Disney Dreamlight Valley Review

There’s nothing I hate more than reviewing a business model rather than a game. It feels like any review of Disney Dreamlight Valley has to pull up its sleeves like Donald Duck and immediately get involved in some fisticuffs. Because this was meant to be a free game, right? We were meant to be celebrating the anniversary of Disney Dreamlight Valley’s launch with a completely free game that anyone could play. And we’re not. 

Instead, Jafar turns up and thumps a cobra staff into my nethers. Disney Dreamlight Valley remains a paid-for experience, against the original promise. We get A Rift in Time, a wodge of expansion DLC, which is also paid for. And Disney Dreamlight retains its battle pass systems and cosmetic store. Not only has Gameloft and Disney gone back on its word, but everywhere we look we see price tags. 

Without a doubt, this is a mini-betrayal that could have been avoided. Disney Speedstorm, Gameloft’s other Disney foray, went free-to-play, so there was clearly another path. And we would have been far more welcoming if Gameloft were upfront about their plans. A mid-price game with paid expansions and purely cosmetic purchases? It’s not great, but we’ve seen worse.

At risk of sounding like corporate shills, we’re kind of happy they didn’t go the Speedstorm route. Having pumped days into Gameloft’s racer, we know what lies down that free-to-play path. Unending adverts, relentless retention systems and a vacuum where personality should be. Disney Dreamlight Valley should never have misled so many people, but in some ways it’s the right choice for the game – give or take some battle pass currency packs. 

I have been dabbling, on and off, with Disney Dreamlight Valley for over a year. It’s got that tractor-beam pull of an MMO, coupling an absolutely massive core of content with that temptation to scratch off one or two objectives. I can play it for five minutes, or give up an entire week to it, and I’m not sure I’m in control of which will occur. The milestones and objectives endlessly pass, and I wonder if I will ever be done with it. 

But it’s also got that laid-back calmness of an Animal Crossing. It gently beckons me in with the promise of relaxation, of just growing a couple of pumpkins and then buggering off. But, like Animal Crossing, it’s a false narrative, as I will inevitably trip over something else that needs cleaning, fishing, mining, harvesting, fetch-questing, gifting, building, moving from one room to another, unlocking, buying, gathering, finding, completing, sorting, reorganising. I feel relaxed by the end of it all, but it’s also 3am in the morning, and I can only be so relaxed at that time of day.

It’s a trap, as my favourite Disney character would say. It’s a game that I move in and out of love with, living passionately in its embrace for a couple of weeks before having a hissy fit and deciding that, no, I’m never going to play it again. And then Mirabel from Encanto gets added as a new character and I’m back in again. Just when I thought I was out, etc etc. 

It’s hard to describe what you do in Disney Dreamlight Valley without it sounding like inordinately hard work. You’re in Amnesia Town: Disney Edition, as dozens of Disney characters arrive in the same space with no memory of how they got there. So, you do abso-bleeding everything for them. They’re useless. You nanny them, build their houses, set them up with each other, even feed them. Over time, their memories improve and little slivers of story pop out of them. Then more characters turn up. I was simultaneously adoring the fact that Maui was here, while wiping his arse and doing his shopping for him. 

Which is to say it’s brilliant. The interlocking systems are myriad, as every action in Dreamlight Valley has multiple reactions. Fish a single fish and you will complete battle passes, increment quests, complete challenges, trigger a quick minigame, reward you with something to sell and something you should absolutely keep. Every five meters there’s another thing, with a similar chain of reactions.

And just like the best (or worst) MMOs, that one action comes with overheads. That fish has now reduced your stamina. Better replenish it at the house! That fish has filled up your inventory. Better pop to a treasure chest to empty it! Then you can cash in the challenge, the quest, the resulting currency, and so it goes on. 

Disney Dreamlight Valley is brilliant, but you have to be aware of this high-maintenance nature, this neediness. Whenever I’ve given up on it (only to return weeks later), it’s because the sheer number of requests became too much for me. Why does there have to be a stamina system at all? Why is Disney Dreamlight determined to make it so difficult to store items away, or unlock certain areas in the world? The answer is often ‘so that it forces me to play for longer’ and I feel all dirty, have an involuntary shiver, then put the pad down. 

Younger players beware, too. Our two daughters have an even more complicated, contrary relationship with Disney Dreamlight Valley than we do. Our youngest loves it – it’s the characters she loves, the way they need her so deeply – but it’s constant walls of text and is stupendously stop-start. If you have a six year old or younger, it might be too much for them for these reasons. And our eldest is bemused by how it refuses to pick a path. There’s very little in Disney Dreamlight Valley that constitutes a ‘Main Quest’. Everything shouts for her attention, yet none of it seems to be important.

Does the A Rift in Time DLC, released at the same time as Disney Dreamlight Valley’s Anniversary, alleviate any of this? Not at all. It’s a glorious celebration of everything that is utterly brilliant and terrible about Disney Dreamlight Valley. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

One way that it does differ is it gets rid of people, at least a little. The emphasis of A Rift in Time is pure exploration: vast open spaces with alien fish, fruit, veg, trees, gems, rocks, etc. Those Dreamlight players who survey an expanse and see it as nodes to be cleared, jobs to be done, will be in dreamland. I’m one of them. I may never get out. 

Somewhere, a Disney Dreamlight Valley designer decided that A Rift in Time needed more things to do. Now we have a Gwent-like subgame called Scramblecoin, where Disney characters get transmuted into chess pieces, and you hop about a board in the name of coins. I didn’t need this additional timesink, but now I need it, in a way that only addicts could verify. 

And of course there’s Rapunzel, Gaston, EVE and Jafar, all namechecked and present. They crawl about the A Rift in Time area, unable to perform even the most basic motor-functions, begging us to help them. Yet help them I do, watching the many, many progress bars increase as I do so. Jafar, you spoil me with your battle pass progress, friendship score, XP, currency rewards, etc etc etc etc. 

I know I should be angry at Disney Dreamlight Valley. The decision to move from a paid experience to an even more paid experience is Ursula-like in its sheer evilness (worse, as Ursula sticks to her promises). I should be angry, but I’m only a few-thousand dreamlight away from affording a new area, and Rapunzel is soooo close to becoming a level 10 friend. There’s too much to be done. There’s no time to be angry.