Disney Dreamlight Valley has a simple premise: what if you took Animal Crossing’s life simulation gameplay, sprinkled in some Stardew Valley farming, but then replaced all the townsfolk with Disney characters? Giving Disney fans a sandbox island to play in, then letting them invite over the likes of Moana and Wall-E, is a strong pitch. After spending some hands-on time with the game, I can confirm that it makes good on this concept, but I was still left with concerns over exactly how it will be monetized.
Building the Magic Kingdom
Dreamlight Valley tasks you with helping Disney characters recover from ‘The Forgetting’ — a mysterious event that has caused them to experience widespread memory loss and has left poisonous Night Thorns dotted around their world. You’ll travel to different Disney and Pixar-themed Realms to recruit new characters to help you out, and then find them a home within Dreamlight Valley. You can then increase your friendship level with them by completing their quests, offering them gifts, or even just asking how their day is going.
The preview I played allowed me to experience a thin slice of this world, consisting of three biomes in Dreamlight Valley itself — the Plaza, the Peaceful Meadow, and Dazzle Beach — and Moana’s Realm. Unlike Animal Crossing where you start off with a blank canvas of an island that you slowly transform, Dreamlight Valley already has locations with their own themes that you can swiftly improve. You also aren’t stuck to a real-world day and night cycle here — the only thing limiting you is your energy level bar, but even that can be replenished by eating food or returning to your house.
Dreamlight (Stardew) Valley
In many ways, the deviations from that Animal Crossing formula make it an interesting alternative. You can make great progress within one play session rather than waiting for days (or fiddling with your Switch’s internal clock), NPCs have full questlines instead of just being characters to talk to, giving you rewards like clothes and new furniture for completing them, and furniture placement is done from a simple birds-eye perspective. But by fast-forwarding these processes and placing a heavy emphasis on the obtaining of Stuff and Things, it also comes across as a little soulless.
Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley are both at their best during those moments of quiet contemplation — early morning fishing in the hopes of catching a Great White to put in your aquarium, or tending to your crops on a busy harvest day. Improving your surroundings is certainly a goal for both games, but it’s more about the journey than arriving at the destination — many who gamed the system to unlock better furniture in Animal Crossing will tell you that it dampened their experience with it.
Dreamlight Valley, on the other hand, wants to give you stuff all the time. You start out with all the tools you need to start mining, fishing, digging, and more, and you can swiftly start climbing up friendship levels, getting furniture and clothes to improve both your surroundings and player-character. Customization is swift and easy, with there being plenty of options for making both your world and your avatar look how you want them to. There’s a ton of potential here, given the huge number of licenses Disney has to work with, but I can’t say that Dreamlight Valley immediately giving me what I want is better than the comparatively slow burn of its inspirations.
Mickey Microtransactions
I’m also skeptical about how it’ll be monetized. Disney Dreamlight Valley is free-to-play, with a confirmed Battle Pass — called a Star Path — and purchasable in-game currency (its Founder’s Pack will give an unconfirmed amount to buyers). After enquiring about potential microtransactions, I was told that the game will feature a premium currency called Moonstones, which can be purchased with real money or collected/purchased with an in-game currency. These Moonstones will be used to unlock the premium track of the Star Path, and can also be used to skip missions in it along with purchasing cosmetic items in the in-game store.
Considering this is a game all about getting new things, with the obtaining of stuff being its main driving force, the use of microtransactions is a concern. It looked like there were plenty of unlockables during my brief playtime with the game, but considering that its longevity will revolve around improving your island, what happens if the best improvements are locked behind microtransactions? It’s difficult to not be cynical when it comes to the question of how Dreamlight Valley will be monetized, though I hope my fears go unfounded.
If those worries do go unrealized, then what’s here could be a treat for Disney fans. Being able to freely change this world and adorn it with furniture related to Disney and Pixar’s most famous properties is basically a kid’s dream, and visiting Realms based on different movies is a cool concept — even if the Moana Realm provided little more to do than collect wood and silk for her. Given that I played such a limited amount of the game, it’s impossible to say whether future Realms will be more robust, though there’s a lot room for players to more deeply explore some of their favorite Disney and Pixar settings.
And that’s primarily my takeaway from Disney Dreamlight Valley — optimism over its potential, mixed with trepidation over its monetization. We’ll only have the full scope of exactly how much impact these Moonstones have on Dreamlight Valley when the full game is released, but fingers crossed that they won’t sully what is a very good idea for a game.
Disney Dreamlight Valley will release in Early Access on September 6, 2022. PC preview code provided by publisher.
