Most foes can be felled with even the most basic equipment, provided players have the ability, time and patience for the undertaking. As the game progresses, it becomes clear that skill matters as much as equipment, if not more. The controls are smooth, handling the relatively fluid action well. Will’s first foray into the Golem Dungeon, armed with naught but his broom, thrusts players into the action and provides a tutorial of Moonlighter’s basic roguelike mechanics. If there are no heroes plunging into dungeons, bringing back artifacts for coin or seeking out the secrets of the mysterious 5th Door, what’s a curious merchant to do? Go in and do it himself! Business, however, has dried up too many deaths in the dungeons has caused all but the Golem to be closed to the public.

Enter the Moonlighter, the oldest shop in Rynoka and Will’s family business handed down to him by his now dead parents. Within these labyrinths, various artifacts can be retrieved from battle with the Guards, then sold for gold. Typically, heroes push into the more challenging dungeons, the Forest, Desert and Tech Dungeons, whilst merchants are relegated to the easiest, the Golem. We catch up with Will in one of the “Dungeons,” a strange collection of, well, dungeons that mysteriously appeared years ago, inspiring adventurers from all over to delve their depths in search of riches and glory.

Will is a young merchant and would-be hero from the dusty, near-dead town of Rynoka. Digital Sun has taken a lot of what they have likely known and loved from games over the years and packed it into their lush Kickstarter-funded take on the genre, Moonlighter. However, it can also become quite repetitive, as players are forced into the same situations again and again to improve their hub and progress even further. It is evident that the roguelike is a fun mold for developers the gameplay lends itself to any number of themes, each with their own mechanical tweaks, rendering one quite different from another.

Instaling Moonlighter