Why Early Access?

HearthMoon is built around one idea: a village feels alive when its people can really talk with you, remember you and live lives of their own. That idea runs through every system (conversation, memory, trade, crime, building and survival), and the only way to tune hundreds of unscripted conversations is to hear them in real play. Early Access lets us shape the villagers, the world and the main story together with players, instead of guessing in private.

Approximately how long will HearthMoon be in Early Access?

We expect HearthMoon to stay in Early Access for about 6–12 months. The biggest milestones are the main story, conversation-driven quests, and making the local AI run reliably on a wide range of PCs. Player feedback may change that estimate; if it does, we will say so in our development updates.

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?

The full version is planned to include the complete main story: a mystery told through the villagers themselves, where the trust you earn decides what you learn and how it ends. We also plan conversation-driven quests that grow from what villagers need and what you say to them; deeper conversation, persuasion and memory; selling to merchants at prices shaped by your relationship; more dangerous and intelligent enemies; reworked Warrior battle arts and new spells; more life in the catacombs, the market, the tavern and the houses; new tricks for your dragon; and work on performance, presentation and accessibility. These are goals, not guarantees, and their scope and order may change with testing and feedback.

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

The current build is a playable single-player village and wilderness. You can talk to any villager by voice or text, trade at a 12-stall market whose merchants keep their own hours, eat and play poker at the tavern, build on land you own, fish, farm, mine, cook and craft, and live with the consequences of crime. You can tame a baby dragon that obeys spoken commands, grow as a Warrior, Ranger or Mage, and face the cemetery's undead, the catacombs and the Dragon Knight, and the werewolf on blood-moon nights. The main story and conversation-driven quests are not in the game yet. Expect bugs, uneven performance, unfinished visuals, and AI replies that are sometimes slow or odd. Saves may not carry over between major updates.

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?

HearthMoon is $19.99 during Early Access. We plan to raise the price to $29.99 at full release, as the main story and other content arrive, and we will announce the change before it takes effect.

How are you planning on involving the community in your development process?

Regular development updates will be our main way to talk with players, and we read every report. The most useful reports include the steps to reproduce a bug, your PC specifications and performance, and examples of conversations that worked or went wrong. We will share what we are working on and explain the changes we make. Player feedback will directly shape our priorities, though we cannot promise to build every suggestion.

What is included in Early Access?

The full HearthMoon sandbox as it stands today: the living village of Emberwick, where you can talk to any villager by voice or text and they remember you; a market of 12 staffed stalls and a tavern with hot meals and poker for in-game gold; building your own house on a village lot or out in the wilds; fishing, farming, mining, cooking and crafting; taming and raising a baby dragon; Warrior, Ranger and Mage paths with battle arts and spells; the catacombs and the Dragon Knight; and blood-moon nights with the undead and a giant werewolf. You also get a character creator for your hero. The main story and conversation-driven quests are still in development and will arrive in future Early Access updates.

Will I have access to the product during the entire Early Access phase?

Yes. Buying HearthMoon in Early Access gives you the game for the whole Early Access period, every update released during it, and the full release when it comes, at no extra cost.

How is AI used in HearthMoon's gameplay?

HearthMoon uses generative AI so that its villagers, and your baby dragon, can understand you and answer in their own words. Walk up to any villager and press E to talk by typing, or speak through your microphone (press V to turn it on or off). The villager replies in subtitles and out loud, based on a written character card for that person (personality, job, family and what they know) and on facts the game supplies, such as prices, stock, the time, the place and who is nearby. Villagers remember what you tell them and what they have seen.

Our dynamic quest system will also use AI to create quests. Villagers turn their own needs (a hope, a fear, their trade or what is happening in the village) into quests they offer you in conversation, in their own words, and you can haggle over the reward. The game's own code sets what each quest asks for and pays, checks that it can be completed, and tracks your progress, so the AI cannot invent an impossible task or a reward the villager cannot pay. Dynamic quests are in development and will arrive in Early Access updates.

The AI can also suggest what a villager does next, but only from a fixed list of actions that the game's own code checks before anything happens.

What technology powers the AI?

All of HearthMoon's AI runs locally on your PC and is installed with the game. Conversations are not sent to any online AI service, and no account, subscription or internet connection is needed for them.

Villager dialogue comes from Qwen3.5-4B, an open-weight language model, run with llama.cpp. When you speak, Whisper speech recognition turns your words into text, and the villagers' voices come from Kokoro text-to-speech. Both also run locally. Because everything runs on your own graphics card, replies can be slower on lower-end PCs.

How is AI content moderated?

Several safeguards run on your PC every time the AI speaks.

Each villager speaks only from its own character card and the facts the game supplies, and is instructed to stay in character and inside the game world. Your words are treated as conversation, not as instructions, and cannot change the game's rules. The AI also cannot change the game by itself: every action a villager takes and every quest's terms are decided or checked by the game's own code.

A content filter checks every sentence the AI generates before it is shown or spoken. It blocks slurs and explicit sexual language, and it blocks any sentence that pairs a word about children with an intimate or physical word. A blocked sentence is thrown away and the villager tries again in its own words; if that also fails, the villager reacts without speaking. Every blocked line is written to a log file on your PC.

Child villagers can never be attacked or harmed, and the game keeps them out of romance, gambling and trade.

Is there a way to report or block unwanted AI content?

Yes. To report something a villager said, email us at [email protected] with what was said and roughly when; a screenshot helps. Every line the filter blocks is also written to AIFilter.log in the game's log folder (Saved\Logs), which you can attach. We use reports to improve the filter in updates.

You can also block words yourself. The filter's word lists are plain text files in the game's install folder, under BloodMoon\LocalAI\Filter. Add any word you never want a villager to say on its own line in ListB_Explicit.txt, and the game blocks it from then on; it picks up the change within seconds, even mid-game. You can also turn your microphone off with V and type instead, or simply walk away from a conversation.