The new demo for this cozy vampire farm sim gives you one week to decorate your spooky property

As a perfectly bite-sized treat for spooky season, the farm sim where you're a vampire has kicked off a quick demo to give us a taste of its pumpkin decor and midnight spellcasting. The first demo for Moonlight Peaks lets you play seven in-game days of foraging, farming, and decorating, with the option to take a snapshot of your creation once you're finished. 

For this demo I'm confined to my property, so there will be no checking out the town or meeting the local supernatural crew, but there's plenty to do on my farm. The first order of business, as ever, is planting a couple crops. Moonlight Peaks get points in my book for making it pumpkins instead of parsnips, which I've now planted in far too many far sims. 

I'm also set up with an upgraded set of tools in the demo so I can easily chip away at all the large trees, rocks, and iron veins on my property that I'd presumably have to wait a while to tackle in the full release.

I've got a lot of freedom to pick up and move all the pieces of my property as I see fit, from pathways to decor to the pre-built cursed chicken coop I was equipped with in the demo. The real star of Moonlight Peaks so far though is the spellcasting and potion brewing. 

With my wand I can cast spells for automatically watering my crops, moving trees without cutting them down, and making my crops mature faster. The spellcasting minigame, which has me follow the movements of a cursor around a circle, is just a smidge tricky on a gamepad, but it's quick and catchy as minigames go. I imagine the full release will have some kind of magic meter to prevent infinite spellcasting but I didn't seem to have any restrictions in the demo. To create potions, I have to grow magical herbs like Googly Garlic and Glow Ginger to combine into brews that give me infinite stamina for one night or increase crops gathered for a time.

Because I'm a vampire, my farm day begins at 4 pm and ends at 6 am and the cute and spooky nighttime aesthetic of Moonlight Peaks makes a great first impression. Aside from my nocturnal schedule, I don't get to anything particularly vampire-y in this demo aside from transforming into a bat form whose secret-area-unlocking purposes aren't showcased while stuck on my farm. Later on in Moonlight Peaks, the developers say I'll "unlock powerful vampire abilities" like enhanced senses of some kind and additional shapeshifting. For now, I'll just be growing cursed crops from home to prove to my dad Dracula that vampires can survive without sucking blood.

Moonlight Peaks is expected to launch sometime in 2024, so if farm and town simming is your thing, make sure to give this one a try while you can. The demo began today, October 26, and will be available for "a limited time," developer Little Chicken says. You can download the demo for yourself over on Steam.