izigame.me

TL;DR AT BOTTOM

So this game is really cool in theory. The art is cute and fun, the concept of adding magic and flight to a farming sim is neat and the alchemy angle is probably cool too.
Bugs
I have problems with it though: Firstly it has several bugs and technical issues which have been detailed on the discussion boards. Primarily there are weird card interactions, some crashing, stuttering, glitches and freezing going on.
Empty World / One Dimensional NPCS
It also lacks content and feels somewhat empty. It basically rips off Stardew Valley with the village NPC vibe and talking, but it seems to have missed what actually made Stardew Valley charming. The NPCs lack personality and character.
I question the choice to sprinkle in POC, queer characters (everyone?) and gender non-conforming characters but then make the main character specifically a blonde white person and not give players character customization in a genre that has had character customization for over 10,000 years. It is ostensibly a representative and diverse game, but I'm stuck playing the most standard looking character in the western world. It's a bit weird and thematically contradictory, but that's just my opinion.
Also EVERYONE is flirtable/date-able for some reason, and friendship is entirely RNG with no indication if "talk/joke/flirt" will be successful or not. The amount of "friendship points" you gain from those interactions seems random as well.
Points probably AREN'T truly random, but it feels random and unsatisfying. It's really just "let me go to each of the 10 villagers, select talk 3 times, take the random values it gives me, and move on" and it feels more like a daily chore and instead of a narrative player choice which contributes to the feeling that the world is empty and pointless.
There is this giant world with tons of islands but most of them are unnecessary because the core gameplay loop is the same on every island. It's extremely repetitive and much of the progress is locked behind artificial grind in the form of: X resource is needed to upgrade Y so you can gather Z resource and then do it all over again. But why? What's my GOAL?
Alchemy
Your character has a specific set storyline which is that he/she is an "alchemist" but you don't even start off being able to DO that. It just seems weird to me that everyone identifies you as an alchemist, including tutorial parents, but you don't have any information on how to do that, where to do that, WHY you would do that, etc.
I never even got to the alchemy part before I put in for a refund because it wasn't explained beyond "combining plants is possible." in the very short tutorial (which often freezes for people)
Controls
The controls are finicky, un-intuitive and frustrating to use. One of the things in the game is that your little "spirit" (which is just a Pokemon) follows you around in the overworld ALL the time. You can make them stop that but some of those spirits have bonuses that only work if they are following you around. For example: the flufffox spirit has a bonus that gives your an increased chance at success to aforementioned completely RNG social interactions with the 8 NPCs in the world. But in order to gain that bonus, the flufffox has to follow you around in the over world constantly. Those little spirits get in the way SO much and it's very annoying. They block you from seeing and sometimes placing items, mining, cutting, digging, planting, harvesting.
Hitboxes
Speaking of those things, the hit boxes are very abnormal.
I had an issue where I was standing in the center of a 9 tile square and I was able to place a seed in 8 of the 9 titles, including the center tile which I was standing on, but not on the bottom middle tile, why? These types of weird inconsistencies require re-adjusting positioning to try to figure out just what is required to get something to work. Chopping trees and breaking rocks is very similar.
Sometimes I could hit them sometimes I was slighty too far, or too up, or too down or too something. Sometimes I was positioned just right to be able to hold down the Left Mouse Button (LMB) to continuously swing or hit, but sometimes, it wouldn't do it continuously so I had to repeatedly click the LMB instead of hold. Those inconsistencies to the controls caused a lot of headache so I tried all keyboard controls instead (which isn't really possible with the control scheme but I digress) I had a more reliable time using "E" on my keyboard to interact, but since movement uses WASD it's very awkward to try to move and use E to interact very quickly. And doing things quickly is very important.
Time
This game has a mechanic related to daytime similar to Stardew Valley. I don't LOVE that mechanic in Stardew Valley either but this isn't a Stardew Valley review it's a Moonstone Island review. I don't really like being forced into a limited time frame to play a game, it's moderately anxiety-inducing and makes an otherwise peaceful and chill game much less chill.
In Moonstone Island the limited time in the day is just bad. It also implements a stamina bar. I really think either one of those mechanics by themselves is a bit awkward, but both together makes for an extremely bad experience. The map is huge. Very huge. You cannot do what you need to do on the starting island, you just can't. Exploration to further islands is not only required, it's one of the selling points of the game: "Over 100 Islands to explore!" Right, but only in 10 minute chunks. The dungeons and mining caves are fun to explore, but knowing you need to do it quick and get back to your starting island means there is this sense of urgency that really just makes the whole experience kind of a tedious blur. "Let's just get through this as fast as possible."
To that end, it becomes more prudent to avoid enemies rather than fight them, which makes the entire Slay the Spire inspired card battler system take a back seat. For me at least.
Spirits
And speaking of the battle system: The idea of Pokemon elements is cool, but for all the reasons mentioned above related to time to explore, it's really worthless to do. And just like the NPCs, the "spirits" lack personality as well. They all look like fanfiction versions of pokemon, with the occasional fanfic digimon thrown in for good measure. Their abilities don't really make much sense (the starting abilities for the 1st 3 spirits are: electric bee - respawn to 10 health when you die. earth dinosaur - gain 1 rage every 3 rounds, and weird sheep - gain 1 power every time you take fire damage) outside of the starting 3 we had a fox (basically eevee) that makes you more charismatic. None of these abilities seem to pertain to anything fundamental or intrinsic to the spirits themselves. There is no backstory, flavor text, origin story, environmental information, or dialogue given about each spirit. Just what the spirit is, what it's element is, what it's unique ability does.

TL;DR:
This game feels like a love letter to Stardew Valley, Slay the Spire, and classic Pokemon games with a touch of witchiness, cottage-core and solar-punk thrown in for good measure. It has gorgeous pixel art, progressive themes and diverse representation.
However, the game has many disparate concepts, themes and elements going on and struggles to expand on them with any real, true depth.
Everything comes off as surface deep, and when taking more than a cursory glance it can all be pulled apart easily. From the unpolished controls all the way to the static set-piece like NPCs, it doesn't do anything it tries to do well enough for it to be worth the 30$ asking price.