Exclusive: Moonstone Island Is An Utterly Charming Deckbuilder With Retro Zelda Vibes

Take the farming and house decorating of Stardew Valley, the dungeon crawling of Minish Cap, and combine it with RPG deckbuilding combat in a beautifully-rendered top-down pixel world, and you have Moonstone Island — a game that’s very quickly shot up on our “ones to watch” list.

You are an alchemist-in-training, spending a year in the wilderness to master your arcane techniques, and to figure out how to restore Moonstone Island, and the town, to their former glory. You travel around by balloon, broom, and glider to access over 120 procedurally-generated sky islands, populated by monsters to fight and dungeons to explore. You can even set up your home on any one of the islands, in any one of the biomes!

Moonstone Island has a ton of the features that farming sim lovers crave: You can fall in love with locals, farm your own land, decorate your little house, and craft a number of recipes for potions to help you out on your journey, or furniture to adorn your house.

The thing that sets Moonstone Island apart from farm sims is its combat — you will be able to befriend wild spirits to fight alongside you in card-based battles, and you can adjust the deck as you go, upgrading and optimising along the way.

Moonstone Island hasn’t been confirmed for a particular release date yet, other than “soon” — but it is planned for the Nintendo Switch!

You can also wishlist the game on Steam (which helps the devs get better visibility — and maybe a publisher!), and follow the game on Twitter for the latest updates.

Has Moonstone Island made its way onto your wishlist? Let us know in the comments!