Moonglow Bay Reviews
The slow pace and gentle yet solemn storytelling — with lots of bright, joyous moments, too — is delightful, and I’m eager to learn more about Moonglow Bay and its people, in a town shaped as much by fishing as it is by grief.
A little frustrating in places, but Moonglow Bay is mostly a chill fishing RPG that digs into its themes of community, resilience and rebuilding in surprising and consistently interesting ways.
We really wanted to like Moonglow Bay. It has the bones of a great fun cosy game: collectibles, a heartwarming story, fishing! Unfortunately, between the bugs, bland characters, and unnecessarily frustrating boss battles, the meat is a little thin. We enjoyed collecting the fish and restoring the town for a spell, but even the fun quests didn't have the compelling pull of many other games. If you really love fishing in your cosy adventures, this could be worth dipping your toe in. But if you're just in the market for a cosy game, there are plenty of fish in the sea.
Moonglow Bay is a genuinely moving and surprisingly feel-good tale about coming to terms with grief and embracing change.
Moonglow Bay has a lot of promise; it’s easy to spend hours with it when it’s working properly. But when it’s not, it turns into a nightmare you don’t want to revisit. The cosy vibes of the gameplay, fun characters, and enjoyable fishing and cooking mechanics don’t make up for fundamental errors with the game that really mar the rest of the experience.
Moonglow Bay is a good game for those who want a fishing-heavy simulation game with a cute story. That said, the game would benefit from some large updates to improve minigame controls and shopkeeping mechanics, creating a more intuitive experience for players. As it stands now, it's difficult to recommend outside of the very niche audience described, and while it has good ideas, its execution makes broader appeal an impossibility.
Even knowing that it is surely not a title for all audiences, I really think that Moonglow Bay is a totally recommended experience for anyone who enjoys these titles of more relaxing cut and without haste, which by the way, manages to do something that Lake could barely: Totally disconnect from everything, and enjoy the experience without having to go around asking "Have we already arrived in India?".
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Its voxel art visuals are beautiful and the soundtrack is suitably chill. Moonglow Bay has been developed by a truly passionate team, one with so many great ideas that, in trying to implement them all, perhaps haven’t had the time or experience to flesh them out with the depth they truly deserve. Still, if the idea of saving a town through fishing sounds like your cup of tea, Moonglow Bay is worth checking out. Just be prepared for a rather simplistic ride.
Moonglow Bay failed to hook me, but as the debut game from a small studio, it's a solid enough start overall for the subset of gamers who haven't yet had their fill of titles like this. I hope the team can tighten their focus and gameplay mechanics for their next release.
There are sparks of greatness all throughout Moonglow Bay but are almost all buried beneath a mountain of technical issues.
Moonglow Bay offers is an escapade to a seaside fishing town, but at times, it gets a little fishy.
This kind of game is a welcome change to the farming/life RPG genre. If you are a player that enjoys fishing in games, then this is the game for you because it’s all fishing, all the time. Moonglow Bay is overall a fun, relaxing game, but it struggles with controls, game-breaking bugs, and glitches that can ruin the game.
Pure joy from start to finish, Moonglow Bay delights in its colour and story with some well executed fishing mechanics.
Understood according to its focused proposal, Moonglow Bay is a quiet game of melancholic but hopeful daily life. The simplicity and conciseness make it fall into routine, but there is purpose in the cycle of actions that fits well with the narrative of, one day at a time, revitalizing the community and the life of a widowed person who will use the fishing rod to deal with her grief.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
A super-calm mix of fishing, cooking, business management, and town-restoring RPG, Moonglow Bay is a decent idea that wasn't executed that well, and is thus very boring and repetitive. It also struggles with making you care about anything. Players do things just to do them, with the tiniest sense of progress possible. Take your fishing rod and fish somewhere else.
Moonglow Bay starts strong with its emotional story and initially solid gameplay loop of fishing and cooking. Unfortunately, bugs and the lack of variety quickly become its downfall, resulting in an experience that grows more bland and frustrating to play the further you progress.
Moonglow Bay is a fun and relaxing game that I found very rewarding to play, there's a huge variety of things to do in this game so I never get tired of it. Every day I play I can't wait to go back and see what monster-sized fish I manage to catch and see what kind of new dishes I get to create in the kitchen.
At the end of the day, Moonglow Bay falls into a monotonous gameplay loop that doesn't seem to try very hard to make it interesting. This negative aspect could easily be fixed if the game set out to have a shorter length, it's certainly not a game capable of sustaining itself for many hours like other titles in the genre.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
If you’re ready to explore the wonders of the sea, get comfortable, grab your fishing gear, and dive into Moonglow Bay: a game that combines immediate gameplay, deep reflections, and unique aesthetics. If you're ready for a story of fishing, loss, and rebirth, this title might captivate you.
Review in Italian | Read full review