Moonglow Bay

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.

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.

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.

There are sparks of greatness all throughout Moonglow Bay but are almost all buried beneath a mountain of technical issues.

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.

Moonglow Bay on the Nintendo Switch is a fun, if not flawed, fishing game. I like using the boat to explore, find new fish by collecting data on them in my journal, plus there’s lots of tasks to complete, allowing you to rebuild the town, along with a pretty cool photo mode, but the performance issues hamper this relaxing voyage somewhat.

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.

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.

While it lacks a bit in structure and direction, this fishing adventure does have some charm