Disney Dreamlight Valley: first impressions

Xbox Game Pass members can play the Early Access version of Disney Dreamlight Valley now — check out what we thought after several hours with the life-sim!

It is a dark and stormy night in Disney Dreamlight Valley. The thunder crashes in the sky above Mickey Mouse’s house, and the lightning flashes, throwing my shadow across the front door — an outline of a figure armed with a pickaxe, waiting silently for Mickey to wake up. Despite all evidence to the contrary, I am not here to kill Mickey Mouse. When he wakes up, I will ask him to hang out. He will accept, perhaps thinking we’ll have a nice time cooking or gardening together, but no; I will accost him the second he steps outside and make him follow me on an endless mining quest for gems to sell at Goofy’s stall — there is a teapot I have my eye on in Scrooge McDuck’s shop, and nothing, not even Mickey Mouse’s personal schedule, will get in my way.

Despite my villainous capitalist designs on the teapot, Disney Dreamlight Valley is, actually, very light-hearted. It’s themed around ideas of friendship, magic, and working for the good of all. There are many, many things to collect in Disney Dreamlight Valley, and many ways in which to earn them. It’s still too soon to tell if this will become overly repetitive and grindy further down the line; this is a First Impressions piece, and based on the first few hours alone, I’m having a great time with Disney Dreamlight Valley.

Like many other life sims, Disney Dreamlight Valley sees you leaving the stresses of a city life behind, and, while unwinding in the peaceful countryside, we happen to somehow arrive into Dreamlight Valley; a once-prosperous place that’s now overrun by Night Thorns and darkness. Shortly after, we meet Merlin, who explains how the Forgetting caused the Valley’s inhabitants to flee or stay behind and lose their memories. (Merlin, it must be noted, has got the crazy scientist laugh down, with a full head-back cackle.) Merlin thinks that our character has the magic needed to get rid of the Night Thorns, save the Valley, and bring back its inhabitants. By this point, you’ve customised your character to look however you’d like, and although you start off in a plain white shirt and jeans, this is soon rectified; new items of clothing are scattered throughout the Valley, with more available as you level up friendships with its inhabitants, or else can be bought in Scrooge’s shop — or designed from scratch with the Touch of Magic customisation tool. With Merlin’s guidance, we claim a house for ourselves, explore the Valley, and start setting things to rights.

The sheer amount of stuff is a little overwhelming at first; you’ve got Star Coins, Dreamlight, Dream Shards, Night Shards, Moonstones for the Star Path (which seems to be Disney Dreamlight Valley’s version of a Battle Pass), gems, crops, seeds, resources, clothing items, pieces of furniture, fragments of memories, recipes, and a whole lot more. I’m getting to grips with what can be used for everything, so I am still hoarding most of it, but it seems Star Coins are your main currency for buying everything, while Dreamlight is the resource we’ll use to unlock new biomes in the Valley. Things do seem pretty expensive — 5,000 Star Coins for the first backpack upgrade?! — but I’ve been able to earn a fair amount by selling gems to Goofy, clearing smaller Night Thorns, and earning bundles through levelling up friendships. The meals I’ve cooked so far don’t seem to sell for much, and instead seem more useful as gifts to quickly boost friendships. Oh, and don’t forget to claim the Founder’s Pack rewards and the Welcome to Dreamlight Valley gifts — including a small treat-covered crocodile — which should be in your mailbox.

I’m divided on how grindy this game may prove to be. You do run out of energy often, but there are always apples and other fruit around, which can be eaten to replenish yourself, and which grow back fairly quickly. Crops — so far — also grow relatively quickly, and it’s easy to busy yourself with the game’s many other tasks while you wait for them. So far, I haven’t minded circling around the Valley on a loop to mine for gems to sell, but this may prove more frustrating later in the game. When you’ve got to Level 2 of a friendship with a character, you can also invite them to hang out with you and give them a particular bonus, such as the ability to gather more forageables while they’re with you. You’re meant to boost friendships out of feelings of love and kindness, but I admit to farming these relationships so I could progress the plot; I needed three friends to Level 5, which meant I was briefly stuck in a loop of force-feeding them all fruit salads and grilled veggies, which was all I could make from my endless supply of carrots and apples. Oh, Scrooge McDuck wants iron ingots and topaz? Tough luck, he’s getting another fruit salad. Each character has their own schedule, too, and there are periods where they’re asleep; presumably, if you needed them to progress the plot, you’d be stuck until they wake up. You learn new recipes for crafting as you go, and earn more items of furniture with various rewards. You have the freedom to make and place these items wherever you want and can redesign the Valley whenever the mood strikes you. On the plus side, you get a lot of freedom with this decoration. On the downside, the controls for placing furniture and buildings, and decorating clothes, are currently very clunky and awkward.

We’ll be kept busy in Dreamlight Valley — exploring, collecting resources, farming, cooking, decorating, crafting, building friendships, and helping each character. There’s the main quest, of restoring Dreamlight Valley and undoing the effects of the Forgetting, but each character also has their own quests for you to follow, and it’s easy to see how Disney Dreamlight Valley could frequently be refreshed with new content. Disney Dreamlight Valley has that tantalising “start from scratch” mentality that’s proven so irresistible in other life sims which have likewise plopped you down in the middle of nowhere with only a decrepit shack to your name. There’s that irresistible urge to clean up the Valley and help sort everyone’s problems, which is compounded by the level of nostalgia these characters can summon; songs from your favourite Disney movies wind together as you run around each biome, and the characters might themselves sometimes reference the events of their familiar stories. It would be easy to deck this game out in Disney paraphernalia and rely on that strong sense of nostalgia to do the game’s work for it — from just a few hours’ gameplay, though, it does feel like Disney Dreamlight Valley has a lot to offer.

The possible grindiness of this game is very much reflected in the Disney Dreamlight Valley achievements; no matter how fun it is at the moment, collecting 1,800,000 Star Coins, harvesting 4,500 vegetables, removing 3,000 Night Thorns, and starting 1,000 daily discussions will take quite some time. I’m enjoying the core gameplay loop right now — clearing Night Thorns away is quite fun, and it always feels like there’s so much to do; the only question is, how long before this gets old?

Summary

It's not clear if Disney Dreamlight Valley will become repetitive and grindy in the future, but judging from the hours I've spent playing the game in Early Access, and the fact that I can play with Xbox Game Pass (and not have to fork out any real-life Star Coins), makes this a Free Pass.

Heidi spent four or five hours playing Disney Dreamlight Valley (Early Access) through Xbox Game Pass. She did not earn a single achievement in this time and does not expect to any time soon.

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Written by Heidi Nicholas

Heidi tends to lean towards indie games, RPGs, and open-world games on Xbox, and when not playing Disney Dreamlight Valley, happily installs every new wholesome game that appears on Xbox Game Pass, before diving back into favorites like The Witcher 3. She's looking forward to Age of Mythology Retold, Everwild, Fable, and Avowed on the Xbox horizon. Heidi graduated with an MA in English Literature before joining the TrueAchievements team.