This July, Little Chicken is set to release Moonlight Peaks in partnership with XSEED Games. After recently checking out a slice of the game early, we had a chance to chat with Yannis Bolman, CEO at Little Chicken & Moonlight Peaks Game Director, and Mia Boas, Art Director on Moonlight Peaks, about the upcoming release. Our interview dives into the development process over the last few years, working with XSEED Games, inspirations for the game, potential future platforms, and much more.
Moonlight Peaks has been in development for almost 3 years. What are some of the main challenges that you feel the team faced throughout the process? Are there any behind-the-scenes stories that have defined development?
Yannis Bolman: We’ve faced quite a few challenges! Even though the team is pretty seasoned, this was our first Life Sim. So there was a lot we had to figure out from scratch before it all started coming together. Finding the right balance in the daily rhythm of running your farm, the main questline, and things that offer a distraction is something we worked on a lot. The hard part is that you have to do a lot of designing and building before you have all the parts that make that mix. It’s like making a wonderful dish, but you have to grow all the ingredients first, wait for them to grow and mature, before you can decide on blending it all together into something that tastes good.
Next to that, I think writing all the storylines and making them blend in with the main questline and all the various features that the game offered was quite challenging. Not just because of the crazy amount of characters, but also because you never quite know what the player will choose to do next, and you have to make sure the story progression of the individual characters still makes sense with the progression of the main questline and the things available to the player. You want to make sure that the things happening in the individual storylines feel like they matter, but at the same time, if a player never interacts with that character, you have to make sure they don’t miss out on essential things for the overall storyline.
Even in the indie sphere, there are quite a few Life Sim titles, such as Fae Farm or Coral Island, both of which have been pretty popular since their release. How do you feel Moonlight Peaks stands out in a unique way?
Yannis Bolman: Well, I think it’s safe to say that Moonlight Peaks is definitely the most purple Life Sim out there. But besides that, I think we tried to mix in the supernatural angle as much as possible. Having all kinds of supernatural beings in the game gave us the opportunity to go a bit crazy. It turns out magic can be a good solution for a lot of things. So using that angle helps us to do things a bit differently. Automating your farm will be done with a lot of magic. Besides that, I think with the storylines and characters, we’ve tried to make them real. While the vibe is cozy, we wanted the characters to feel like real people with their own history and frictions. They have disagreements, they have pasts, and they don’t always get along. It makes the moments where you do build a bond feel much more earned and meaningful. I think that it’s important to have conflict in stories as a way for people to learn about a character and how they deal with situations. I think that makes them interesting. So hopefully, besides all the magic and the mechanics of the game, I hope the characters and their storylines will resonate with players.
It warms my heart to see that XSEED Games has decided to publish this title. How do you feel this helped the team in bringing your vision to life?
Yannis Bolman: We were very happy when XSEED approached us to publish Moonlight Peaks. Looking at their history, it’s safe to say they’re one of the grandfathers of this genre. With games like Story of Seasons and Harvest Moon, they have such a rich past in the Life Sim genre. With so much history in their portfolio, it was sort of a no-brainer to go with them as our publisher. They gave us a lot of freedom with Moonlight Peaks. They believed in the vision we had for the game, and pretty much let us take it where we wanted. Which is not something you see very often with publishers, and it felt like a privilege to be given that freedom.
Which of the characters did you like writing the most? And who would you say the players might enjoy interacting with the most?
Yannis Bolman: Oh, there’s a lot there. I think the more extreme characters are always the most fun to write. I like it when a character offers a different perspective on things. Writing scenes for Death for was always really fun, and pretty much just flowed out of my keyboard naturally. Using the angle of Death being on holiday and sort of letting it all hang out, while enjoying the little things in “life”, gave a lot of fun perspectives on menial and everyday things. It was also a lot of fun to see through that perspective, because while his ‘job’ is really serious, to him it’s pretty plain and just something he does every day. And it turns out he loves to party and dance. So I think his storyline is one of the more fun ones. But then there’s Orlock, the drunk vampire. I think he was fun to write, as you kind of expect him to mess up some scenes the way only he can.
Mia Boas: Ludo was definitely one of my favourite characters to write. He’s such a sweet, carefree character, but also quite goofy, which made him really fun to work with. He has a lot of funny moments and shows up quite frequently throughout the main storyline.
Orlock was also really fun to write, especially because of his relationship with Fiona. They have a lot of moments where they bicker back and forth, and writing that dynamic came very naturally.
Popularity-wise, I think Saga will probably be a favourite within the community. I’ve already seen her mentioned quite a bit in reviews, and I think her personality and overall design are the kind of things people are immediately drawn to.
I could also see Death becoming really popular, just because he’s such a strange and unconventional character, while still being very endearing. He’s someone people will probably enjoy learning more about over time.
What was the main inspiration behind the concept of Moonlight Peaks? And what was the overall brainstorming process in thinking up each of the game’s many activities?
Yannis Bolman: We wanted to make a Life Sim for the longest time, but struggled to come up with a good theme. Our Art Director, Mia, suggested doing a vampire theme, and it turned out to be a great idea. We mixed in some magic and other supernatural elements and characters, pretty much added in all the various things that we thought would make an interesting mix. Players seemed to like this weird combination of themes, so we went all in!
When brainstorming, we listed a whole bunch of things we wanted to add. We discussed having combat, but it made sense not to have it. Plenty of other games offer that already, so instead we tried to look for other activities. Inspiration came from many things, and we mostly looked for things that would tie into either decorating, farming, or building relationships.
Currently, Moonlight Peaks is only coming to PC, Switch, and Android. Are more platforms planned? And regarding the Nintendo Switch 2 version, will the game feature an Upgrade Pack, so that players who plan on getting the console in the future can just easily upgrade their Switch 1 copy down the line?
Yannis Bolman: At this point, we’re committed to having it on those platforms first, as we think that the majority of our audience is there. That being said, I always feel that it’s nice to be on as many platforms as possible, so any player looking for Moonlight Peaks can just jump whenever they please. I hope we’ll be able to cover more platforms in the future.
Regarding the future, we’ve made sure the game has a few extra visual tricks up its sleeve for more powerful hardware like the Switch 2 to really make the world shine. However, we’ve strived to keep the experience consistent across all platforms. While we did add bells and whistles to make it look prettier on newer tech, it will be the same experience whether you’re on the original Switch or on Switch 2. If you have Nintendo Online, you will also be able to continue playing on your Switch 2 if you started on the original Switch.
As of the time of writing, Moonlight Peaks will only support 6 languages on release (English, Japanese, German, Korean, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese). Are there any plans to maybe add other languages, such as French, Italian, Spanish, or even perhaps Brazilian Portuguese?
Yannis Bolman: I guess this is more a question for XSEED/Marvelous, as they help us out with the languages. I think in general you want to make sure you can reach as many people as possible in their native language. Given the massive script size, we chose to focus on these six languages first to make sure they offer the best possible quality. But we’re definitely listening to our community, and if the demand is there, we’d love to expand to even more languages post-release.
The player avatar in Moonlight Peaks is a vampire, but you get to meet all sorts of other paranormal characters, such as werewolves and witches. In the concept phase, was it ever considered letting the player choose which species they would be? And what led to ultimately just honing in on the vampire side?
Yannis Bolman: We considered doing that. But when you look at all the complexities that it brings with it, it starts to spiral pretty quickly. So it was pretty hard to do, and let alone to do it right. Imagine all the different characters you can romance, and their unique personalities and storylines. All of them would have to react differently depending on which species you chose. We figured that a vampire dating a vampire would have to feel different in terms of things you do and say compared to, say, a mermaid dating a mermaid. This was simply too much to cover in the time we had for development. Also, we settled pretty quickly on the storyline of the player being the offspring of Dracula. That set the stage for the rest of the storyline. It would have been impossible to have a strong narrative if we couldn’t focus on one storyline.
Life Sims are known for being cozy, with a light focus on romance. From what we’ve seen in some of the game’s advertising, inclusivity is a big factor that the team seems to be aiming for. What are some of those elements we can expect to see?
Mia Boas: We really tried to include a wide variety of dateable characters. From the beginning, the goal was to create a cast where there could genuinely be someone for everyone. We tried to avoid relying too heavily on the more “generic” dateable archetypes and instead focused on creating characters who felt distinct and memorable in their own ways. At the same time, we did our best to represent different genders and cultural backgrounds, because having a diverse cast was something that felt important to us creatively.
Note: This interview was edited for clarity.
