Disney Dreamlight Valley — First Impressions
What have I learned after three weeks of early access?
Disney Dreamlight Valley is a new game that seems to serve as a key that unlocks, if not the actual experience, at least then the sense of that experience of the Disney many of us loved as kids; an experience that feels more personal and intimate, quieter. It is a game that conjures up a simpler vision of Disney than the conglomerate that the company has become. It allows, even coaxes, the player to revisit and recalibrate their relationship with these characters that they love and have lost track of through the noise.
First off, what exactly IS Disney Dreamlight Valley? Developed by Gameloft for Disney, Dreamlight Valley is a game that would normally be classified as “life simulation,” but is most easily described as “Animal Crossing with Disney characters.” If you’ve had experience with Animal Crossing or one of its sequels, you are nodding your head right now understanding pretty clearly what this is. If you’ve never been in debt to Tom Nook or stayed up until midnight to hear K.K. Slider play at the train station, the gist is that the game series works by easing the player into simple relationships with the other characters in a town populated with anthropomorphized animals through gentle, generally calming, activities such as fishing and foraging together and, in one of the series more fascinating innovations, it weaves into the rhythm of the player’s life by simulating that the world of the game is continuing on, round the clock, whether your game system is on or not. In other words, they know that you’ve been gone. This could sound creepy but in actuality tends to breed a sort of devotion to the world that is unusual in gaming.
Where Disney goes in Dreamlight Valley is that they take this concept — and you could play the game exactly as you would Animal Crossing if you wanted to — add beloved Disney characters (though, Mother Gothel? Really?), overlay a narrative about how all of the Disney characters have had a spell cast over them to cause them to forget who they were and their relationships to each other and then drop a series of compelling quests into the mix. The game pushes forward like this with the player occasionally earning enough coins to buy or upgrade items or enough “Dreamlight” to open new “Biomes” (environmentally distinct lands) or to introduce new, familiar, characters.
Somehow the mix of Animal Crossing’s languid “slice of rural life” pace remains unruffled by the breeze of Disney’s quest-based narrative and that’s Disney Dreamlight Valley in a nutshell.
So how is it? After playing for several weeks, I have thoughts.
The design is delightful and rich. Not intending to be photo-realistic it nevertheless hits a level of detail that is quite impressive for this style of game. The characters’ looks are spot-on perfect and with their, limited, speech being performed primarily by the actors famous for the roles, you couldn’t ask for better. The controls are simple and intuitive. The quests are rarely challenging, but usually fun, and there are enough carrots dangled in front of the player to keep them reaching for “just that next thing, and then I’ll be done for the night.”
At first, I felt a little bit of resource panic; expecting that I would constantly be struggling for food (You do have to eat or you can run out of energy to complete tasks.) or coins or Dreamlight; or that I might find a gem or a particular fish that I would never see again and later might need. This need to hoard and over-plan passed quickly. After my first several sessions, food became a non-issue, and, after a few more, money and Dreamlight began accumulating naturally at a pretty steady clip. Gems reappeared consistently as did ingredients. I began to relax and enjoy things more, realizing that whatever I needed would eventually turn up. I did upgrade my backpack so that I could carry more stuff, which was a really good idea, and also built some storage chests — easy and cheap once you have a Crafting Station — to store extra stuff in my house which can come in handy on days when one of my Disney pals would REALLY like a certain flower as a gift and I don’t want to go wandering the forests for it. For the most part, though, this isn’t a game about scarcity.
Dreamlight Valley does maintain Animal Crossing’s real-world time interactions, but, surprisingly, they don’t come into play that much. Some characters sleep in later than others (Donald, Goofy, I’m looking at you!), the light does change throughout the day, but only once in my first three weeks of play has a quest required that I be someplace at a certain time of day; and that requirement was far from exacting.
Most of the quests are involved enough to be intriguing, but every once in a while I found one that required running back and forth, to and fro, between areas and characters just hauling items. These seemed to happen more later in the game and I wonder, as the game is in pre-release until next year, that some of them might’ve been less developed than earlier quests. It’s also possible that I just found it easier to locate things as I grew more experienced in the valley. When I started playing there was also a warning that some quests would be harder to complete due to resource balancing issues that were being worked on and thus you were given 20 free Dream Shards — changeable to Dreamlight if needed — at the beginning of the game to even it out. Whatever those issues are or were, I haven’t encountered them and currently have more Dream Shards than I know what to do with. The only quest resources I’ve ever had to struggle for are iron ore and seaweed (which is just time-consuming, not difficult).
All this is to say that there is very little that is stressful about the narrative flow of this game.
A few random notes:
Building Upgrades — Uncle Scrooge, it is worth mentioning, is greedy, but honorably so. I have yet to spend money on an upgrade of a building or a business that didn’t pay off. And there’s the added advantage that you are not only increasing value and opportunity but also beautifying your valley each time. It’s a win-win.
Choosing Characters — Unlock the characters that you love, but if you aren’t sure, Remy is a really good one to have early on. Currently, there are 17 available characters with another coming online this week. At least five more are in the pipeline for the future and, assumedly, Disney could keep adding more in perpetuity if they want to.
The Buddy System — Even though it is sometimes nice to wander through the Forest of Valor in the rain alone, it is worthwhile to be hanging out with a character friend most of the time in the game. It increases your friendship level, which opens new quests, without you having to do much, and can really increase your accumulation of stuff as the characters assist you with your tasks. It is particularly good to have a fishing buddy when you are fishing and a mining buddy when you are looking for gems. Sticking with your friends pays off.
Moonstones, monetization, and “How much does this dang thing actually cost?” — It’s… complicated. Early access does require that you purchase a “Founders Pack” ($29.95), “Deluxe Founders Pack” ($49.95), or “Ultimate Founders Pack” ($69.95). The differences between the three are some odds and ends clothing and furniture and a stash of Moonstones. While, initially, there was an “Event Path” based around Pixar that lasted a few weeks, the rewards from which could be upgraded by spending Moonstones, it was pretty inconsequential to the gameplay. When Dreamlight Valley enters full public release it will be free and Disney insists that nothing about the narrative gameplay will require a purchase. The only cash that will be exchanged, then, will be the purchase of Moonstones which, to be honest, don’t seem like they are all that useful at the time of this writing.
It is possible that later Event Paths will be particularly compelling and will encourage micro-purchasing of Moonstones, but as of right now, it looks like this game is just going to be free.
Now that I’ve given some first impressions and a few tips, let’s talk about the actual point of this game, spending quality time with fictional characters. Relationships with the Disney characters form as they are gradually brought into the valley and cured of “The Forgetting.” They are often confused and vulnerable when they first arrive or are coaxed into the valley; I feel protective of them, even the villains whom you are urged to treat with kindness and understanding. (Minnie Mouse is particularly insistent on this point.) It’s an interesting take because you do occasionally also have to draw ethical lines with them, while also protecting them and the valley itself. I can’t emphasize this enough, the game isn’t about winning or losing or succeeding or failing; it’s about bonding with characters that you care about (but Mother Gothel? Really?).
Goofy and Merlin became early, and instant, friends as does Mickey fairly soon. After I accumulated a little Dreamlight I began opening up a succession of characters and new Biomes and the experience became richer and richer. Eventually, I found that I had a thriving social life in the Valley which, and here’s where this becomes really interesting, I had to learn to manage; not because anything bad would happen if someone was ignored for too long, but because I felt a sort of caring responsibility — I had brought them there, after all — for each one (except maybe Mother Gothel. Does anyone really feel a bond with Mother Gothel?).
They aren’t sparkling conversationalists. They aren’t always even polite. But there is a nostalgia here that works for me. Particularly when interacting with the characters that have been around for a while — Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy, Merlin — I find a sort of peacefulness that comes from it.
Let me share a real-world moment that I think of often when playing Disney Dreamlight Valley that explains a little about what I mean. About 7 years ago I was with my family at the Disneyland Hotel. (It was my kid’s first trip and we splurged.) My wife and kid had gone on ahead somewhere and I was walking just behind Goofy’s Kitchen and Goofy came out. He was alone, no handlers: just The Geef himself and me.
He waved at me and I said, “How’s it going?”
He gave me a big shrug as if to say, “It’s goin’.”
“You know what, man, just keep doin’ what you’re doin’ and it’ll all be alright.”
He thought for a second, gave me a big thumbs up, and we parted ways.
Now, why did this stick with me? Nothing of consequence was said. The encounter lasted less than a minute. But we shared a common fantasy that this nice person in a costume was really Goofy and that I was really giving him advice and that it was useful in some way. It was a magical moment that left me smiling all day.
That’s a lot of the appeal of Dreamlight Valley; it’s not often that we get to share these quiet little interactions, one-on-one, with characters that we’ve grown up with. It’s not the same as meeting them in the real world, but there’s a similarity in the experience that causes me to exhale a calm satisfied breath every time I appear in the valley, especially when it’s raining.
Disney Dreamlight Valley is an upcoming free-to-play life-simulation adventure game. Fans are invited to create their personalized avatar and embark on an enchanting journey alongside some of Disney and Pixar’s most beloved characters. It is in early access presently and will be released for free in 2023 across numerous platforms: PC, Mac, Nintendo Switch™, PlayStation®5 (PS5™), PlayStation®4 (PS4™), Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and Xbox One consoles.
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Kelly McCubbin is a columnist for the Boardwalk Times