Design Analysis — Moonlighter

a creative take on the roguelike genre

Shopkeeping

In addition to the typical rogue-like gameplay, Moonlighter has a shopkeeper mechanic which I think is a very clever design for the following reasons:

handle player downtime

going ham on dungeons can cause player fatigue. Maintaining a cute little shop actually worked as a pretty good transition here.

loot management

Trash loot piling up and taking up all your inventory space is absolutely annoying. In typical RPGs, usually, you just sell them to some random merchant, which is just such a basic approach that creates no meaningful interaction(reminds me in WOW, there’s literally an addon just to auto sell trash in your bags). But in moonlighter, you can sell them in your own shop which creates engaging and interesting interactions we will get into next

buyer-seller relationship

we know that there are some pretty strong intrinsic emotions associated with scoring a good deal as a buyer. On the other hand, the feeling associated with making a profit as a merchant is actually just as strong if not more. It’s hard to define what exactly is happening in our brains here; outsmarting customers, independence, ownership… whatever it is, it feels fucking good when I sell my trash loot for a hefty price

Inventory Management

Another interesting design take I found was that some items, artifacts in this game specifically, need to be placed in specific spots in the player’s inventory. This adds another dimension of constraints to inventory management. I can’t really say I like it or not, inventory management has always been a pain in the ass in most games, but it’s definitely a creative take.

Risk and Reward

One last thing that stood up to me was being able to teleport back safely while in the dungeon. It creates a “fight or flight”, “risk and reward” situation that really engages players to commit to difficult decisions; “Do I pull out now and save my loot” or “Do I keep going and look for more treasure”. In typical roguelikes, death is very punishing. The Player will usually lose all his sweet loot and have to restart from 0 again. This teleport mechanic at least provides players with a choice, which makes the game feel less harsh and punishing. And if the player’s decision ends up being less fortunate, it’s on himself and not the game. (Key emotions: dilemma, owning decisions, gamble)