Moonglow Bay is the best video game I played in all of 2022, and the fact that I am publishing this in August 2023 probably gives you a good idea of how my productivity and mental health have been lately.
If I had to sum up the state of video games in 2022, my answer would be ‘… Pass.’ It’s not that nothing happened, but not a lot of interesting stuff happened, in my opinion. Zelda got delayed, we got a new Pokémon that’s pretty similar to the old Pokémon, Blizzard continues to just be the fucking worst, and a new Sonic game came out and – you won’t believe this – some people think that it was really good, and some people think that it was actually pretty bad. This has never happened with the release of a Sonic game before.
So it’s no surprise that I don’t really feel like writing a year-end round-up of the best things I’ve played, even though they practically never include anything that actually came out in that year anyway. What did I play in 2022 that was actually released in 2022? The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe, that was great. There’s a developer named DaisyGames who makes interesting variations on Sokobon puzzle games, I played a few of those. Trolley Problem, Inc. was fun, and an excellent example of British humour not really landing outside of the UK for some people (it’s a game where you’re given a series of comedically exaggerated trolley problems, and criticized for whatever option you pick, and some people didn’t like that there was no ‘right’ answer.) And apologies to The Legend of Tianding, a dynamic and excellent beat ‘em up with stylish design, slick, responsive controls, and captivating personalized gameplay. This would have been my Game of the Year if not for Moonglow Bay, and ever since I finally finished that Sockventure review, The Legend of Tianding has replaced it as ‘that game I should really get around to writing about, sometime’. Other than Moonglow Bay, of course.
But Moonglow Bay snuck in right at the end – literally, I started it on December 1st – and swept the nominations, of which there were… basically none. But regardless, I absolutely love this game, and I wanted to explain why because a) It’s fantastic, b) It’s currently sitting on a ‘Mixed’ review score on Steam because it apparently launched with some bugs which are no longer present, c) I’m trying to get into the habit of posting at least one article a month since I apparently have a patron now (?!??? How?) and d) … Honestly, I would not expect to enjoy this as much as I did.
Let me clear about something; The Legend of Tianding is extremely action-oriented, with some Mark of the Ninja-style level traversal (and secret-scouring,) but solid combat in which you beat up enemies, then steal their weapons (staffs, guns, batons, swords, grenades, and many, many more) and use them to fight back against crowds of bigger enemies, and you can then steal their weapons, etc. Fun, frantic, and fast-paced… which I guess is the same as ‘frantic’, but I wanted the alliteration. And Sockventure is a little bit Super Meat Boy and a little bit Celeste and entirely a well-sculpted 2D platformer. Both of these games are fairly challenging, which is probably why I liked them so much, because I am a thrill-seeker and a hardcore gamer 101, and I unironically think the difficulty in I Wanna Be The Guy is perfect.
Moving on to Moonglow Bay; uh, Moonglow Bay is a fishing sim.
Yup, that’s about it. Also with a few ‘Baby’s first Cooking Mama’ minigames thrown in to turn the fish you catch into food, which you can sell for ‘shells’ to repair or upgrade your boat. And there’s an aquarium which you can populate with every new species of fish that you catch, and… again, that’s about it. If you’re ‘hooked’ – heh heh – by this, then I’m very happy for you and you don’t really need to read any more, but I’m writing this specifically because unlike an aggressive Mahi Mahi in Resting Crag waters facing a Poise Rod equipping with the Jig Lure and High Bait, I would not be hooked by this. I’ve always been open to a little bit of everything, but I tried one Harvest Moon game and bounced straight off of it, and I have no urge to even start Stardew Valley without clearing at least a month from my calendar in case I end up liking it, so I have no idea how a fishing sim shot to the top of my list of recommendations. But having played it and loved it for about thirty-five hours, I can at least make some guesses.
But enough beating around the Blushing Cuttlefish; instead of talking about how surprised I was to love this game, let’s start talking about why I love this game. And I love it so much that I’m going to try to do it in a continuous, linear fashion, rather than turning this into another ‘Top 5 reasons Moonglow Bay is great’. Although since I am trying to sell you on this as quickly as possible, if I was going to write a bunch of snappy headings, they would probably be ‘A complete lack of anything resembling pressure or time restraints,’ ‘Unlike a game like Animal Crossing, catching every species of fish is a reasonable and attainable goal to work towards,’ ‘The story is good too,’ and the point that I would be starting with, ‘The game is not afraid to spit in the face of realism and/or common sense for the sake of being accommodating to the player.’
If that’s a bit of a mouthful, I think it would be easier to just provide an example. In the prologue/tutorial at the start of the game, you catch a fish. There is then a time-skip to three years in the future, and shortly after this, there’s another brief tutorial where you cook a fish into a delicious meal that you can sell for money shells. The fish you caught three years ago is still in your inventory, and it’s still good. On the one hand, uh, boo! Plothole alert! Furiously ringing my CinemaSins bell – ding ding, that’s not very realism! On the other hand, it’s incredibly convenient for the player, and that’s Moonglow Bay in a nutshell.
In Moonglow Bay, the fish you caught three years ago in the tutorial is still good to sell or cook. In Moonglow Bay, you can stay awake for infinity hours, and the only effect on gameplay is that very occasionally, the player character will let out a little yawn and then resume doing whatever you were in the middle of doing. In Moonglow Bay, no time will pass while you cook seventeen lobster rolls and nine steamed purpletails, and you can then carry them around in your pocket for a week, then put them in the vending machine outside of your house and not only will they still be fresh, but you’ll get top-dollar for them by the end of the day. Moonglow Bay is entirely about making the player experience as comfortable as possible.
That’s not to say the game doesn’t offer a serious challenge; if you want to collect everything, get to know everyone in town, renovate all of the buildings and donate one of every fish to the mandatory fish museum, you’ll need to put in the effort. But it never feels like putting in an effort, it feels more like relaxing on the side of your schooner (inaccurate description of the in-game boat, but it’s just so fun to say) on a lazy Sunday afternoon, waiting for a bite but not really needing one, just listening to the waves roll by. It’s really good, is what I’m saying.
Moonglow Bay opens with a short tutorial in which you are guided by your significant other to catch a fish. Given that you will be catching hundreds if not thousands of fish during your time in the bay, it’s essential that this will be simple and straightforward, but not boring. Moonglow Bay accomplishes this well with a fairly standard set-up; you cast your line, wait for a bite, then reel in the opposite direction that the fish is swimming, trying not to cede any space but also making sure that the line doesn’t snap. Simple, but satisfying nonetheless.
But that’s not the only way you can catch fish; there’s also… nets! Just park your boat next to where you can see a group of fish shadows, and cast your net over them all. If you want to get them all in one go, you’ll have to wiggle the net back and forth a little bit, which is consistently just enough of a challenge that you’ll feel like a pro whenever you pull it off, and you’ve caught five fish at once! Usually none of a particularly rare of interesting species, but it’s a quick way to expand your collection, and they cook just the same. God, that sounds sinister. It’s not supposed to; cooking and selling meals is how you make money shells to upgrade your boat and stuff.
Fishing is also simple enough to be easy, but there are enough options to satisfy the more complex gamer; there are different rods and different lures that you can use to catch fish. Every fish in the game falls into one of three categories; fast, which are weak but quick, and will quickly change direction, so they’re more likely to test your reflexes if you want to keep reeling them in, resilient, which are slower-moving but stronger and tougher to catch quickly, and aggressive, which is a balance between the two. On top of the normal, or ‘balanced’ rod that you start with, there are three rods that specify in catching a specific type of fish, and three lures that function the same way. If you’re thinking “Oh, great, this means I have to constantly switch between rods and lures to catch everything!” then ha ha ha, NOPE! While there are a few species that are difficult to catch without experimentation, nearly all of them can be caught with your starting rod, if you just switch lures every once in a while.
But what about catching multiple fish at once? Well, complete enough favours and improve the town enough, and you can buy the multi-lure, which, as the name suggests, can catch up to three fish at once. And you can also win a fishing line that doesn’t even use bait, it’s just tossed over the side of the boat and you can catch up to five fish at once – any five, even some of the big ones – as long as you can complete the world’s easiest quick-time event by tapping one of your controller buttons as the icon pops up.
In addition to line-fishing and net-fishing, there’s also ice-fishing… which I honestly never used, it was fine but a little more fiddly and strict on the timing than just regular fishing, and there are no exclusive fish locked behind it. And you can also buy lobster traps and lay them out with bait to catch some of the rarer crustaceans on your list, and they actually fill up pretty quickly, just a day after you’ve set them down. We could talk for hours about the nicest sounds in video games – the Kirby dance, Link picking up a heart container, Ace Attorney’s “Objection!” or the sound of the console turning off as you decide to stop playing Cyberpunk 2077 and do something worthwhile instead – but one of the most pleasant sounds in recent memory is the jingle of the bells on the lobster traps when they’re full, as they go off just as your boat approaches them, but when they’re still just off-screen.
But I’m getting a little ahead of myself; sure, you have all of these ways of catching fish, but why? What’s the point of it all? What’s the story in Balamory? Well, I mentioned that the game opens with a brief fishing tutorial delivered by your significant other. You can choose to play as either an old man, old woman, young man or young woman. I chose the Old Man because I’ve been listening to a lot of Neil Young lately. If you’re too young to get that reference, thanks, you’ve made me feel old and worthless. Regardless, you catch a fish, and it’s a nice, casual and heartwarming moment that feels both very special, but also kind of throwaway, as if this could have happened on any day; after all, you’re a couple who live near the coast, own a small boat, and you can go fishing whenever you want. The future is looking bright.
…
Suddenly, it’s three years later, which is also three years since the disappearance of your spouse, who went sailing and neither them nor their boat have been seen since. You’re not handling it badly, but you also don’t seem to really be handling it at all, having spent the last three years basically just waiting for news that you know isn’t going to come. Your routine is disrupted, however, when your daughter drops by for an extended visit, having taken leave from their job, in order to gently encourage you to move on. I felt a little bit called out by this, because upon their arrival, the first thing you have to do as the player is move around their house picking up the trash and empty take-out boxes that have accumulated in order to make the place presentable, because you were too unmotivated to do so before you had company. It made me feel called out because I frequently have to do this, and I don’t even have the excuse of having lost my significant other in a boating accident.
Your relative has a plan to get you out of your funk, though. You have nothing but free time, you are great at fishing, and Moonglow Bay – the place, not the game – is small and homely enough that preparing and selling some simple dishes might actually have a substantial impact on the economy, and maybe even attract some tourists. So with their encouragement – and the rest of the townsfolk, who are all happy to see you out and about for the first time in a while – you get your boat out of storage and set sail on a journey of self-discovery, self-recovery, and cooking lots and lots of fish fingers and fish cakes, because they’re the recipes you started with.
While there are some areas that will take time (and boat modifications) to reach, one of the great things about Moonglow Bay is that from the moment you set out, a huge chunk of the map is already available to you. There are still plenty of discoveries to be made – you’ll need a smaller boat to get here, an icebreaker to get here – but around half of the entire world map is at your beck and call from the moment you set off, giving you easy access to about 30-40% of the game’s species, straight off the bat. And a wider range of fish gives you wider range of recipes to cook.
You can also just sell the fish outright, but this would take a lot longer (although it’s tempting when you have a hundred or more Moon Eels that you’re not using for anything,) so this brings us onto the cooking. When I called this ‘Baby’s First Cooking Mama’, that was not intended as a put-down in any way. There are some basic Cooking Mama-style minigames that make up every recipe, and these usually include either carefully-timed button presses (chopping, filleting, frying) or moving a cursor around, trying to keep it in a highlighted area that moves around (washing, boiling.) There are only six different actions that you can take, but it’s good that it’s relatively straightforward, because cooking a recipe perfectly three times increases your mastery of that recipe, from Novice to Intermediate to Advanced, and most recipes in the game are unlocked by mastering previous recipes.
There is something of a difficulty curve, because later recipes require many, many more steps to complete; it’s not uncommon to have to wash, chop and fry at least three times in a single recipe, in addition to other steps. Most advanced recipes also require a filleting knife, which you have to buy at the fish market, where you can also buy some upgrades that let you cook several meals at once. On the one hand, cooking eight meals at once only counts as cooking it once for the purpose of increasing your mastery, but it also helps you to make money significantly faster. On the other hand, make a mistake while cooking ten lobster rolls at once, and you have ten slightly substandard lobster rolls, which sell for slightly less and will not increase your mastery at all.
There are lots of things that I love about this cooking system, mainly that the in-game timer completely stops throughout the process, so if you want to drop by the aquarium but it’s already 18:00 (it closes at 19:00) and you’ve just remembered that the owner, Marina (heh, I get it,) asked you to cook her some grilled octopus if you have the chance, then you can take as long as you need to give her a perfectly-cooked meal in addition to dropping off any new species that you’ve found.
And that’s another thing; every little thing that you do in this game positively effects every other thing. Donated lots of new species of fish to the aquarium? That helps tourism, meaning that you’ll receive a little more money for every sale that you make. Used some of your shells to renovate the town? That has the same effect, bringing in more people which helps the economy. I could predict that more cynical players might not be wowed by this, especially the implication that all it took to radically improve the town was for someone to cook five hundred fish finger sandwiches, but I found it kind of charming, in the same way that in Ace Attorney games, you can take down an international smuggling ring, or overthrow the corrupt leadership of a nation, solely through the power of being a really good lawyer. It’s like that, but with sashimi. It feels less like you’re doing a load of a busywork for a town, and more that symbolically, you kind of… are the town, and its success is your success.
Once you’ve gotten the hang of sailing, catching fish, returning, preparing meals, donating new specimens to the aquarium and lather, rinse, repeat, it won’t take long before you have more money than you know what to do with. Some of the more advanced recipes in the game – the ones that bring in the big bucks – require you to spend a considerable amount of money – shell out, if you will, heh heh heh, wait please don’t go, I can do better, I promise – on other ingredients before you can cook them. In another instance of prioritizing convenience over realism, you don’t need to go anywhere to buy the ingredients; if you have the money, then when you select the recipe, the ingredients will just magically appear in your fridge.
In conclusion, cooking is a basic but fun way to combine two of your primary goals; to level up your abilities, and also to make a boatload of money. I can’t remember how many times I returned from a fishing trip and went straight to the kitchen, with the only goal being “If I can make three perfect Rainbow Rice Bowls then I can unlock Seared Unagi Nigiri, and I’d also like to get to advanced on Fish Burgers, and maybe make a start on the Ruby Glazed Whole Fish.” And then, an hour later, I would leave the house with all of these cooked meals, ready to stock up the vending machine outside my house (and the second outside the tech store, and the third outside the aquarium) and I would suddenly realise that I had cooked around, uh, twenty-thousand shells worth of food. When I started placing my very first meals in the vending machines, I tried to arrange them like “One Crab Rice, one Fish Chowder, one Fish Kebab, then one Fish Chowder and one more Crab Rice to finish,” and by the end I was just throwing twenty Lobster Thermidors and Shrimp Po Boys right next to each other, knowing full well that twenty Lobster Thermidors would set the buyer back thirty-thousand shells.
There are other reasons to cook meals too though; every other inhabitant of the town has their own schedule, and there are twelve specifically who you can ask “Hey, I’m getting back into the swing of cooking, want me to prepare you anything?” and if you have the recipe available, you can give them their requested meal once a day over five days, and they’ll be extremely grateful and also gradually reveal a little backstory, either related to themselves, their relationship with your spouse, or the town itself. After all five meals, they’ll ask if they can sign your journal, and you have a double-page spread specifically for ‘friendship stamps’ that you have collected.
You can also cook meals in response to requests that are posted daily on a message board near the town entrance. It’s usually just someone saying “Urgent! Need fish burger delivered to lighthouse!” which, to be fair, is the exact kind of message I would be leaving on the town message board if I lived in a lighthouse. These are fine, and you should definitely do a couple of them, just to get a feel for them, but I never paid them that much attention. You’ll get a reward of shells or some ingredients, but nothing too game-changing.
The main way you’ll interact with the town once you get into the swing of things, is renovating. None of the buildings of Moonglow Bay are on the verge of collapse or anything, but they could use a good clean, maybe a fresh coat of paint, a new pathway or something of the sort. Every area of town that could use this has a little sign asking for donations, and since you’re the only person in town capable of doing anything, it’s up to you to fund these renovations. Not that they’re very expensive; for comparison, you might be asked to pay a thousand shells to renovate a building that you’ve walked past dozens of times on your way to the aquarium. You can make a thousand shells by selling eight Fish Pastries. And every time a building is renovated, you get a cute little storyboard – it would be nice if it changed depending on the type of building you were fixing up, but I can understand why it remains the same – and then the building actually changes in the town. Some of the buildings even offer new services, although these are mostly mandated by the plot, so you’ll be unlikely to miss them. This is how you get the sea market to reopen, which lets you buy the meat cleaver and fillet knife, which gives you access to more advanced recipes.
Another reason to renovate the town is that your efforts are recognized, and you gradually begin to unlock new abilities at the Town Hall; a multi-lure for catching more than one fish at once, a fishing line that lets you catch up to five, and even… a moped. Walking around town is never slow, but since several of the buildings which offer vital services have opening and closing times that they adhere to rigidly, it’s nice to know that you can hop on your moped and zip over to the Boat Shop and pick up that reinforced hull before they close. Speaking of which!
Upgrading your boat is never too necessary, with a few plot-mandated exceptions, but on top of reinforcing the hull and having repairs done, you can increase your top speed, add a bunk so that you can sleep without having to return home (not that you ever really need to,) and even increase the size of your cabin again to the point where you have a second fully-functioning kitchen and can cook dishes out at sea. It’s pretty basic stuff, but it’s still satisfying, even if you never upgrade your boat to the point where it does things that are too wacky.
… Yes, the boat is flying.
Even when I wasn’t discovering new species and was just restocking my supplies, I had a really great time just sailing around for four or five days, catching a ridiculous amount of fish with rods, lines and nets, setting lobster traps, and just generally having a very chill and relaxing time. The game even notifies you every time you catch a fish that’s a new record in terms of weight, so even if you just catch a bunch of fish that you’ve already caught before, you might get a new Frost Octopus record.
You can also clean up the various debris and rubbish littering the high seas; this doesn’t even provide you with any advantage, but it feels good and I kept doing it anyway. A little girl near the start of the game asks you to do it. The townspeople will also offer you tips on new types of fish that you can catch, although their tips are always… well, stupid – they’ll always provide you with a nickname for the fish that you want, and until you deliver the fish to the aquarium, that’s the name they will be known as. Although given that some of the real names of the fictional fish in this game include the Unicorn Lobster, the Baritone Ling (shaped like a trombone,) and the Piglett Bass, maybe they’re not so far off the mark after all.
Speaking of which! Moonglow Bay has phenomenal writing in this regard, because every single species of fish you catch has a short description accompanying it, and these range from slightly silly to laughably ridiculous. The Piglett Bass, for instance, apparently likes to eat acorns and befriend anthropomorphic toys. The Unicorn Lobster grants a single wish, but with a tragic consequence… namely, that it won’t come true. The Singing Clam made local headlines upon discovery, until everyone realised that it only knows one really annoying cover song. There are 151 of these fish, each with their own short comedic tidbit.
What sets Moonglow Bay apart from the competition, I feel, is that catching all of these fish is a difficult but not too difficult – and not too time-consuming – task. To put it another way, I’ve played eight core-series Pokémon games, and I haven’t 100%-ed any of them… at least until last year, when with the help of a friend, I completely completed Pokémon Yellow. But I’ve played two Pokémon Ranger games and I 100%-ed them both easily and with a smile on my face, because… there were only like, seventy Pokémon to collect, and none of them were in particularly obscure or difficult locations. Compare and contrast to the potentially hundreds of hours it would take to complete another game in a similar genre.
Let me explain something about my initial experience with Animal Crossing; I’ve only ever played the GameCube original, and I (unsurprisingly) only managed to completely fill up one entire wing of the town museum. It was the wing that contained all of the fossils and dinosaur bones, and it took months, and I felt proud and happy when I had finally completed it, and I was wondering what kind of reward I would potentially get for doing this, and I got… one line of dialogue. The owner of the museum – an owl who I have forgotten the name of (Hooters? It can’t have been Hooters,) because the game clearly means that much to me – said something like “Gee, wow. Thanks.” The end. Great way to reward me for all that effort, Hootsworth.
In Moonglow Bay, upon donating the final specimen of fish to the aquarium – Blathers! That was it. The owl was Blathers. Sorry, that was going to bug me all day – then Marina thanks you for your effort, and then you even get a nice little speech where she says something akin to “This a huge achievement! I know it might feel a bit like an anti-climax, because I have nothing to give you, but this will seriously help draw more people to the town, and if you ever want to drop by and hear how these little fellers are doing, or ask me about them, then I’ll be right here. Thanks again!” It’s not quite a “Way to go, you’ve unlocked the Infinite Rocket Launcher, I’ll attach it to your boat now. Whoa! And just in time, it seems; the bay has been invaded by ninja-pirate skeletons, you’d better get out there and start blasting!” but it’s still a really fun way to cap off your accomplishment.
And it’s an accomplishment that I had fun doing because filling up the museum in Animal Crossing, without trading things with friends, would have taken literally a year. Partly because of the seasonal species, but also because of how rare some of them are at the best of times. Do you know how long it took me to stock the aquarium of Moonglow Bay to 100%? Thirty-five hours. Unrelated, but do you know how long it took me to beat the game? Thirty-six hours. That was it. It was a goal that I could realistically work towards and make a good amount of progress on during every play session. It only took even that long because I insisted upon unlocking every recipe in the game and achieving an advanced mastery in all of them.
I’m not kidding about wanting to try Stardew Valley someday, but it’ll have to be a day where I have nothing to write, nothing else to play, nothing else on my to-do list, and won’t have anything else on my schedule for at least a week or two. I’m sure that Stardew Valley is amazing, but there aren’t nearly enough games in this genre that have a set beginning, middle and end, and can be finished to absolute completion in the span of a week. Moonglow Bay is one of those rare games, and it’s also probably the best.
But I’m not trying to elevate Moonglow Bay by putting other things down; just to clarify, I could easily play Stardew Valley for just an hour or two per day for a month and probably have a great time, but… I wouldn’t; if I enjoyed it, I would marathon it in several nine-hour sessions until my boss finally figured out that I didn’t really have pneumonia, and fire me. And that’s not Stardew Valley’s fault. But it’s nice that I have a game like Moonglow Bay that I can start and finish without taking up too much time.
One of the reasons I wanted to write this is because oddly enough, Moonglow Bay is still sitting at a ‘Mixed’ reception on Steam. I understand that the game was apparently much more buggy when it was first released, but I didn’t encounter a single bug in my time in the game, except for the Rhino Sand Fleas you can catch on the beach to turn into bait. So if you’re even a tiny bit curious if you would enjoy this title, please consider giving it a try, or at least adding it to your wishlist. Because even if Moonglow Bay 2 was just the same story set in a different town with different fish, it would still pretty easily be one of my top ten games of the next year too.
Moonglow Bay is my 2022 game of the year, and I hope I’ve been able to explain why.
Thanks for reading!
-Dopefish
…
P.S. Oh, I almost forgot. You can pet the dog.
The Dopefish 