Moonlighter is a dungeon crawler where the goal is to make piles of gold, taking items from fallen enemies to sell at a shop back in the safety of town. Once there, it’s up to the player to see just how much they can soak each customer for with every item without pushing them so hard they get mad and leave.
Shopkeeping is a delicate dance in Moonlighter, giving players a handful of states their customers can be in. These states show when an NPC is excited over a low price, happy with a normal one, irritated but still willing to pay a high price, and completely put off a product’s price. The customers show these faces live as they look at an item while wandering the shop, so players will need to watch for these reactions and adjust their prices accordingly to get the highest amount of money for an item.
Players won’t just be eyeing these customers as they play. Players also have to ring customers through at the register, as well as watch for shoplifters who will need to be clobbered, as they look for customer reactions. If the player misses these, though, the game keeps a log of the best value that brought up a particular reaction, allowing them to adjust their prices the next time they put that item out for sale.
When not selling items, players will need to comb through a variety of dungeons, each with its own unique monsters and valuables, for several floors. Players can leave these dungeons at any time using a special item that costs a bit of gold, but they can be taken out quickly if they are not careful, tasking players with no letting their greed take control. Dying only means getting kicked out of the dungeon without the items they found, though, so it’s not a huge problem if the shopkeeper gets roughed up at times.
Moonlighter is available now on Steam, GOG, the Humble Store, the PlayStation Store, and the Microsoft Store. The Nintendo Switch version has not been released at this time.
