Moonlight Peaks is a gothic Animal Crossing dating sim, but it's so much more than that too

Moonlight Peaks is Animal Crossing, but it's also Story of Seasons, Stardew Valley, even V Rising in parts, and at the same time, it’s none of these things.

Developer Little Chicken Game Company is open about its influences, but in Moonlight Peaks these influences are deftly woven into something almost in a genre of its own.

I spoke to producer Erik Kors and game director Yannis Bolman about the game during the 2025 London Games Festival.

The Moonlight Peaks you see today is very much the product of years of work, combining original ideas and life sim inspirations into a cohesive project.

"We started looking at it from, 'OK, what are the main pillars that we really want to build on?" Yannis explains.

The Little Chicken team eventually settled upon a troika of concepts to build their game upon: decorating, romance and, of course, farming.

"We really see that players in this genre really love decorating," he notes, "we also saw that players really wanted romancing of characters, so we wanted that to be part of it as well."

While they openly take inspiration from the giants of the genre, it was just as, if not more, important to set the game apart from the rest, hence vampires.

But the game's vampiric charms are not only visual, but play heavily into the game's mechanics.

"Quite early on we had the character transform into a bat," Yannis explains, "which gave us a lot of new ideas – maybe it's cool to transform into other forms to have other interactions."

The way these three "pillars", as Yannis calls them, interact are key to making the game not only fun to play, but immersive. Yannis and Erik aim for Moonlight Peaks to invoke the feeling of a "living, breathing world" with a broad choice of how you spend your time there.

The interplay also allows for plenty of iteration – the team is constantly pitching new ideas, new mechanics, new experiences.

The farming sim genre is a crowded market, and while Moonlight Peaks has already stood out to many players, it's unique mechanics like romance or turning into a bat that will help it continue to do so.

Team members will often spend time researching other games, whether that's life sims or not, hunting for inspiration for Moonlight Peaks.

"The best way to learn is basically to look at all the games and then see what you can incorporate," Erik says. "If you can make it your own, make it better."

At one point, Moonlight Peaks featured a biting mechanic, similar to more typical vampire games like V Rising, in which players would have to top up their blood supply by biting villagers. This was later removed, however, as it didn't fit the game direction and more cutesy vibes.

But while some vampiric ideas don't make it in, concepts from other surprising sources do.

The final section of Journey, a beautiful segment in which the player scales a vast mountain, served as inspiration for one of Moonlight Peaks' later areas: "That final level was so inspirational because of the setting and the feeling you get there."

Time is money, though, and as much as Yannis and Erik would love to spend forever adding new mechanics, all games have got to release at some point.

"It's hard to make sure that we don't over scope everything," Erik explains. Yannis chimes in, joking that this is what he and Erik clash the most over.

"[I'll say,] 'OK, let's do this,' and Erik is like, 'Yeah, that's a great idea, but we actually need to fit it in production as well,'" Yannis laughs.

"We have this ever-growing list of things that have higher priority that we also have to do. So, it's a struggle. Most of the time we look at 'Does it make a lot of sense?', 'Do we see it in enough places?', to make sure that it's worth investment in time to actually make it."

Thankfully, Little Chicken has been able to focus on development thanks to help from their publisher, life sim juggernaut Marvelous Games, the company behind the iconic Story of Seasons series (previously Harvest Moon, for those of us who remember it).

"We're really lucky," Yannis says of the partnership, "I couldn't think of a better match."

"They can chime in with a lot of experience and insights that we might not have yet, because for us, it's the first time doing a life sim," he continues.

"They've been marvellous. Sorry for the pun."

But while Little Chicken could scarcely have hoped for a better publishing partner for its game, in development, its greatest partnership is perhaps with their players.

Little Chicken has worked hard to cultivate a specific style of game, one that reflects a specific community of gamers. Around 80 per cent of interest in the game comes from women, and 10 per cent from non-binary gamers.

Dialogue between the studio and the fans is open, with fan feedback, both positive and negative, helping to pilot the team in the right direction.

"The community is very helpful and very open to whatever we throw at them," Erik explains.

From the start, the developers shared their work online, be it concept art or early mechanics, and began to build a community following a clip of theirs going viral on TikTok.

Immediately recognising the importance of this, community feedback was quickly factored into development: "This is really powerful," says Yannis.

He gives the example of a character model redesign that the team had planned.

"We had a three-month period where we had put a lot of work into this new character which was a bit more adult.

"We spent a lot of time tweaking the character, then posted a video and within 20 minutes everyone was like, 'We hate it, please bring back the old one.'"

While Yannis and Erik are keen to make sure they don't compromise on their overall vision for the game too much, community feedback, and especially community support, has been key.

"It's really fun to work on a game that people are excited for. It really helps with the general motivation to put in a bit of extra effort to make it shine a bit more," smiles Yannis.

A mishmash of styles and mechanics inspired by a gamut of different games built in response to player feedback could easily go wrong. A Frankenstein's monster of an experience that does everything, sure, but does it poorly.

Moonlight Peaks, however, is placed well within that Goldilocks Zone where everything appears in perfect, if fragile, balance. Here's hoping it stays that way, no matter how many new mechanics Yannis and Erik squabble over.

Moonlight Peaks is coming to PC in 2026.

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