Disney Dreamlight Valley is an interesting new life-sim game by Gameloft that lets you interact with several Disney characters, with the promise of more characters arriving as time goes on and the game gets updated. The game is supposed to be free to play but early access for people who purchase the Standard Edition and Gamepass users is already available.
The game’s character creator is pretty basic but gets the job done. From what I played, though, it seems that the main strength in this area will be the clothing and accessories that you can unlock. Some of them can even be customized in an interface that lets you place stamps and change the main color. The game also lets you save each of these customizations so you can easily access them or switch between them whenever you want.
Dreamlight Valley starts you off in a small tutorial by meeting with Merlin, who explains you the current situation of the location. You quickly learn how to clean up thorns that are infesting the valley and get your own house. Finally, you learn about tasks, being able to track a specific one, and you unlock all the basic tools you’ll need for your adventure. All of these felt pretty intuitive and easy to follow.
I tried the game on both the PC and Xbox One S and it felt pretty smooth and responsive. Controls are already pretty easy so that also helped getting hang of the game quickly. I imagine the Switch version must have some limitations in relation to graphics and framerate, the second one not being as important for this type of game. On Xbox One S, the graphics looked pretty good too overall. My only issue with Xbox One S was the initial loading of the game which is a bit on the slow side. Everything else seemed to be good.
Overall, Dreamlight Valley seems to be a fun chill game that I would like to play from time to time. Something I really liked about it is that the game syncs the in-game clock to your real time, so if it’s currently night time at your location, it’ll also be night time in the game. That’s a feature I really enjoy in games and wish more had that option when it’s possible and/or makes sense.
Link-NM is the administrator of N Masters, Makendo Central, and aspiring indie game developer at NovaFan Games. His favorite game franchises include Mega Man X, The Legend of Zelda, and Mario Kart.