Dansk
Svenska
Norsk
Suomi
Deutsch
Italiano
Español
Português
Français
Nederlands
中文
Indonesia
Polski
日本語
한국어
Čeština
Ελληνικά
Türkçe
Tiếng Việt
عربي
Follow us
HQ
Videos
Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault
Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault - Interview with Digital Sun about the 3D sequel
We spoke with communications manager Israel Mallén to learn more about this anticipated sequel, which trades 2D pixel art for a fresh 3D approach, on top of adding several new and more complex systems and gameplay elements.
Audio transcription
"Hello everyone and welcome back to Gamereactor. Today we have a really interesting interview for you because I'm here with Israel Mallén, the Communications Manager at Digital Sun, to talk a little bit about Moonlighter 2, The Endless Vault. Now Israel, this is an exciting one and also a really interesting one for me because I'm coming into this quite blind. Obviously, our good friend David has seen a little bit of the game, but I haven't seen it myself, so this is all very fresh to me. So David has handed me a bunch of questions, which I'm hoping you'll be able to help out with today. So to begin with, Moonlighter 2, The Endless Vault, is described as the perfect introduction to the saga. So how have you built this game so that fans don't need to experience the original? Well, to be honest, Moonlighter is not a story-heavy game and probably won't always be. There's some knots here and there, but it's always a game about gameplay first. It's a shopkeeping roguelike where you get the loot in the dungeon and shop the loot in your shop. That's mostly it, so you don't really need a lot of knowledge of the previous game or about Moonlighter at all to enjoy whether it's the first game or this sequel. So it wasn't very difficult, very challenging to give players the reasons to play this sequel, even though they haven't tried the first game. So that wasn't a challenge at all, I'd say."
"Fantastic. One thing that does seem to be the case is that this is more of a roguelike experience than it is, say, an action RPG with roguelike elements. So with that being the case, can you explain why you went down this direction? Yeah, absolutely. The first game, all in all, was made by 10 to 20 people, depending on the moment. We were a way smaller team and we had a lot less resources and the situation has changed for us. We are bigger, we have more experience, we have Cataclysm of the Mist Seeker, other games in our background, so we know a lot more about making games. And this allows us to make more complex games. For example, the first Moonlighter was, as you said, and as I said in the Xbox event, it was an ARPG with roguelike elements, shifting dungeons, some procedural things here and there. But at its core, you had your weapons, you had your build, you know what to expect when you go to a dungeon. But here in Moonlighter 2, everything is changing every time you enter a dungeon, every time you enter your shop."
"From the perks, you will find the blessings, depending on the game, you know, the typical upgrades you find between rooms in a roguelike. We're incorporating that to spice things up, to make each run more challenging and more diverse. For example, you can find a perk that encourages you to go with, I don't know, with the Gauntlets, for example, which is a returning weapon, because they throw a projectile every time you hit. That's just an example."
"And other runs will encourage you to go for a more tanky build, where you will hit less to the enemies, but you'll be way more resistant, way more tanky. So that's an example of how dungeons have changed. You can say the same about the shop itself here, instead of knowing you had the first game, you had this mini game of trial and error, where you have to guess the price based on people's reactions. Here you will know the price, but you have a lot more space to haggle with clients and to get more out of each deal. For example, you can get in-run blessings, which, for example, let's say that every item from this specific region, dungeon, wherever you want to call it, will get an X% boost. And you have to play with those synergies, with those combinations, to make the most out of every time you open the shop. That's how we are making Moonlighter 2 a true roguelike and a more roguelike-oriented game compared to the first game. Okay, very exciting. And you did mention there a little about the perks in the dungeons. How often do you get them? How frequently do they appear? I suppose you gave some examples there, but how much can they disrupt a run when you're playing the game? Yeah, that's something we are discussing right now because the game is still being cooked and we need to balance some things here and there. But most of the time you will get them. Think of Hades, for example, or those games where you have to choose between getting a new ability or get more money or get more enemies with a certain reward. It's up to the players to choose where to orient their runs."
"I can give you a specific number of every three rooms, for example, you will get a perk. It's something that you will decide, but we are still taking the numbers. Of course. And you also mentioned briefly then about the shopkeeping and how that's been changed as well. With the tweaks that you've put into the game, how are you ensuring that the shopkeeping remains entertaining? And also, how do the selling streets work? Yeah, to be honest, the first game and especially the shop was very cozy. But when you were there for like 20 hours, 50 hours, it wasn't a game meant to be played for that long. We had the roguelike elements, but it wasn't a true roguelike in the sense that you could spend like a zillion hours in there. So the shop could get a bit repetitive, admittedly, and that's something we want to avoid in the sequel."
"How are we doing that? It's very simple. With the in-run upgrades, as I call them, every time you open your shop, you can get a benefit from selling certain items, for example, or for attending specific customers instead of others. There are a myriad of ways that we are not ready to show now that we will show in the future that you can interact with the customers and with the items you got in the dungeons. And with that, the selling streets results in, let's say that you, for example, I'm trying to put examples as I go. Let's say that you have played the first dungeon and you got a lot of items from there and you got the first pair of keys, a multiplier for those items, like 20% more every time you sell those. But the next pair of keys, every time you sell the same item, you will get a 20% more. I don't know if you get the idea, but they're always trying to make you be creative with the things you are selling because you have a limited space as in the first game. And we want to give players a lot more decision, a lot more room to be creative and to tweak things as they go in the run. So yeah, that's pretty much how it works."
"Exciting. And one of the other core areas that you've changed in this Moonlighter follow-up is that obviously there's a new town for people to explore. So what should fans be focusing on here?
And what should people be paying attention to when they're exploring this new area?
Yeah, well, Tresna, as we call this new village, works pretty much the same as Rhinocket, but it's way bigger. It has a lot more villagers, a lot more vendors. You can interact with a lot more people, not only NPCs and charming characters, but also vendors. As in the first game, you had mostly the guy selling you the weapons and the witch selling you the potions. There were more characters, but those were the main focus. But then here we have a lot more. We have, for example, there's a vendor focused on selling you items to improve your shop, which was impressive in the first game, to decorate it. And each decoration adds to the selling streak that I mentioned before. So for example, you can get a decoration that every time you sell items from a certain region, you will get a 50% boost in your sales. So it adds to the gameplay and also to the aesthetics, because we are not forgetting that whether it's in Tresna, whether it's in your shop, people are here also to enjoy the coziness of Moonlighter, and we want players to be for customization and for that coziness. So yeah, there's a lot more to do in Tresna than in the previous game. That would be a nice way to put it. Now, there are a few different biomes for players to explore, I believe, in Moonlighter 2. So can you provide a few examples of what these are and how they change, I guess, how they change in different situations? Yeah, for example, we've shown two of the biomes so far, and a boss from the third one, but not the actual biome just yet, that will come. And in these two first biomes you have, the first one is a desertic biome with a lot of sand, with a lot of impact of fire and sand. Those elements have an impact on the gameplay. For example, they influence the perks. There are a lot of fire-based perks there, like the one I mentioned where every time you heal with your gauntlets, although this might change until we release the game, every time you heal with your gauntlets, a flame comes out and hits enemies. That's something that you will only find in this specific biome. And when it comes to inventory management, which is also a huge part of Moonlighter and Moonlighter 2, of course, the moment you put a relic, certain relics can burn adjacent ones and gain money from that. So there's a lot of min-maxing the inventory management."
"And in the second biome we've shown so far, it's quite the opposite. It has a lot of nature, of plants, it's way more lively, and the wind here has almost all the impact.
There are weapons to, there are effects to push away enemies, there's this freeze effect that causes relics to stay in the inventory. So you have limited space and there's a cost and also reward every time you unfreeze there. So there are a lot of things changing between biomes and we don't want to spoil too much, but you can expect a lot of replayability and a lot of freshness every time you enter a dungeon, which is something that I enter here as a Moonlighter 1 fan, honestly. And I appreciate everything that game did right, but we had a lot of room for improvement in replayability-wise and we are trying. One of the areas as well that you've shown a significant change, you could say improvement, I'll say change, is in the art direction. Obviously you've gone to a purely sort of 3D setup now. Why did you decide this and what does it allow you to do that you couldn't previously? Yeah, I agree with you that it's a change. We love pixel art. We've made two games in pixel art and two games now in 3D, so we are kind of split between those styles and there's a lot that we could still do with pixel art, but we felt that for the size of the studio now, for the ambitions we had, combat-wise for example, 3D really adds a lot of a new dimension, if you allow me this one. It also allows a lot of space for more complex combat, for more challenging runs, so we wanted to push ourselves to create something more complex and more beautiful in a different sense. If you know what I mean, when I see 3D environments they are always more willing to let you put details, to let you put things in your eyes, so you can play, you can be a bit more placeful and we wanted to try that. So yeah, it's a new perspective, it's not necessarily better, we feel it's the right decision, but the first game will still be there, you can still enjoy Moonlighter in pixel art, so all fans will be pleased, I say."
"Now obviously Moonlighter 2, it has a lot of additional complexity to it in regards to all the different systems that you're incorporating. With all these different elements in mind, how are you going about approaching polishing and balancing and making sure that when the game does arrive it's in a very sort of tight and polished state? Yeah, as with all of our games, we are always trying to put the best games into the market, that's easier said than done, but we are very aware that you can't just throw a broken game into the market, or well you can, but we don't like that. And we are trying to, when it comes to balance, we are trying to make the game challenging enough for returning players, but also accessible enough for new players, because we can't forget that everything started by our love for the Zelda franchise mostly. We love Minish Cap, we love Wind Waker, and that resulted in Moonlighter, and we want to keep that coziness, that kindness to the gameplay, even though we are allowing for far more complex gameplay and far more complex experience. So we are trying our best to keep both audiences, and to keep everyone that loves Moonlighter attended and well served. And yeah, we're in the middle of that, so all I can say is you should trust us, because we already know how to make a good Moonlighter game, now we're trying to make an even greater Moonlighter game, and that includes making it more complex and making it more rich, I'd say. Absolutely. You mentioned about the Zelda inspiration there, and considering when we're recording this interview, I'd be remiss to ask about the Nintendo Switch 2. Do you plan on bringing Moonlighter 2 to the Nintendo Switch 2?
Well, the first Moonlighter had a home at the original Switch, and we are well aware that most of our players, or a great part of our players, is related to Switch. I'm very fond of Switch, and we can ignore that. All I can say for now is that consoles are in the horizon, and we are open to new opportunities, and that includes Switch 2, although for now we can only confirm our presence in PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC, of course. Absolutely. Well, Israel, as a final question for you then, a little bit more of an open question. There's a lot of different things that you're offering in Moonlighter 2, but what's one thing? If you had to choose one thing to say fans should really keep an eye out and experience this part of the game, what would it be?
To me, it has to be the shopkeeping part of the game, because there are other games trying that, but honestly, I don't think that there's a game blending so well the dungeon and shopkeeping fantasies as we do. And yeah, a lot of games have combat, but not a lot of games have forces you to put those objects into sale and deal with clients. That's very charming and very unique to Moonlighter."
"I'd say that the shopkeeping element is what makes us unique.
Fantastic. Now, obviously, you guys are still finishing up the game, so as just a final thing to squeeze in for anyone that's wondering, when can we expect Moonlighter 2 The Endless Vault to launch? Well, all I can say for now is that we have the news you want to hear prepared and we'll be able to tell you something very, very soon."
"Phew, exciting. I'm on the edge of my seat, Israel. Can't wait to hear more.
But yeah, this has been our Moonlighter 2 The Endless Vault interview. As Israel says exactly there, stay tuned. There's going to be a lot more exciting information about this game coming out very, very soon. And until then, for more about the game, be sure to stay tuned to your local Game Reactor region. Thank you all for listening."
Interviews
More
Videos
More
Movie Trailers
More
Trailers
More
Events
More