Disney Dreamlight Valley

Let’s get the stuff I enjoy about this game out of the way first.
⚪ The storyline is immediately engaging, and you WANT to find out what is happening.
⚪ The look of the game is fitting, and it all feels connected with the different ‘biomes.
⚪ There is a healthy mix of Classic and New Disney in this game; it leans more towards newer Disney, but that was expected.
⚪ Lots of small collections are scattered across and your rewards are more storyline and some pictures from the films.
⚪ I love how most people in this community have collectively come to the decision to have massive farms so that you can just continuously make money quickly.
⚪ I like that you must talk to different characters to get the different bonuses (for mining, farming, foraging, crafting, fishing etc) and the more you work up your relationship level, they can produce more valuable items, though this isn’t 100% all the time.
⚪ I like that every ‘biome’ is decorated with a theme: snow, plaza, forest, darkness, desert plains, elephant graveyard.
⚪ The different buildings are well themed to each character and the outer design of the buildings themselves are cool as well.
⚪ The repetitive cycle of the game is just as addictive as the ones from more established games such as Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons.
Now, onto the things I have issue with.
First things first, the animations break all the time.
Through out my many hours in this game, characters would just break in their walk animations and just glide passed me and, sometimes, they would be dominating in a t-pose as they did so.
The animation problems are heightened whenever it comes to characters or animals that swim or fly.
Both Ariel and Ursula are often wading within rocks or popping their heads through the bridges and the swimming animations alone are just so incredibly lazy and janky.
This goes mostly for Ariel.
Story quests, while fun, get completely overrun by boring and irritating friend quests.
Games have side quests, yes, but this game makes you feel as if you’re about to do 50 exams.
A lot of the quests DO NOT work properly and are still bugged to the day of writing this review.
Take the Ursula quest.
This quest is so broken that it resets your completed tasks sometimes, so you continuously must try and complete the quest before it breaks again. Several time I had to visit that overly chatty Takoyaki and several times, I then had to piss about with trying to place her stupid house.
Simple things like watering crops will inexplicably leave ONE crop being unable to be watered until you re-log.
The clothing side of the game is the most customisation that you will be getting and a lot of the time (for a very long time) you are stuck with ‘vaguely resembles this franchise’ clothing.
God help you if you don’t want to wear ball gowns, dresses or skirts because that is 99% of the clothing.
You CAN customise clothing with a blank template of specific clothing (no designing trousers for you) but it’s like being given play-doh and told to sculpt a replica of the London Eye. It’s not good enough.
And let’s not pretend that this game was ‘made for children’ because Disney knows that older people are getting this game, so having basic stencils to design your clothing is both boring and old school.
Also, screw you if you want to have long straight hair or a fringe that doesn’t look like it’s been cut using the bowl technique because you aren’t getting it.
You know, despite most Disney characters of both genders having these attributes.
Going back to the ‘old school’ thing for a second.
A FULL priced game with an in-game shop.
There is no excuse for this anymore.
Let us earn the items with the multiple currencies you have us get.
You aren’t strapped for cash, Disney, get out of here.
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The islands that you rarely get to visit, to gather more characters, you will only need to visit ONCE.
No resources will spawn there, no special decorative items, no storylines are that particularly linked to the bigger story.
Sure, you can expand the main village but, travelling to distant islands shouldn’t just be a ‘collect this character’ quest only.
It would be a lot better if those islands had exclusive resources on them to make the world feel bigger than just the village you are building.
If they are one use only, then don’t make it possible for us to travel back to them because they are just empty TINY voids when you have taken the character out of there. They have nothing anymore.
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There is a chance that when you interact with a portal, your character will flicker and jump around the screen before finally just standing there. This can break and crash your game.
This happened SEVERAL times (this is mainly for Olaf’s quest that I noticed this the most) and I was worried I had a permanently broken save file but by the power of grey skull, it let me complete the quest.
During cutscenes there’s a chance that there will be a double of either your character or the Disney character and a lot of the time they will be in t-pose.
--
An extra complaint I have is that the game is shockingly quiet when it comes to voice acting (apart from the repeating lines) and I just assumed that at least MOST of the lines would be voiced.
Y’know, being a full priced Disney game and everything.
But whatever.
Take the game with a pinch of salt.
If you like cosy games with a story, wait for this game to go on sale before you buy it.

A dopamine trap masquerading as a farming sim, Disney Dreamlight Valley includes stellar decorating options, endless fetch quests, and equally endless grinding. After ~500 hours, I don’t know if I enjoy the game or if Scrooge McDuck has a gun to my head.
Story
After returning to your grandparents' countryside home, you suffer a traumatic brain injury take a nap and wake to find the old farmland overrun with sinister thorns and amnesiac Disney characters. You must use dreamlight magic to unravel the mysteries of the Forgetting and the Valley's missing ruler, rescue lost characters, and restore the Valley. The main story is interesting and, while I wasn't particularly moved by it, the themes and conclusion seem to resonate with many adult and young adult players who feel disconnected from childhood wonder.
Gameplay
While there's enough variety to keep you busy, all game mechanics boil down to gather-craft-deliver in real time.
Resources regenerate after a certain number of minutes; farming requires you to water crops at timed intervals (plants do not wither when neglected); and some quests require real-life days to pass before you can complete the objectives. Attempting to "time travel" by adjusting the clock on your device will break the game.
The first 50ish hours are mostly foraging, farming, mining, and digging for materials to sell for gold or hoard for crafting. All tools operate in roughly the same way and recent patches added several accessibility options for players with limited mobility. Gold can be spent on crops or at Scrooge's store, which refreshes daily with new selections of furniture and clothing.
The rest of your time is spent completing fetch quests for Disney characters. "Hanging out" with a character increases your relationship, which unlocks new rewards and gives bonuses when performing certain actions. There's no voice acting or cut scenes outside of the main story, and the endless fetch quests quickly start to feel cheap, frustrating, and unrewarding -- BUT the developers were clever: there's a constantly refreshing panel of bite-sized "royal tasks" that award "dreamlight" (AKA instant dopamine), which unlocks new biomes/characters. If you have any kind of attentive disorder, this is basically catnip.
Late and post-game are mostly decorating your valley, experimenting with designing your own clothing and furniture, participating in Star Paths, and competing for moonstones in Dreamsnaps (more on this in a moment). You can also explore multiplayer, which allows you to visit and collect materials from another players' valley if you have their code; there's no in-game chat or emotes, but it's so cool to see what others have done.
What Works For Me
✅ Character Customization. The full editor can be accessed at any time and includes limited facial features, ten body types, and a rainbow of skin colors, but the real customization is in the expansive catalog of clothing/hair styles that you purchase from Scrooge or unlock in quests. At a certain point, styling your avatar is basically its own minigame.
✅ Crafting + Cooking. While cooking/crafting is straightforward (go to the appropriate workstation and select a recipe), there are tons of neat craftables and all of the food looks delicious. Best of all: crafting and cooking pull materials from your storage chests, even if those chests are on a different island.
✅ Decorating. It takes a long, long time to collect enough materials and items to begin decorating, but it's worth it: there are so many unique assets to choose from, the graphics and lighting are absolutely gorgeous, and the controls are mostly seamless on both keyboard and controller. I've spent at least 300 hours renovating.
✅ Community. In decades of gaming, this is the first time I've had game friends become real-life friends. When I was a new player, members of the subreddit offered materials and tips or invited me to their Scrooge shops. Later on, I'd post my multiplayer codes so others could visit/collect resources while I worked from home. Sure, I met the rare griefer, but I also had spontaneous 1920s dress-up parties and bake-offs and silent discos and that odd kinship that forms when you see the same faces again and again.
What Doesn't Work For Me
❎ Character Quests. There are 47 characters (including expansions) with 4+ fetch quests each. Some are fun, but most are filler. After a character's final quest, dialogue usually suggests celebrating in some way, the screen fades to black, and then dialogue recaps the celebration for you. It feels… unrewarding. For all the money Game Loft is raking in, we should get a cut scene or snapshot montage here.
❎ Premium Shop. In the "Premium Shop," you spend moonstones (e.g. real money) to purchase particularly cool cosmetic items. This wouldn't be a big deal, but Game Loft weaponized FOMO: the shop only offers 7-8 items at a time and rotates its inventory at 9AM EST every Wednesday, so you feel pressured to make purchases in case an item doesn't come back.
❎ Moonstones. Technically, you can earn moonstones in-game: 50 from a daily chest, another 300 - 4,000 by participating in a weekly themed photo contest called "Dreamsnaps", plus 50 more by judging entries in the previous Dreamsnap. It sounds like plenty, but the cheapest Premium Shop items cost 850 and most average 2,000 - 3,000 ($10 USD).
❎ Dreamsnaps. Since there's real money at stake, the weekly photo contest is less about expressing your creativity and more about trying to generate as many votes as possible. As much fun as I had with it in the past, other players take it so seriously that the community can feel exhausting.
❎ Star Paths. These time-locked seasonal events have unique rewards, but require so much grinding that they're hard for new or busy players. I joined during Mulan's Star Path, and raced through most of the game to ensure that I earned the rewards; I didn't get to enjoy discovery or move at my own pace. The most recent Star Path was overly long and annoying just to be overly long and annoying; as an adult with a busy life and family, I couldn't complete it.
Final Thoughts
After 500 hours, I'm burned out on fetch quests, tired of grinding, tired of Dreamsnaps, and frustrated with the bugs proliferating in the Storyvale expansion. At the same time, I have to fight the urge to log in every day to see if Scrooge's shops have any new stock. (I wasn't joking about weaponized FOMO.)
I was tempted to leave a negative review because my feelings are generally negative right now, but at its core, DDV is a lot of fun. It's well-designed, it has heart, it has a lovely community, and decorating is just -- *chef's kiss*. I never minded that farming or quests happened in real time because there was - and continues to be - so much else to do. The first ~350 hours of playtime didn't feel like a chore; I genuinely enjoyed almost every moment that didn't involve fishing, building Minnie's clocktower, or... well, fishing.
Recommendation
I'd recommend DDV if you don't mind logging in for daily housekeeping, want a laidback farming sim with plenty to do and discover, and/or don't mind grinding to create beautiful areas and biomes. If you want somewhere safe, comforting, and pretty to escape to for a hundred hours or more, this is perfect.
DDV is not for you if you want a story-driven experience or hate real-time games; in which case, I'd steer you toward My Time at Sandrock. If you struggle with impulse control or FOMO, and especially if you're on a budget, maybe try Coral Island instead.
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I've been playing since the start of Early Access in September 2022 (first on the Nintendo switch and then switched to PC) and this is one of my favorite games!

The good:
- Many things to do in the game, especially for new players (quests, exploring, collecting, levelling up, farming, decorating, DreamSnaps, etc.)
- Fun to decorate & interesting challenges with DreamSnaps
- Touch of Magic tool allows players to create & share custom designs with motifs for certain clothing / furniture items
- Aesthetically pleasing, pretty immersive & several biomes / realms to explore
- Love talking & hanging out with Disney/Pixar characters
- Interesting main story plot line
- Lovely community on Discord
- Seasonal events, Star Paths & community challenges
- Multiple content updates per year

The bad:
- Sometimes grindy / repetitive
- Premium shop & its weekly rotation feels a bit like something from a mobile game + can cause FOMO for players. You can earn Moonstones (premium currency) via DreamSnaps, but that's not nearly enough to buy all the new weekly added premium items & buying more with real money is very expansive (1 house skin is 10-15 euros; 1 character skin is 10 euros; 1 critter/companion is 5-7 euros; 1 tool set is 15 euros).
- Gameloft often doesn't communicate well (although they do send out surveys once in a while)
- Many QoL improvements needed in almost all aspects of the game (e.g. better RNG, better UI, better filter/tag system, search bars, placing items diagonally, etc.)
- Some character quests lack depth
- Multiplayer not available for DLC & you can only look at eachother's Valley's, so not really play together
- Some characters shown in the original trailer are still not in the game
- Had to buy the game again to be able to play it on my PC
- Not able to have multiple profiles
- Lack of consistency in creative freedom
- Item limit for decorating outside
- Slow in implementing fixes for bugs

Been playing this game for a while now on Game Pass, and recently bought it on Steam when I found out, and verified, that the cloud save for the game not only extended cross-platform, but cross-game stores as well. Now playing my Game Pass save on Steam - primarily so that I could play it on my Steam Deck - which it plays absolutely flawlessly on, BTW.
Honestly, I'm an old guy. Not really into cartoons or Disney movies any more, but the game characters really are fleshed out to be interactive with the best. To the point where I guiltily and under the cover of darkness subscribed to the Disney channel to see how their stories played out.
The game is also both an OCD'er nightmare and wet dream all wrapped up in one package. It's game grinder heaven or Hades. But it serves the purpose it's intended for that rewards the time spent, being creating more storage, massive amounts of themed furniture, events such as festivals, ect. So IMO, it's the best use of grinding for personal world building rewards and satisfaction that I've ever played, and I've been playing since Pong.
It has a cash shop, and paid events that can get very pricey for those who can't maintain control of themselves, so OCD'ers beware on that front. And we're not talking just cosmetics. It's a single player game with multiplayer visitations to other player's world, so I can't really call the cash shop as being "pay to win", but it's definitely "pay to enhance" your gameplay.
Still, it's a very robust game with absolute tons of things to do, create, build, furnish, decorate, dress up, in your own personal game world to just let your imagination run completely wild in, and it succeeds in this to "infinity and beyond"...and this old redneck's guilty pleasure.

Yeah, I like it. The developers have clearly done their research into the genre.
Ever felt the in-game clock of Stardew Valley was speed running your whole life? Or that Graveyard Keeper's pace might actually be keeping your grave? Has Animal Crossing’s bird’s-eye view ever had you questioning if you’re some kind of god with poor depth perception? Oh, and don’t even get me started on the "hey-let's-turn-your-PC-into-a-toaster" optimization of My Time at Portia.
Well, Dreamlight Valley basically takes all the grievances of similar titles and provides a thoroughly polished experience. The amount of content is well worth the price. As a completionist, I am looking at about 500 hours worth of gameplay for the base game—aka my new part-time job. :)
I'd only cut the relentless socializing. I get it, you need something, but can you please not hover around like a homeless puppy while I’m trying to tend to my crops? I KNOW you have a quest for me, I SWEAR it's on my radar. Let me live my best farming life for just five minutes and water my tomatoes in peace.