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Moonglow Bay review: a relaxing fishing RPG that’s all about keeping it reelCatch of the day
Catch of the day
Everything in the seaside town ofMoonglow Bayhas seen better days. That includes you, a middle-aged accountant who’s moved out of the big city for a fresh start. But things never go quite to plan, do they? The moment-to-moment of Moonglow Bay is a chilled-out experience of getting out onto the waves, exploring various biomes, catching fish, and cooking them up to sell or gift to the townspeople. But within that is an exploration of things going awry, and letting go of old dreams in order to build new ones.
The fact that the game wants to tell its own story, rather than let the player run free, is evident from the beginning. The player character is somewhat customisable, but not through any kind of full creator. Instead, there are four appearances to choose from. Then, you pick another of the avatars to be your partner. You can choose pronouns for both yourself and them, regardless of appearance, but little else.
Moonglow Bay | Gameplay Trailer | Set sail on October 26thWatch on YouTube
Moonglow Bay | Gameplay Trailer | Set sail on October 26th
I (imaginatively) named my avatar Jay, but had I realised what Moonglow Bay was doing, I would have given them an unrelated name. Because the character isn’t designed to be a self-insert. And that’s fine: it’s what’snotoptional that’s much more interesting. In a stunning display of nominative determinism, their surname is always Fisher. They’re always from the city, and always have a 40+ year-long relationship, a grown-up daughter named River, and a dog named Muffin.
From this basis, Moonglow Bay can dig into its themes. The town used to be your partner’s home, and you’ve returned to fulfil their dream of setting up a marine-based street food stall. But the town is in ruin, all of its residents are afraid of the sea, and various (spoilery) events mean that setting up the business is going to be much harder than the Fishers ever expected.
The illustrations in your notebook are a delight.
In order to restore the bay, however, you also need to get to the bottom of its mysteries. The townsfolk are convinced that the sea is full of dangerous creatures, and will share these myths with you at any given opportunity. As it turns out, they’re not half-wrong. Moonglow Bay is actually full of weird and wonderful fish, from a square-bodied little guy just named “Dave” to the bosses scattered around the waters.
The visual designs of these bosses and their associated narratives are usually wonderful, but the way Moonglow applies its usual mechanics to them can be hit or miss. It doesn’t help that the controls (on PC, at least) never came to feel fully intuitive for me. For example, in most cases K is the main ‘interact’ key. But on the boat, pressing K just enters the cabin (which I did almost every time I wanted to go somewhere), and it’s L to drive. Usually it’s not a problem thanks to Moonglow Bay’s chill tempo, but these counterintuitive moments make for needless extra fuss all the same.
I wasn’t kidding about Dave.
However, there’s one boss fight that involves a timed puzzle that only causes stress. Nor is it the only example. For another boss, the hitboxes felt slightly off throughout. Not such a big deal when throwing a net towards fleas on the beach requires you to look away from them, but it becomes problematic when the game makes you think that you can’t open a door when you have actually completed its associated puzzle correctly.
But these small frustrations are soon forgotten. The game’s story keeps unravelling towards a genuinely tearjerking ending, digging into its themes of community, resilience, and rebuilding in surprising and consistently interesting ways. It keeps a steady, compelling rhythm, switching between the normal fishing and cooking to something more dramatic and then back again. And watching the town slowly come back to life, not despite setbacks but building on what they leave behind, is beautiful.
Just one more thing: Muffin is a cute dog, but I wish I could adopt one of the seals from the northern areas. Give Fisher a real fishing assistant.
