Disney Dreamlight Valley

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Game Title: Disney Dreamlight Valley
Released: December 5, 2023
Game Length: 89 Hours
Grade: B-

Release Controversy

Early Access: Let's address the elephant in the room. The development of the game hasn't been for the best. Articles started reporting the game back in the middle of 2022 that they were going to start Early Access in September. Though they revealed four of the biomes in May 2022, all eight biomes were available from the beginning. By pre-ordering the game, you received a small bonus. Despite the game not being officially released, they had their battle pass system called Star Path all ready to go that allowed you to get exclusive rewards by doing activities. For the next year, they released a barrage of updates fixing bugs and building on two of the highest biomes with characters, quests, and decorations. They added a few realms including Toy Story, Lion King, and Beauty & the Beast. They found ways to monopolize on various cosmetics for characters, houses, tools, pets, and many other things in the Premium Shop. They also had several holiday events and created DreamSnaps for you to earn goods through taking pictures of things.

Release: For a long time, there have been reports that the game would be Free-To-Play on release. It was already that way for Xbox Gamepass Membership. But then they announced something that shocked everyone a month before release: the game would remain premium. Since they were leaving Early Access, all Founder Packs would no longer be made available. Further, the base cost of the game would increase from $29.99 to $39.99. There would be new editions where you pay an additional $10 for the Cozy cosmetics or $30 for the A Rift in Time DLC and the Gold cosmetics. In preparation of the add-on, they developed one major patch for the release that included Jack Skellington and multiplayer support inside the ValleyVerse. 

A Rift in Time: It seems rather odd to throw in a downloadable pack on the official release date of a game. Having it cost $30 when it only offers the first Act with two more Acts released later on isn't really that exciting either. As for the contents of the package, there are three new biomes (with their own critters, fish, resources, journal entries, and crops) that include the ancient technology portion scattered across the docks, the desert, and the jungle. The game adds three new characters: EVE, Gaston, and Rapunzel. It is interesting to note that a tower that looks like it belongs to Rapunzel as well as the character in the middle of her painting animation can be seen in the background of the original trailer (around the 7 & 50 second mark). The new Royal Hourglass tool allows you to seek out rifts for treasures in any region. Instead of Dreamlight, you will now have a separate set of achievements for the new currency - Mist. While there is a separate set of daily activities for the new areas, you'll be able to obtain more than enough through the new treasure-hunting tool (especially if you have someone with the perk tagging along). You will need reagents to craft and operate three new machines that can automatically cook, dig, plant, water, harvest, and collect all items inside a given zone. Remy's Restaurant and Scrooge's Store do not supply new features but instead mirror their counterparts in the valley. To craft the special fragments, you will need to collect ten of the randomized materials and 25 glimmers inside the realms. This proves to be difficult when you can only collect a glimmer from a spot once per day and there is a chance you will collect 500 mist instead.

Gameplay

Characters: While some content is made available after completing quests, each one of these wacky villagers will need a house and some company. Once they get settled in, you need to figure out their schedule and build-up your friendship. Assign them a perk, since they surprisingly do not have predesignated roles, so that they gain experience and throw you extra items when you find things through activities. Though, be aware that no experience or energy is used when flattening a hole, nothing is gained from the WALL-E garden, time spheres do not provide you anything extra, and picking up ordinary objects such as sticks does not count. Friendship can be gained by daily conversation, gifts (daily extra bonus ones are shown), and serving them a meal. Since Ariel & Ursula can't come onto land (initially) and Buzz Lightyear & Woody don't eat, they will prove to be the hardest to please. When you hang out with them, expect to hear the character's theme song play on occasion (including Scar).

Dialogue: The biggest highlight of the whole game is how conversations progress between the characters. You are generally given three different statements and characters will respond accordingly. Daily conversations and even farewells can be cycled through by re-selecting a villager. For example, Belle might occasionally say she is reading a book to which you will respond with "no spoilers" as you leave. There are never any repercussions as there isn't a wrong choice in your statements. While the character animations and vocalization might be limited, they do at least acknowledge a few things such as when it is raining or getting late. Sometimes during quests, you will be prompted to watch a couple carry a conversation with speech bubbles over their head.

Dreamlight: At the heart of the game, your goal is to unlock areas and realms by acquiring a currency through certain activities. You can continue to chain through daily activities until you receive tasks from areas or characters you haven't unlocked yet. Completing achievements or crafting from shards will also reward you a small sum. Certain crafted items such as potions, chests, or a manual that re-assigns a character's role will require a good amount of these.

Activities: The second main currency to be worried about are star coins. This is what allows you to upgrade, unlock, and pay for new cosmetics. You can dig, grow crops, fish, take pictures, cook, forage, collect items off the ground, and mine. In addition to houses, you can build the Scrooge Store and Remy's Restaurant. There are four auxiliary things you can unlock: Moana's Boat, WALL-E Garden, Kristoff's Stall, and Beast Greenhouse. No, Ariel and Ursula do not open their own exchange goods program. The stalls have unlimited coal and seeds with a small maximum on any other item. Fishing spots will indicate their rarity color by the ripples and mineral veins will reveal a gem when one is available. These always spawn in the same locations. Resources that sprout a gold chest will show a tiny one inside before harvesting. Foraging or harvesting crops has a small chance to initiate a timed event of endless collecting (shown by a gold ring) or collect dispersed goods on the ground (that provide a daily gold chest if done before the clock runs out). Dug spots will disappear if not used after a day and ignoring crops that need to be watered again will have them dry out (instead of withering away). You can't swim, jump, or climb in this game. 

Scramblecoin: There is a board game where you compete for the most coins within 5 turns after placing and moving at the max 3 figures across a board. The game is almost entirely based on luck as coins drop randomly wherever there is an empty slot. The pieces are more or less fair with a little bit of power creep when comparing ones such as Goofy moving 3 tiles and Eve being able to cross the entire board. You unlock a new piece after acquiring so many points.

Critters: Learning how to interact and what to feed these little guys is all part of the game. There is a different type for each biome and you can see how they rotate out each day from your database. Almost everyone can figure out that rabbits love carrots but knowing raccoons love blueberries might be a little more obscure. If you are having trouble identifying their habits, characters will help fill in the gaps. Simba will outright tell you what to do for some of the animals and there is a quest with Scar to learn of the hummingbirds. Mirabel talks about the raccoons, Ariel knows everything about the turtles, and Rapunzel hints on what the monkeys like. I'm surprised with the number of animal companions in Disney films that Pua is the only one available (and the ancient robot as the crafted one in the DLC).

Decorate: You begin your adventure in a house with a single room. But don't let that fool you as you are able to place things anywhere outside as well. As you complete content, more items will become available to you. Landscaping such as trees, brush, and rocks are completely free to add or remove outside. They are not locked to a single biome. You are allowed to place things down as long as there are no objects in of the way (it will override the things mentioned above). You can upgrade your house to have up to four rooms and multiple floors. Decorations and general objects obtained from the ground can be placed on top of other things such as tables when there are slots available.

Category Problems

Storage: Perhaps the biggest weakness of the game is how things are organized. Storage is a big problem that doesn't go away when you finally get 50,000 star coins to purchase that last upgrade of 42 slots for your inventory. I've tried several different approaches from leaving a couple chests in each region to keeping about 20 of them in a giant circle inside the house. Iron (and maybe dark wood unless you are using the ancient machine to collect) can be hard to come by when you need 5 ore per bar and so many items such as crafting tables to giant decorations require them. One tactic I tried using was throwing everything in a giant pile and coming back for them later. There isn't really a good solution but at least you don't have to stow away your cosmetics. There are several ways to sort things in your inventory but type only distinguishes in broad strokes. Don't expect them to properly line up similarly-looking objects or by region. Gems and plants were notoriously out of order when using the filter. Although you can transfer the same items with a click of a button, there isn't a way to transfer all items. Despite the number of categories you can browse through for decorations, some need to be better defined such as those labeled as storage that aren't capable of holding items and the ones marked as utility that only have the sit function.

Cooking: When you are trying to cook, there is a set order of ingredients splashed across the screen such as fruit, vegetables, seafood, and spices. However, the list of meals you can prepare are condensed to only three categories and thrown into a generated alphabetical list: Appetizers, Entrees, and Desserts. I sometimes question which category each meal belongs to. For example, a salad is an appetizer but a hearty salad is an entree. Pumpkin soup is an appetizer but leek soup is an entree. You are pretty safe to bet that almost anything sweet is considered a dessert. Wouldn't it have been better splitting them up a little more so I don't have to scroll through 50 items? 

Landscape: There are a total of 8 biomes (plus the 3 in the expansion) with their own individual color and style. Must they really lump all the decorations together in four vague categories: underbrush, tree, rocks, and paths & fencing. Because of the game's very odd naming schemes, not all items tell you which region they are usually found in. Not all items properly line up in alphabetical order. Even the filters don't have a way to sort through the mess. So instead, you have to do a bit of work scrolling through the lists in search for the things you want to place.

Scrooge Store: When first starting out, you might not spend a lot of time buying every item that comes across the lucky duck's store. I didn't upgrade mine until way later in my experience. Sadly, the system that dispenses the game's cosmetics is terrible! Not only do you have to wait a day before the collection refreshes but there is a chance of seeing the same items or generic objects that are available from Scrooge's Catalog at the start. Any quest items you earn can also be bought from the catalog. There was some optimism when they stated you could make purchases from visiting other stores once the developers incorporated multiplayer, but only one item can be sold from each slot to any person at any time during the day. The ridiculous cost of each item is highly skeptical, especially when you are buying the same type of item, alternative color of something already purchased, or something not purchased for days (looking at you Minnie portrait frame).

Puzzles: Every now and then during one of your activities, you will receive a small fragment of a picture taken from one of Disney's movies. The pacing feels extremely off when there are a total of 70 frames with each one segmented into 10 shards. By the time all my characters reached maximum level, 32 puzzles didn't have a single shard. My category sat at a 30% completion rate with the largest one only having 5 pieces out of 10. 

Rooms: The problem with the house layout is that there is no way to fully customize it to your liking. You will always have one room that connects to three other rooms for each floor. The doors will always be in the same place and the maximum size of each room isn't large enough for a proper setup. You cannot remove the rooms if you decide that a door doesn't please you in the entryway but you can at least move the door along that specific wall. Instead of loading all the rooms at once in a way you can see into them from the entrance, each room is segmented and requires a full transition after using the door.

Quality of Life

Cosmetics: Your wardrobe does not take inventory space. You can access, modify, and actually encouraged through completing dailies to change your outfit periodically anywhere in the world. There is a long list of unusually rare combinations to see in this game such as having a top over your shirt or choosing what to wear under your skirt. The system can sometimes be flexible by bending your hair down when wearing specific types of hats. The list of choices also include changing your person's sex, hair, or body type. Costumes can be thrown over your current outfit and removed for convenience. Current layouts can be saved on a crafted mannequin. Most importantly, there is an undo and undo all option!

Touch of Magic: The motif system is a little polarizing at first. Half of the rewards you receive in the game are these little design "stickers" you can place on blank slates. There is a small subset of clothes and decorations that provide you the option of scaling up to 50 layers of various shapes and sizes. There are about 75 different colors and a decent list of textures that cover over the objects. You can save, edit, or delete the designs of the customized items within the interface. 

Automation: The game generates a lot of convenient shortcuts that benefit your gameplay with some very weird caveats. Two of them stand out more than the rest. Cooking allows you to pull up a list of recipes and pour in the necessary ingredients into the pot. However, you are not able to generate more than one meal at a time. They reserved this function to the ancient machine in A Rift in Time. As long as there are holes and you carry some seeds, you can hold down the button to push your character along until the function can't be carried out anymore. This function works for both planting and harvesting.

Database: Almost everything inside the main menu interface is wonderful. There is a complete database full of values for every reagent and where to find them. All the critters are listed and inform you if they are currently available that day. Every quest and their requirements to unlock are listed in detail. You can fast travel to any portal or realm that have been unlocked. Achievements, including a list of every craftable decoration, are all on display. You can see where each character is on the map and select them to generate a guiding system for your character. I only wish there was a way to center on a specific character you are searching for instead of the current select/deselect window provided. Otherwise, the map is very specific on what characters are asleep, where you can forage or harvest, and when crops are in need to be watered. Characters will display blue stars for quest dialogue or purple stars for new quests both in the world and on the map.  

Character Care: The game does a phenomenal job at providing characters at the most convenient times. If you track a quest that involves someone specific, there is a good chance they will suddenly appear next to you. Sometimes, there will be an eager character that will rush over to you when they want to play Scramblecoins (for extra points). When mining or fishing, a nearby character will come over to watch you. Goofy will always be available after you interact with one of his stalls. 

Promotions: In addition to the star paths and DreamSnap challenges, blue chests found daily in the world will provide you moonstones if you are connected to the Internet. Bonus material and messages from the developers are sent directly to your mailbox. You can input codes into the help menu for content.

Technical Problems

Bugs: More games this past decade have been thrown into "Early Access" when they want people's funds right away but have not yet become a fully-realized product. This tends to bleed into the release window when they tell their customers that their problems might be fixed later on. Sometimes, it can seem that developers will distract their fans with other things in the hopes to minimize their troubles. They do their best with every hotfix but some things still fall through the cracks such as:

Issues: Occasionally, the game does something you aren't accustomed to or normally don't expect to happen. With how the systems are built, these occurred quite frequently. There are a few things that stood out more than the others:

  • Within the first few hours of playing the game, I had a mild case of motion sickness. While there was a chance that the frames-per-second dropping or how the trees swayed might have contributed to the problem, the recommendation to disable camera shakes and flickering inside the graphics menu alleviated my symptoms.
  • You might be able to feed animals as much as you want but the action only counts the first time once a day. This comes up with Wall-E Good to be Home quest and any daily activities. 
  • There will be quests that inform you that you will have to check areas periodically but really have specific time delays like in the case of collecting aliens.
  • Half the cooking recipes will only be made available when you discover them. While I managed to guess up to 80% on my own, I needed some hints for the others. 
  • During certain events, characters can appear upset in photos.
  • Although your energy fills up to the maximum when you enter your home, eating meals will stack a yellow bar on top that increases your speed to a sprint. In addition, pressing the prompt button will cause you to glide faster on glitter while slowly expending your extra energy.
  • Items can be split but only if you have an open slot available within the storage unit. The game doesn't recognize the desire to bring the amount into your inventory. 
  • There aren't easy options to change the amount of an item. For example, you cannot increase or decrease a stack by 10 but you can wrap to the maximum amount by decreasing below zero.
  • It is possible to collect a previously collected memory fragment. They will provide you 20 star coins as a reward instead.
  • The amount of items you have in storage is not displayed while at the workstation. 
  • Recipes are usually provided for you as usable items in your inventory when questing but occasionally the characters will test your knowledge by only hinting at the ingredients you should add to the pot. When it came time to making a Lobster Roll, Ursula will flat out tell you what you need. Though, people still had issues when adding the ingredients in a different order and mistaking shrimp for lobster. As a side note, who would have thought I had to look up how to make Ratatouille?

Concerns: Every now and then, there is something that will be a bother. These aren't inherently positive or negative but are somewhat surprising when you encounter them. They are:

  • Camera angles aren't the most intuitive. They can be very painful when in tight spaces. Sometimes, the camera will lock right behind a bush during a conversation. Although rare, trees can also occasionally block your view.
  • Quest items can hog your storage space until you complete them. If your inventory is full when progressing through the dialogue, the option to cancel the quest only appears at the end and resets the entire sequence when you are ready to accept again.
  • Unless you were paying attention to the patch notes or know a bit of the source material, figuring out that you need to find a tree to turn in the little dolls might have proven to be more difficult than anticipated.
  • The Secret Room can be easily missed since it appears after you obtain the quest.
  • Teleporting and access to the map are only available when exploring the biomes and inside your personal home. They are disabled for realms, houses, the castle, mines, and caves. 
  • You can't use Remy's fridge to store food at the restaurant.
  • It does not snow in Frosted Heights even when it is raining everywhere else. This might be some sort of graphical glitch that a rare subset of people will see.
  • There is very little to do inside people's homes. You cannot decorate or move objects. There are a few interactable objects such as Mickey's house having a stove to cook on, Goofy offering a crafting table, and Jack having an unusual Jack-in-the-Box. Appropriate music to their theme will play and there are several things you can sit or lounge on.
  • There is a weird priority system when it comes to button prompts. Items that are at the doorstep of houses are hard to collect when you are prompted to enter inside (despite entering when touching the door). Special and timed interactions can be interrupted by a character's level-up sequence. Interaction is still possible when you are inside a time rift.

Advantages: Learning about how growing a ton of pumpkins to dramatically increase your flow of cash isn't something that I would consider revolutionary. The game does a great job allowing you to decide what perks the characters gain, what activities to do each day, and whether you are going to spend the day trying to learn new recipes on your own. However, there are a few possible avenues that made me feel dirty for doing:
  • The Ratatouille Realm allows you to obtain as many ingredients as you want for free and cook whatever you want as long as you don't leave with them in your inventory. There is nothing stopping you from preparing five-star meals and then dropping them all on the ground. They will remain there indefinitely. This means that you are allowed to enter the realm from wherever, pick it up, eat until you are completely satisfied, drop the rest, and exit the realm. You can visit WALL-E realm for quick access to a workstation.
  • In five of the regions, you will be tasked to complete character quests before learning how to dissolve or break apart objects that separate the regions. Other than moving around the rocks at the beach with two possible pathways, the mushrooms, logs, ice, and bone can all be technically bypassed by moving the portal in decoration mode to the other side. Fortunately, none of these upgrades are required to unlock a biome. 
  • The option to decorate generates a bird's eye view to more than the region you are currently in. This allows you to glance for which mineral nodes have gems showing among other things. You can even highlight and relocate pickable objects to a more convenient location.

 Summary

Review: The developers purposely added functionality to Dreamlight Valley in the hopes to preoccupy players over a long period of time. A new set of cosmetics are randomly cycled and their cost can only be matched when you can collect endgame material. You can clearly see the original intent of the game to gather up a large community and incentivize them to purchase things out of their premium shop. Instead, they reneged on their word by having an upfront cost on release and burdened them with brand new downloadable content. While there are some nice quality features in the gameplay, the unusual choices of categories and limited mechanics hinders a well-received experience. I do not recommend this game.