Studio Supersoft announced a free update for Moonstone Island, with people who return getting access to a new type of house and being able to find a new Spirit. There are also a number of quality of life features, like the ability to reset a Spirit’s deck of cards or make the background music loop.

There’s no teaser trailer showing the new items in action. However, the social media and official Reddit shared official patch notes. The Spirit and house appeared in the official announcement image. The house looks like a yellow and pink mushroom. As for the new character, it is Hoppot. 

In of quality of life items, it makes it easier to decorate, use items, and adjust characters. If you have a chest in your home and it has items in it, you can pick it up and still move it. You don’t need to empty it first. On PCs, you can use numkey shortcuts assigned to each tool to make it easier to swap between items and perform actions. Finally, using a deck reset potion on a Spirit clears out the deck and lets you reselect cards for respec purposes.

Here are the full patch notes for the Moonstone Island free update:

• One new Spirit
• One new house skin
• A deck reset potion
• Pick up chests that contain items
• The ability to swap the NPC Spirits
• New basement staircase
• Numkey shortcuts on PC for the tool wheel
• Looping music

Moonstone Island is available on the Nintendo Switch, PC, and mobile devices via Crunchyroll Game Library, and the free November 2024 update is live now on all platforms.

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It is now possible to play Moonstone Island on Android and Apple iOS devices, as Studio Supersoft and Raw Fury announced the game ended up being added to Crunchyroll Game Vault. People at certain subscription levels can play it as part of their hip after logging in. 

In Moonstone Island, players follow an alchemist who lands on the titular island when flying away from home to take part in a year-long test to prove their skills. To accomplish their goals, they’ll need to craft means of getting to other flying islands, tame Spirits, and fight alongside them to defeat challenges ahead. As it is also a life sim, there is farming, crafting, a home to customize, and neighbors to befriend and romance. 

Here is the official trailer that shows how Moonstone Island looks if you play the game on a mobile device.

As a reminder, only two tiers qualify for the Crunchyroll Game Vault access. You need to be a Mega Fan or Ultimate Fate. The former costs $11.99 per month, and the latter is $15.99 per month. 

Moonstone Island is available on the Nintendo Switch and PC, and you can play on mobile devices in subscribed to a Crunchyroll subscription tier that includes the Game Vault library.

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A new kind of crafting is coming to Moonstone Island, as Studio Supersoft revealed a Cooking Update. This July 31, 2024 addition will be free and add things like new crafting stations and Spirits, though the video did note paid items will also appear.

Here’s the official trailer, which goes over some of the Moonstone Island Cooking Update additions. It starts by confirming the new crafting stations, decorations, quests, and Spirits. Then, we get to see a stove cooking station with a pot and pan on it. In that clip, we see Moonfish Tacos and Nightshade Noodles will be two of the recipes ing the game. The Cookbook segment shows there will be Spring, Summer, and Winter recipes, as well as special ones and types tied to fish. The new questline seems to be tied to Ossono and the inn, with people making requests once you start making food. As for the new decoration items, there are ones for the kitchen. As for the new spirits, they are Eleplant, Fangface, Grampus, and Jelbell. 

Other updates are in the works as well. For example, Studio Supersoft shared a list of all the known issues in the Moonstone Island Switch version of the game. The goal of this is to help the developer with future patches to fix the title.

Moonstone Island is available on the Nintendo Switch and PC, and the Cooking Update will arrive on July 31, 2024.

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Studio Supersoft took to the Moonstone Island official subreddit to list all of the known performance issues with the Switch version of the game. This is part of an endeavor to help people know what the team is aware of and working on, while also providing an opportunity for players to submit bug reports with Raw Fury for additional errors.

Some of the issues are more serious than others. For example, there is a problem where upon using the glider at the end of an island, it won’t actually unfurl and appear. Instead, the player’s avatar will very slowly move in the direction they were facing over open air. This will continue until their stamina runs out, the time of day ends to roll over to the next, or they run into an island. (From personal experience, running into another island will cause the game to resume play as normal.) Opening a chest could cause the game to freeze. 

Other issues involve items that go missing or don’t appear properly. For example, you can’t tell if a Spirit in Moonstone Island is a holo one on the Switch, this game’s version of a shiny, due to a performance issue keeping it from appearing a different color. Someone’s Medallion could disappear, making it impossible to tend the three Spirits with you when not near your barn, and other objects can apparently despawn.

Here’s the full list of Moonstone Island known performance issues on Switch as of July 22, 2024. In addition to people being able to report to Raw Fury, the official Studio Supersoft is replying to comments on the Reddit thread and adding reports to the list via those comments. There is no timeline shared for fixes yet.

Bugs, Issues, & Glitches

• Holos don't appear as different colours, although the shimmer effect is still there
• Game freezes after opening a chest
• Some animations freeze
• Gates are one-way
• Some rocks can't be smashed in the mines
• Sometimes, using the glider can result in the player sliding across the screen with no animation
• The goddess statue daily gift is not "random" and may only give you moonstones
• Controller rumbles and won't stop
• Loom designs displaying incorrectly -- the bottom-right pixel is missing from the design when placed down
• Objects (including house, chests, and Spirits) despawn and don't reappear
• Invisible walls
• Spirits sometimes become "invisible"
• Fish can't be caught after the fishing minigame
• Debug code appears in red at the top of a screen
• Medallion disappears from tool wheel
• Villager sprites stop moving
• The Magic Man's card shop sometimes freezes
• Overlapping textboxes when talking to Magic Man
• Lag in the Spirit Barn when you have lots of Spirits (or sometimes just because)
• Spirits gifted to NPCs not appearing
• Goddess statue sometimes does not give gifts

Moonstone Island is available on the Nintendo Switch and PC. 

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When it comes to creature-collecting games, deck-building titles, and farming sims, the Nintendo Switch is my system of choice. I love having these games in my hands. Being able to play them on the couch or in bed. The portability is comforting. Moonstone Island gives me elements of all three on my Switch, and I’ve been absolutely consumed with playing it as much as possible. My game is even paused while I’m writing this piece.

For those unfamiliar with the game following its PC release, Moonstone Island involves a young alchemist who finished school and is about to set off on their own. Your goal is to spend a year learning and growing. After taking off from your family residence, your broom breaks apart and you crash on Moonstone Island. It’s a floating island with a whole village on it filled with helpful individuals. You then can set up your new home there, or on an island nearby, and start exploring the floating landmasses, taming spirits, conquering the four seasonal temples, and fulfilling requests.

What makes Moonstone Island interesting is that a lot of concepts and ideas are being tossed at the wall, and I felt like I was free to engage with them in whatever way I’d like. It introduces farming right away for certain beneficial crops that are tied to taming Spirits, buffing or debuffing them, or fulfilling missions or seasonal temple progress, but you can also find these items via foraging on different landmasses. I could assist people with tasks, or ignore the ones that weren’t starred and related to the story. There’s a freedom to it that reminds me of the Rune Factory games once you really get settled and in the swing of things. What do I want to prioritize? Well, then go for it!

I also didn’t expect to enjoy the way Moonstone Island handles its creature capturing and raising as much as I did. It’s more like you’re crafting a deck of cards, rather than a team of monsters. Each one of the three is a third of the whole, with their decks influencing the course of things. Add a poison-type creature to your deck? You’ll get DOT effects. Find a water type? That grants you healing and refresh abilities. Get an earth one? That might use attacks that deal bash damage to break down armor while also inflicting damage. It made me approach team creation differently, because it wouldn’t be so much about dealing with weaknesses. (Though that is a part when I knew I’d head to certain islands or temples.) It was about effectively using the cards that played into my strategies. 

And the thing about it is all of these Moonstone Island elements work so perfectly on the Switch. If someone leans heavily into the life sim elements, it is so easy to spend days farming on Moonstone Island and working alongside people. Especially if you get into the dating elements. The island exploration felt equally enjoyable in Handheld Mode. I loved spending a few in-game days getting the lay of the land once I had a glider, then picking up and playing when I had a chance. It also made it easier to fill up my Spirits research, when I was doing some grinding, because I felt I could truly pick it up and play when I wanted, going to an island I knew would have my “target,” and then stepping away when I was done.

Moonstone Island feels like a perfect Switch fit, much like many other games in the genres it represents. Whether you’re coming to it for the life sim and farming elements, the creature catching, or the exploring, it’s just so much fun to play on a hybrid console that lets you pick up, play, and then take a break when needed.

Moonstone Island is available on the Nintendo Switch and PC. 

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Studio Supersoft announced a Moonstone Island May 2024 update that will include paid DLC involving the Magic Man and free content for everyone. The add-on and patch will arrive on May 21, 2024, and apparently a Magic Man plush will also follow. 

The announcement for the free content included a trailer highlighting some of the things that will appear in Moonstone Island after the update. The 24 new cards were discussed first, with the Black Ice, Booster Pack, Conduit, and Summon ones shown. The post-game content person showed a player character talking to the Magic Man, with relationship hearts below the NPC’s name. It looks like the tavern will hold a party event. The Spirits Chiminea, Darclock, Pombomb, and Shrubbin will appear, with Pombomb being a crossover character from Cassette Beasts. Some of the new pieces of furniture also appeared. 

As for the paid DLC, it includes Magic Man cosmetics and decorations for Moonstone Island. You can make your home look like a Magic Hat House. You can then place a matching rug, Candelabrum, Lectern, Summoning Circle, and Tattered Curtain inside. 

As for the plush Magic Man, there are no details about it yet. Studio Supersoft only shared an initial photo of the prototype. It will follow the Fishbo plush that appeared in 2023 on Makeship.

It isn’t uncommon for Studio Supersoft to announce a new Moonstone Island update every once in a while. For example, a Winter Update appeared in December 2023. The developer also teased it is working on Fishbo evolutions after April Fools’ Day 2024. We will also learn more about the game at the Wholesome Direct on June 8, 2024, which could involve an announcement related to the Switch release.

Moonstone Island is available for the PC via Steam and will come to the Nintendo Switch. 

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On April Fools’ Day 2024, Moonstone Island developers Studio Supersoft joked that there would be Fishbo inspired “Fishbolutions” for other Spirits in the game. Now, due to the response to the joke, it looks like they are being implemented into the game.

First, here’s the actual April Fools’ Day joke. The developer said if the trailer got 1,000 likes, it would actually make it happen. 

On April 2, 2024, the social media updated with an “uh oh” message, suggesting it would happen.

Now on April 3, 2024, it seems progress is being made on creating Fishbolution Spirits for Moonstone Island. So far, only Flambit and Wolfbane versions seem to be done. It is unknown how many Spirits could get this treatment and when we could end up seeing them implemented into the game via a patch.

Fishbo has become one of the mascots for Moonstone Island. So much so that a plush was actually made. On Makeship, a campaign started in October 2023 and resulted in stuffed versions of the characters shipping out in 2024. That toy ended up selling out.

Moonstone Island is available on PCs, and it will also eventually come to the Nintendo Switch in Spring 2024. 

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Studio Supersoft announced that a marriage feature will be coming to Moonstone Island as part of a free Valentine's Day update on February 13, 2024. The update will coincide with the release of a small, paid Valentine's themed DLC pack.

The star feature of the update is, of course, the ability to marry characters in the game and have them move into your house after a ceremony. However, also arriving are several new items, a new taming system, a stat reset potion, and five new spirits. The new characters you can capture are Breaus, Kiwiwatt, Toxitoe, Snohm, and Barkbyte. The Steam page detailing the update also teases a new collaboration in the works, though no details were shared.

As well as the free update, a new DLC packed titled Designed for Lovers will also arrive at the same time, including new furniture and housing decorations like a heart-shaped archway, a box of chocolates, and a loveseat. The DLC will cost will cost $3.99, with a 20% discount active until February 22, 2024.

We can view the trailer in the tweet below.

Studio Supersoft have been ing Moonstone Island with multiple DLC packs and free updates since the game's launch, alongside free Halloween and Winter updates that brought various quality of life updates.

Marriage is set to come to Moonstone Island with the Valentine's Day update on February 13, 2024, with the Designed for Lovers DLC pack launching on the same day for $3.99. The game itself is available now on PC, with a Nintendo Switch version slated for Spring, 2024.

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The Moonstone Island winter update is now out, bringing new decorations, some quality-of-life changes and a collection of new spirits. To celebrate this major update, the game is also receiving a 20% discount until December 20, 2023.

Studio Supersoft had previously announced the free contents of the winter update, which includes a collection of seasonal decorations. These include a gingerbread house, presents and snowflake garlands. More decorations will be available in a paid DLC. In addition, players will have access to a bigger Spirit Barn and will be able to store up to 300 Spirits at the Science Center. There will also be a Warp Totem which will add fast travel to the game. A new infinite dungeon and new spirits have also been added, but the details of these are being left for players to discover for themselves.

A few issues have also been patched as part of the update. This includes a bug that prevented progress in the Earth Temple if players used fertilizer instead of the Alchemist’s Wand, an exploit allowing players to reap double crops by pressing two buttons at once and the mysterious appearance of Dark Matter in chests.

To celebrate the release of the winter update, Studio Supersoft has announced there will be a discount on Moonstone Island for a week. From now until December 20, 2023, there will be 20% off. In addition, the paid winter DLC will receive a 15% discount for this week, which will normally be sold for $3.99.

Moonstone Island is out now for PC, with a Switch version on the way. The winter update is out now.

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Moonstone Island will be receiving a round of winter themed DLC and an update just in time for Christmas. These new additions include some free content along with a paid decoration pack will be releasing on December 13, 2023.

The free content for the Moonstone Island winter DLC includes festive decorations and a selection of new Ice Spirits, including a polar bear in a huge jumper and a penguin on a snowboard. Their names have not been revealed yet. In addition, a new infinite dungeon will be included, called the Infinidungeon. Two major tweaks will also be made to the game, including the ability to fast travel using a new Warp Totem item and the ability to save Spirits to the Science Center, allowing you to keep them even without a Spirit Barn.

The paid DLC, called December Lovely Cozies, will feature a range of new decorations for Moonstone Island. These include snowmen, which the developers at Supersoft have named Snowmelia and Frostopher, along with a Snowman House. Other items will include a snowboard, fuzzy rug and icicles. This DLC will be available for $3.99 and there will be a 15% discount for its first week.

This is the second round of seasonal DLC added to Moonstone Island. In October, Supersoft added a Halloween update to the game. Like the winter DLC, it contained new spirits and decorations, along with quality-of-life adjustments.

Moonstone Island is out now for PC, with a Switch version on the way. The winter DLC will be available on December 13, 2023.

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Supersoft announced Halloween is coming to Moonstone Island with a free update and paid DLC. Both will debut on October 27, 2023, with the add-on costing $3.99/3.99 EUR/£3.49.

The inclusions are, in many situations, vague. Supersoft confirmed that there will be new Spirits with the DLC. However, they haven’t been revealed yet. All we know is that paid add-on will be 10% off between October 27, 2023 and November 2, 2023. However, the one teaser below did show the DLC house and some other additions.

When it comes to the free update items, the team did share what they are and show an image. The Haunted House cosmetic option will be there. There will also be skeleton decorations, a gravestone, and similar items. Those were al shown in a social media teaser image.

In addition to Halloween items, other Moonstone Island update additions came up. People will be able to choose how long each day will be. There will be an option to expand the greenhouse. It will also be easier to manage inventory items, with one option being the ability to sort stacks around.

Moonstone Island is available now for PC, with a Switch version also on the way and Halloween DLC out on October 27, 2023.

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Moonstone Island is a game that is trying to be many things at once. On one hand, it’s a cozy life sim about setting up a farm, making yourself a little house, and maybe settling down with a friendly villager. On the other hand, it’s an expansive adventure game about monster collecting, uncovering dark secrets, and trying to survive against adversity.

It’s an interesting combination, and one that seems to come from Studio Supersoft seemingly throwing every influence they possibly could into Moonstone Island. On a surface level, it’s Rune Factory, where a simple farming life is combined with a series of seasonal-themed dungeons. There’s also a crafting system and inventory swiped out of Minecraft. Some of the house building aspects feel like they came out of recent Animal Crossing games, right down to the furniture shop having a similar layout. Combat is essentially every card battler out there, while your party consists of monsters you have pocketed like a certain popular Nintendo-exclusive franchise. All of this is wrapped up in a world that feels like a cross between Breath of the Wild and Wind Waker, but in the sky.

Bringing all these disparate elements together is ambitious. However, it’s also perhaps too much for a small indie team to manage, as most of my experience with Moonstone Island saw each these elements threaten to derail the others.

Let's start with the good points. Straight out of the gate, Moonstone Island is a gorgeous little game, with absolutely beautiful pixel art everywhere you turn. Character portraits are incredibly expressive. Exploring through the sky sees subtle shifts in the environment through the time of day, weather changes, and effects of the island biomes. Even things like islands in the distance are a neat little touch that gives everything life. I cannot fault how this game looks.

The life sim aspects of Moonstone Island are also strong points. There’s a decently satisfying gameplay loop involving building a little farm, doing some crafting, and slowly assembling your dream home. There’s a charming vibe as you build up your little lair on the hill, assembling barns and greenhouses while doing all the things you expect from games in this genre.

Your fellow village residents are charming enough, usually found managing their little shops before heading off to the tavern every evening. The game is eager to get you interacting with them, as it throws options for flirting and inviting them out on dates from the moment you first bump into them. It’s a little aggressive, but at least it should leave players without a doubt on who you can date. (Spoilers: it’s everyone.)

Sadly, having recently played Rune Factory 3 Special, I couldn’t help but compare these townsfolk to those in Sharance. They don’t quite hold up. Like I said, they’re charming enough, but they do blur together a little. They also feel much more obviously mechanical. The options to chat, joke, and flirt don’t even spark conversations. They just make a number go up or down above their head. Dates with characters also feel extremely short and under-developed. After the instantly memorable and likable cast of Marvelous’ game, these NPCs felt comparatively hollow.

The limitations of the NPC writing are only the beginning of the cracks that show in Moonstone Island’s adorable veneer. While the life sim elements are enjoyable, there’s a persistent sense that everything the game offers has been done better elsewhere.

The inventory is so similar to Minecraft, but the limited crafting mechanics in comparison made me wish I was playing that instead. Upgrading your house feels a lot like Animal Crossing, but it’s simply a shop purchase and lacks the charm of Tom Nook being your benevolent and omniscient landlord. Bringing up Rune Factory again, the farming mechanics suffered from a lack of that game's charged watering or random seed drops when harvesting crops.

This is only half the game though. You are also tasked with exploring a series of sky islands littered with resources, enemies, and dungeons. Your initial exploration tool is a balloon that drifts excruciatingly slowly through the sky. Eventually this can be upgraded to a cute little broom and ultimately a glider that can keep you soaring through the sky for hours. Islands come in five flavors, with the gentle earth and water islands, poison islands that excrete gas clouds you must weave around, and the deadly electric and fire islands.

On each of these islands you’ll encounter hostile Spirits, with a types matching the island you find them on. It’s your job to battle these Spirits and tame them, throwing food at them until they agree to follow you. This is where the obvious Pokemon comparison comes in, as you gradually build up a squad of critters you can use to battle one another. There are some fun designs here. Dusty is kind of cheating, since it’s blatantly just a soot sprite from Spirited Away. But there’s also Fishbo, a fishbowl on legs, or Emoshroom, a poisonous redcap with a haircut from the mid-2000s, who are both very silly and therefore essential to have on your team.

However, once again this is where Moonstone Island fails to live up to its obvious influence. I encountered some early frustrations when I found myself unable to head out and do some monster collection, despite being encouraged to. You see, you can only carry three Spirits in your medallion, and you can’t store any more until you build a Spirit Barn. Building this requires a whole questline, a ludicrous amount of wood and stone, and some rare items that mean you’ll be a few hours into the game before you can really engage with one of its main selling points. Oh, and you’ll also need to build feed boxes for each slot in your Spirit Barn before you can catch more Spirits. In other words, you’ll be doing a lot of busywork simply to obtain an electric bee.

Battles are also a real chore. Moonstone Island opted to use a card-based battle system, where your attacks are based on a randomly drawn hand from decks assigned to your party. Spirits have a health bar and an armor count, and this armor must be broken down to do more damage. So it was endlessly frustrating when the game refused to give me cards that broke armor while fighting tanky enemies. I don’t just mean I was drawing poor hands. I also found myself earning fewer of these types of cards during each level up, which simply decreased the chances of seeing them show up in future hands.

Managing the decks of your critters is also painful. You can only make modifications to move sets using talismans obtained from magical arches across the islands. These are one time use and only reset once a season. You then feed these talismans to your Spirits to upgrade or remove cards, or add new ones to their collection. This must be done one talisman at a time. If you’d like a quick option to simply shuffle a deck around in a menu like other games, you’re not getting it here.

This leads to a lot of frustration as your decks fill up with less useful cards, modifying the decks is needlessly tedious, and you’re often left to the mercy of RNG in battles. I often found it more useful to reload when a battle went poorly than to try and salvage a string of bad hands. I found no challenge or satisfaction here, only frustration.

Moonstone Island tragically gets in its own way. This game was made by a team of just three people, so I want to root for it so badly. But perhaps the size of the team is even more reason for greater focus on one of its different elements. There could have been a really good life sim in here. There also could have been an interesting Pokemon competitor. It could have been a fun card battler. It could have been a great open world exploration game. But by trying to be all these things at once, each of these elements ends up feeling underdeveloped, and the combination often doesn’t work.

There’s clearly a lot of ion on display here, but I can’t help but feel there is a clash due to the enormity of their ambitions. The end result is a messy, occasionally frustrating and often tedious game that fails to live up to its many influences. Moonstone Island has the potential to be genuinely great, and it’s a genuine that it isn’t.

Moonstone Island is available now for PC. A Switch version is in development.

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