In the last 20 hours I have spent 8 of them playing this. I cannot stop. Someone please help me, the smiling mouse knows where I live. The ice-woman has snatched my heart and I'd do anything for her. This land is purgatory and I am its victim.

Update: It's been a single day since I wrote the blurb above. 8 hours has turned into 20 hours. I am sick.

Second update: 20 hours has turned into 40 hours. I'm overwhelmed with despair, for I cannot marry the woman of my dreams. She roams the roads of my village every morning. Her enchanting smile makes me quiver. Her pristine, ethereal dress is carried by the wind itself. Her serene platinum hair is all I dream about. Yet, for all the gardening we've done together, for every moment I was by her side, and for every hurdle we tackled... I'm afraid she cannot be courted. For she is no different than Nature herself; you cannot have her heart, yet she'll never let go of your own.

Jogado no Xbox Game Pass durante o acesso antecipado. Eu fiquei muito curioso em entender por que eu investi tanto tempo em Dreamlight Valley. Pensei que era porque era relaxante, porque tinha personagens que tocavam na minha nostalgia ou porque eu gostava de cumprir missões e ir avançando na história.

A real é que esse jogo parece um MMO com mecânicas mais interessantes que só matar monstros. Eu sempre joguei MMO sozinho, focando na história do mundo e das quests, e isso parece feito com esse foco, só que com Disney e com mais mecânicas envolvidas.

Sim, eu quero continuar jogando, maldita Disney.

Where it Shines:
Inclusivity - 10/10
Playing Dressup - 10/10
Gameplay Loop - 8/10
The Good:
DDV was a game I did not expect to love as much as I have. Is it flawed? Yes, in so many ways. But whereas games like Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley just didn't click for me, DDV did. I think it's the heavy character customization aspect. I love playing dressup and buying outfits and interior decorating my home and all that other cool stuff. Sometimes that's all I do and I don't bother with the story at all.
But more than that, the game just feels wonderful to play. It's soothing, calming, relaxing, enjoyable, but in a way that stands apart from others in the genre.
The Bad:
It has the grubby little greedy hands of corporate bs all over it. A game that is purely cosmetic has no business having cosmetic MTX. There's also a lot of bugs and issues that seemingly never get addressed and it's becoming more and more apparent the game is going to move toward F2P at some point and be gacha hell.
Summary:
If you play this game now, while it's still good, it's an awesome experience. But I don't think it will always be that way and will one day be an unplayable pile of garbage. So I advise people to play it now if they're interested. Gamepass is probably the cheapest way to play it as I don't think it's really worth more than $10 in the state it's in.

****note on my ratings:
half ⭐: hot trash garbage
⭐: below average, needs work
⭐⭐: average
⭐⭐⭐: pretty good
⭐⭐⭐⭐: excellent
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐: all time favourite
half star ratings between those mean it's slightly better or worse than stated in this list.
*

Im not going to give this a score yet as quite frankly its very underbaked right now with heaps of bugs, issues and quest-breaking problems. Its also limited in the amount of content present. Im also not giving it a score yet as im waiting for WHEN that moment will drop where the F2P hits, paid content will swoop in and I want to know if and how predatory that microtransaction money will be before I make my full decision.

That said, as it stands Dreamlight Valley, it is a fun timesinky game. Its NOT Animal Crossing as some places are stating it is, its very much a collectathon with 101 fetch quests and basic friendship mechanics and its... Fairly fun and addictive. Its had me hooked for a whole and its pretty easy to just lose hours to it which is weird because normally you'd expect also there to be a ton of timers and energy meters that take an age to replenish but... No? Instead its just rather charming and fun to hang out with Mickey, Donald, Remy, Wall-E (Who is best robot ever SHUT UP) and more.

I dunno. Im just feeling cautious and im waiting for the other shoe to drop in case the game suddenly yanks some of the easy energy options away and bumps the crop/item respawn times up. Ive been burned too many times.

If you do want to play this, I do recommend either waiting for it to launch in full F2P form to get whats likely the intended experience or play through games pass. None of the packs are worth buying given how expensive they are and none actually provide enough stuff given the expensive as hell price point behind them.

A Disney-themed Animal Crossing clone that is better than it has any right to be, and even improves upon its predecessors in some ways, but can get a bit grindy.

I remember when Dreamlight Valley was announced - an Animal Crossing clone, with a Disney overlay, made by the mobile game developed Gameloft. "Welp, this will surely be a soulless cash grab", I cynically thought. And while you could argue whether or not Disney trying to ride off Animal Crossing's success is a cash grab or not, this game is anything but a phoned-in rip off.

Dreamlight Valley is clearly made by people who have spent a lot of time playing Animal Crossing and other farming/life sims like Stardew and Harvest Moon. It takes a lot of what Animal Crossing does, sprinkles in some flavor from farming sims, and adds some really nice quality of life stuff. For instance, I would love to be able to just hold down a button and auto-plant all of my crops in other games like this. And Animal Crossing could really take a page out of Dreamlight Valley's book by showing you where all the villagers are on the map at any given time.

The general objective of the game is to bring the valley you reside in back to life. This involves finding Disney characters, building them homes, and expanding your valley by unlocking new biomes. In general, this game has far more structure than something like Animal Crossing. It actually has a quest log to give you a bit of a push in the right direction. But you can still just do your own thing and expand your town how you want.

As you go, you'll work on your relationship with the Disney villagers, and do quests for them to unlock items, outfits, and things for your village. The problem is, some of the later stages of these quests can get extremely grindy, requiring you to mine a ton of iron from around the valley to progress. Several friends I know who were playing this game completely fell off when the grind hit, and have not gone back.

The good thing is, the devs seem to be extremely receptive to feedback. The game is in early access and they are constantly listening to players which is fantastic. Because the game is in early access, it still definitely has some bugs including some that may lock you out of completing quests until they are patched.

Weirdly, one big thing this game is lacking in is personality. Disney on its own is not a personality. It's got that Disney charm, the theme is great, and the characters' mannerisms are often spot-on. Watching Wall-E cruise around the town and then sit on a bench while holding his feet (?) is very cute. But when you talk to a character they'll just spit out one of five generic voice lines then be silent while you read through some dialogue. There's no cute bebebese to mimic the conversation you're having with these characters like in Animal Crossing.It's just silence which starts to feel a bit cold.

Overall, the game is a great life sim especially if you have any kind of appreciation for Disney properties. And it's only going to continue to grow as they add more characters, biomes, and other content to the game. Unless you're in a rush to try it, I recommend waiting to give them somer time to work through the kinks while in Early Access.

+ A lot more than an Animal Crossing clone
+ Good gameplay loop of finding new villagers and expanding your town
+ Nice quality of life improvements over other life sims
+ Great visual style
+ Plenty of content planned for the future

- Very grindy late-game quests
- Early Access kinks and bugs
- Personality is lacking
- Some incredibly grindy trophies that will take over a year to finish

buggy as heck but lord am i a sucker for disney and animal crossing

also its made by gameloft so im fully expecting to return to this and find everything blocked by paywalls

months later edit : oh look, microtransactions galore
I'm still in love with this game though <3

Farming games kind of stress me out. Don't know why. So this was never gonna be for me long term.

But I do think there's a malicious brilliance in how the game operates. Its not enough that you're building a town for Disney characters to live in or the fact that you get to talk and play with them. The shockingly strong writing for the Disney characters definitely helps, but that's not the brilliance.

The brilliance of the game is in its narrative of rebuilding your home with the Disney characters. With the cast suffering from slight memory issues, no one gets into any specifics. But it establishes that you, the player, had some kind of kinship with these characters. And that plot beat allows the game to eventually build to this line:

Ariel: "Oh, its you [player character]. You've grown so big!"

Its one line. They don't lean into it too hard. But that line captures the core experience of playing the game. Its laser-targeted as nostalgia in a specific way. That mental brainspace of being a child and thinking of Disney princesses as your friend. Its a brilliant, almost dangerously evil tactic. But I kind of respect it. It'd be easier to hate it and the whole Disney franchise model if the game wasn't charming. But unfortunately, its charming, so its easier to give a pass.

sighs When this was first released into Early Access, I would've given this game a 5-star rating in the blink of an eye. But although we knew that this was eventually going Free-To-Play, I don't think I ever could've imagined the depths of their depravity when it came to the egregious monetization of the game. Nowadays, it's difficult to unlock anything new in terms of items typical to a Life Sim of this caliber. Furniture, clothing, buildings, skins for characters etc. There's a certain rotation of "things" for those playing F2P, but it's very limited. I think the pressure to spend money to unlock anything mildly interesting is predatory and immoral.

as of this log this game is still in early access (thank you xbox gamepass for my life) and i have to say: i've been kind of obsessed with this game? god knows i've moaned about not having a switch to play acnh on, and desperately wanting to play it on pc, and this is the next best thing.
it's super addictive, if a bit rough around the edges (ran into a very annoying bug a day before the first patch fixed it, but otherwise haven't found anything gamebreaking).

anyways i'm besties with scrooge mcduck, what else could you want in life.

This is the first Disney product I've touched since the original Kingdom Hearts. It's cute at first with gardening, recipes, decorating and outfit collecting to whet your appetite. That and my PC's unexpectedly juicy ass. But that's about it. You run into a wall quick with mandatory friendship levels and arduous fetch quests that require endless interaction with Intellectual Properties who don't really have much to say. It feels generally light on content; the explorable/unlockable areas are all quite small and you can feel monetization or p2w lurking in the near future from the outrageous prices on some of the items for sale in Scrooge's store. Underwhelmed.
One big positive: the SR2-worthy character creator which manages to have no gender selection at all, without any awkwardness.

Animal Crossing with Disney characters, but wait.

Disney Dreamlight Valley combines Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley gameplay with Disney Characters. You meet famous mascots, do tasks, and have to help out around town. Meeting Ursula or Remy is really exciting and while there’s limited voiced content, there’s something magical about exploring this world.

However, this is made by Gameloft which is a mobile game maker. This is also just Early Access, and when it launches it will be Free to Play. I think a lot of reviews are praising this game because the Free to play systems aren’t turned on, but I don’t know many Free to Play games, especially ones that look like this, that survive on fair monetization. Also, this has the annoyance that if you play it at night you only see the game at night and miss out on characters who go to bed early.

Pick this up if you love Disney, or you have kids but I have a concern that this game will become exceedingly greedy when it leaves early access, buying the game now is only for that early access as well as some of the premium currency. I just don’t trust this publisher, having known them for a long time and knowing people who worked there.

If you want to see more from me: Check out my video on this last month of Game Pass games: https://youtu.be/5_7MTcN1-Ac

This game is incredibly charming, it actually surprised me. If it keeps up with content (and if you look at the datamine it looks quite meaty) and bugfixes this could honestly be the best lifesim game I have ever played, I love Stardew but I prefer 3D lifesims, and Animal Crossing grated on my nerves with villagers that have seemingly 3 whole lines of dialog, but here the villagers are extremely chatty and have fun, simple quests to keep you going. I might update this if it becomes predatory or whatever but so far it's looking magical.