I almost skipped Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight because of how sweet it looks. A tiny priestess, a hand-drawn forest, a little leaf for a weapon.
It reads like a nap in game form. Then it knocked me flat about ten minutes in.
If you’re anything like me, you came for the pixel art and stayed to get bullied by rabbits and shielded knights. So here is everything I wish someone had told me before I picked it up.
What is Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight about?
It’s a 2D Metroidvania from 2016, made by a solo developer named rdein under the studio Bombservice. You play as Kaho, a young priestess walking into a cursed kingdom to try to set things right.
The look is gentle and the animation is gorgeous. The combat borrows a lot from Dark Souls, which is the part nobody warns you about.
If you liked the exploring-and-backtracking feel of games like Blade Chimera or Never Grave, you’ll feel right at home here. It’s cut from the same cloth, just smaller and quieter.
Start on easy or normal, and don’t feel bad about it
The game gives you a few difficulty options, and I know the temptation to prove something on your first run. Please don’t.
Higher difficulties mostly pack in more enemies and shrink your health bar, which means you get one-shot far more often. It isn’t a richer experience, just a meaner one.
Play on easy or normal for your first time through. You’ll actually get to enjoy the world instead of fighting it every step.
Learn to roll before you learn anything else
Your roll is the whole game. Tap the button and Kaho tumbles forward with a burst of invincibility frames, which means you can pass straight through an attack and come out the other side untouched.
This is the same trick that makes dodging in Souls games feel so good. If you played Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo, you already know the rhythm of timing a dodge into an attack.
The roll also gets you past those annoying shielded enemies. Roll behind them and hit their back, because their front will just shrug you off.
Spend your first hour getting comfortable with this. Everything else gets easier once the timing lives in your fingers.
Your bow is stronger than it looks
Kaho carries a bow with unlimited arrows, so you never have to worry about running out. Tapping fire feels a little weak at first, and a lot of beginners write the bow off because of that.
Here’s the part the game doesn’t spell out. If you hold the ranged button, the shot charges up and releases a burst of arrows for much bigger damage.
Get in the habit of charging when you have a safe second. It turns your dinky little bow into something that actually chunks bosses.
Don’t forget your leaf up close
Yes, your melee weapon is a leaf, and yes, it hits harder than the bow when you’re right next to something. The bow keeps you safe, but the leaf ends fights faster.
The trick is knowing when to switch. Snipe from range when enemies are on other platforms, then close in with the leaf when you can do it without getting clipped.
Jumping while you fire helps a ton, since enemies love to sit on ledges just above or below you.
The bells are your best friend
Scattered around the world are little golden bells, and they do a lot of quiet heavy lifting. They work like bonfires in Dark Souls.
Ringing one saves your game, lets you warp to other bells you’ve found, and refills your health, your healing items, and your item charges. You can even melee the bell for a quick save on the go.
Rest at them often. There’s no penalty for it, and dying with a lot of unsaved progress is the worst feeling in the world.
Use your Bellflowers, don’t hoard them
Your main healing item is the Bellflower, and it works almost exactly like an Estus Flask. You get a set number of uses, and they all refill every time you touch a bell.
That last part matters. Because they come back for free, there’s no reason to save them for a rainy day that never comes.
Heal the moment you’re low. A wasted Bellflower is nothing compared to a run you have to redo.
The little fairy code that saves boss fights
This one feels like a secret, and honestly it kind of is. During gameplay, press Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right.
Kaho summons a blue fairy that rains damage down on everything currently on screen. It’s a genuine lifesaver against tough groups and bosses.
You get one use per rest, and it recharges whenever you ring a bell. So going into a boss, treat it like a free bonus attack you’ve been saving up.
Spend your Munny on the right things
Munny is the currency, and just about every enemy drops a little when it dies. You’ll spend it at shops on new items and abilities.
Early on, one purchase is worth prioritizing above the rest. The Ring of Candor gives you a little sound cue whenever a room is hiding a secret, which saves you from bumping into every wall like a lost moth.
Attack-boosting items are also lovely for the harder fights. Just don’t blow your whole wallet the second you have coins, because the good stuff shows up a bit later.
Explore everything, then come back later
Like any good Metroidvania, Momodora rewards the curious. Two things are worth chasing as you wander.
Vitality Fragments raise your maximum health, and stacking a few of these early makes the whole game kinder. The Ivory Bugs are the hidden collectible, with twenty tucked away across the map.
You won’t be able to reach everything on your first pass, and that’s normal. Once you unlock new movement, wander back through old areas and grab what you couldn’t before.
You can turn into a cat, and you should
Partway through, Kaho learns to become a cat, and it’s as charming as it sounds. It’s also genuinely useful.
Cat form gives you a smaller hitbox and quicker movement, and it lets you slip through tight little tunnels that Kaho can’t fit in as a human. That opens up secrets you’d otherwise walk right past.
The trade-off is that you can’t use items or climb ladders while you’re a cat. So pop in and out of it depending on what a room needs.
Try to beat bosses without getting hit
This sounds like a challenge run, but it’s actually one of the best beginner tips I can give you. If you defeat a boss without taking any damage, it drops a powerful bonus item.
Those items make the fights that come after noticeably easier. So a clean win now pays you back later.
You don’t have to nail it every time. But when a boss finally feels manageable, it’s worth a couple of extra tries to walk away with the reward.
For the fights themselves, the pattern is always the same. Watch what the boss does, stay moving, and save your fairy code and summon items for the moments you can safely land big damage.
How Momodora made me feel
Here’s the thing I didn’t expect. A game this small and this pretty had no business being this satisfying to finally understand.
The first few hours felt like a wall. Then the roll timing clicked, the bells started feeling like little rest stops, and suddenly I was gliding through rooms that used to wreck me.
It’s short, only around five or six hours, and it never overstays its welcome. If you go in patient and let yourself learn its rhythm, Momodora turns from frustrating into one of the calmest, most rewarding little adventures I’ve played.
And if you catch the indie bug afterward, we’ve rounded up plenty more worth your time in our list of indie games better than most AAA releases. Trust me, there’s a whole cozy-but-tough rabbit hole waiting.
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Images in this article are from the Momodora: Reverie Under The Moonlight page on Steam and used under Fair Use