moonstone Island’s farming is in service to the creature collection, which is far more the focus of the game. Mercifully, that hasn’t been something he’s seen since the game’s release.
“In terms of the genre, we call ourselves a creature collecting life sim, and I feel more like that. I think that there's more exploration, combat, and creature collecting in the game than there is actually farming. Most people who have it have realized that. I think because we're a pixel game and because we have farming, it will always kind of be put in that Stardew sort of bucket.”
Farming in the game is the main means of getting the resources to befriend, train, and maintain the various spirits players will collect throughout the game. Spink said the concept of the farm was to fill the role of an item shop in a more traditional creature collector. Spinky also explained that farming thematically fit the world the team was creating and their choice of mechanics.
He’s proud of how the various genres at play in Moonstone Island gel together, saying that reaching that point took plenty of trial and error. All that said, there’s room for improvement still because not all the features developers wanted were ready at the time of release. Those will cover both main aspects of the game, notably in the form of new spirits and growable trees for the player’s farm.
“We have lots of plans for stuff we'd like to add! It's such a feature rich game and there's so much opportunity for things that we can do … being able to name your spirits , as well, is something that we wanted to have and didn't quite get in for launch, but we're looking to add in the near future.”
For now, though, there’s no shortage of things to do for new residents of the titular Moonstone Island.
Moonstone Island is available for PC and Switch.