I've talked at great length about my love of explormers on this feature and elsewhere, but a very specific subgenre I don't get to address nearly as often are what I've nebulously dubbed in the past as "hybrid RPGs". A hybrid RPG is in essence any game that has a major RPG component, usually the focus, and then any number of additional modes that ideally feed back into that main RPG progression in some way or else serve as distractions from the grind. Fishing that rewards healing items or extra cash for equipment, for example, or a puzzle mode that lets you build new weaponry from blueprints. My usual examples are games like Dark Cloud 1 & 2 (RPG + town-builder), Persona (RPG + socializing/dating sim), Rogue Galaxy (RPG + Factorio-style factory assembly puzzles), and - most pertinent to this week's Indie Game of the Week - Recettear (RPG + shop management).

Moonlighter is very much operating in a similar space to Recettear (which, in turn, expanded on a concept introduced in Dragon Quest IV with the Torneko Taloon chapter) in that the player is both an explorer of roguelike dungeons as well as the proprietor of a hub town storefront that serves said explorers. By finding materials and artifacts while dungeoneering, the player can sell those to the local adventurers and use the more useful components and the money from trading to fund the construction of their own equipment at the blacksmith's, or put that money towards making their store bigger and more feature-rich, or invest in new vendors that serve you and the town alike with their services. The progression is such that you're always struggling with each new dungeon - there are four total, each of which has three floors that must be quickly traversed - until you've picked up some of the materials found there, used those to make new equipment and curatives, and then take another whack at the boss with your now-competitive loadout.

However, putting the RPG aspect front and center like that slightly undermines how engrossing the shopkeeping aspect can be. There are no hard and fast rules about item values, for instance: part of the process is figuring out the sweet spot cost for every one of the game's items, selling it at a profit without alienating your customers with flagrant overpricing or letting them off too easy with severely underpriced goods that you take a loss on. Each store "session" has you running around restocking shelves with whatever you have to spare (a single dungeon trip will easily fill your backpack's twenty slots), keeping a close eye on customer reactions to your prices and adjusting accordingly, sorting out the occasional shoplifter, and - as your store grows - covering additional challenges like prioritizing priceless items by putting them in glass cases to increase their value further, or taking item requests from clients at a significant mark-up provided you can meet the demand.

The storekeep routine is just compelling enough that it serves as a welcome distraction from the roguelike RPG half, which is fun enough (it follows a very Zelda-esque dungeon format, not unlike The Binding of Isaac) but can occasionally cause some irritation with your limited weapon reach and how certain enemies seem to clip your hitbox despite being some distance away. There's also an omnipresent time-limit whenever you enter dungeons: dawdle too long exploring every dead end for chests and you'll get something akin to Spelunky's invincible ghost breathing down your neck, and he'll even show up during each floor's customary mini-boss fight to make it that much more "enjoyable." In addition, using the teleporter to go back to town carries a hefty fee; this price is higher still if you wanted to come back to the same dungeon seed right where you left it. The game's default difficulty is "Hard" for a reason, and you have to learn to live by its rules if you hope to get anywhere - earn money by selling your spoils, get better gear, and don't expect to waltz through each dungeon on your first visit because the second- and third-floor foes in each will simply overwhelm you without upgraded gear.

While my time with Moonlighter hasn't been wholly ideal - there's a bug in the PS4 version at least where taking along one of the newly added "pet" creatures (who fight foes and occasionally perform other duties) will cause the game to hang indefinitely when you warp back from a dungeon - but as an Indie successor to Recettear with a vaguely Hyper Light Drifter-esque art style it's been gratifying enough and I'd be the first to admit that I'm hooked on the game's cycle and am planning my next resource-gathering excursion as I write. I'm not that far from completing the second dungeon, so I'm probably going to see the whole thing through soon enough unless the difficulty curve goes totally Everest on me. Not without its flaws, but otherwise a worthy contender in an unfortunately uncompetitive genre.

Rating: 4 out of 5.