Disney Stardew Valley? (Disney Dreamlight Valley thoughts)

     Hey there, friends! As you know, I'm Jonathan, a Self-Proclaimed Dreamer, so dreams are constantly on my mind, which makes today's topic a delight to talk about. Disney Dreamlight Valley is a new free-to-play game that was just introduced a few weeks ago that seems to have all the charm of life-simulators such as Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley, but with a Disney coat of paint. There's not a whole lot of information about it yet, but the more that I look into this game, it looks much more than that. Based on some of the writings on the official blog for the game, as well as the article written by IGN's Jeffrey Vega, I'll try to give you all a little information on what this game might be like when it comes out. Let's discover this magical, cursed, valley together, and see what we can do to break this curse!

A Dreamer's Paradise gone wrong!

    According to the first trailer that came out a few weeks ago, "there once was a dream world in which familiar friends from the most heroic to the most villainous lived together in harmony," we see a few characters such as Buzz Lightyear, Ursula, and Kristoff and the general hub of the Dream Castle, and then we're told of a curse called "the forgetting." The forgetting is a literal name for it, as these characters seem to have forgotten all about who they are, and it's up to your character to help them. In the IGN article which talks about Vega's sneak peek at the game, he talks about how he has to help Merlin remember who he is and do a few more tasks before he can actually make it into the central hub area. The Dream Castle is the central hub where it appears the main customization area and where the different characters used to live, but when the Forgetting set in, they were all sent back to their different worlds, where you will have to go and retrieve them. Apparently in the Early Access period that's going to happen this summer for people with a Founders Pass (we'll get to that in a bit), there will be four of these other worlds, two of which are going to be a Wall-E themed world and a Moana themed world, and the other two will be revealed later on down the road presumably. They've shown a lot of Disney Characters from different franchises so far. In the first trailer alone, we saw Buzz and Woody, Wreck-It Ralph, Anna, Elsa, Kristoff, and even Scrooge McDuck, just to name a few. It's impossible to say whether or not all of them will get their own worlds based on their movies, but it does seem to look that way, in addition to being able to customize your hub world to suit the new character's needs!

    The IGN article talks a bit about the life simulator aspect as well, discussing various different aspects of the game, starting in the home. Vega talks about his brief preview session where Game Manager, Manea Castet, showed him around his house. Castet had his living room decked out to the brim with Monsters Inc. inspired decor, then went over to the store which Vega compared to "Nook's Cranny" from the Animal Crossing games, with all of the furniture being able to be purchased from this store (with in-game currency, which is an important distinction). The article goes on to talk about the game operating in real time, following in Animal Crossing tradition instead of Stardew Valley, though borrowing some from Stardew, Vega does mention that certain characters like to go to the restaurant at different times. This leads me to believe that the characters may run on different schedules so you can learn where to meet them depending on the time of day, which is a really cool idea, I think. 

So much to do, so much to see!

The article highlights several biomes that make up the map (including four that the official website recently posted a blog about). Vega mentions the biomes of, "the main Plaza, Peaceful Meadows, Dazzle Beach, Forest of Valor, Glade of Trust, Sunlit Plateau, Frosted Heights, and the Forgotten Lands." The website put up a blog post on May 13 which focuses on the Plaza, Glade of Trust, Dazzle Beach, and Peaceful Meadow, going into much greater detail on each. The Plaza, as the name suggests, is the main central area of the Valley and as such, is where your journey begins. seemingly this will be the first area that you free from the Forgetting, and then set out to other areas. The Glade of Trust is described as the blog post writer's favorite biome, being very different from the others, and a place where you can meet many different flora and fauna in this area (specifically mentioning a pink reptile of some sort). Dazzle Beach seems to be a Moana themed area, though I'm not sure if this is where Moana goes off to or if this is a biome within the valley itself. Ocean fishing with Moana and feeding turtles are two different activities mentioned here, as well as rebuilding Moana's "wa'a kaulua." We also see a "Dreamlight Valley Pillar" in this picture, though it doesn't elaborate on what that means. We'll just have to wait and see! The last biome mentioned in the post is the Peaceful Meadow, which looks to be... well... peaceful, of course! There is not much said about this area other than just several villagers seem to have set up their houses here, including Goofy. One more detail mentioned in this segment is that the "Glade of Trust is one of the first destinations that you can choose to unlock, but only you can decide where your adventure will lead you!" This means that the game will let you open new areas as you see fit, a super cool addition which lets you choose your own path for exploring what seems to be a pretty vast world. This is further supported by the IGN article where Vega mentions that he was given the choice between visiting, "'a desolated planet with a shy robot' or 'the ocean with a demigod,'" which is referring to Wall-E and Moana respectively. These locations all sound really cool, but of course, it all depends on what content we get in these places, don't you agree?

A resident meets with Wall-E in front of a Dreamlight Valley Pillar!

    Fortunately, it doesn't seem that this game will be slim on content. According to Vega, this game is said to contain up to 40-60 hours of gameplay, and a pretty decent postgame as well! Apparently every character is going to have their own quest line, "character arc and can also be leveled up for better rewards." This will add quite a bit to do, though I will admit that I can't imagine characters like Goofy or Donald Duck having extremely in depth character arcs, but we'll just have to see! The IGN article also discusses different character customization options, which I won't really other than to say that there are a lot of cool Disney-inspired costumes and I'm going to be excited to play around with then the game comes out.

Now, to business...

    This game is going to be Free to Play and developed by Gameloft, a mobile game developer which has made many mobile games for Disney (I myself have played many many hours of Disney Magic Kingdoms, also developed by them) and hopefully this one will be well developed and well received by the public. They're actually making two different Disney games right now, with the second being Disney Speedstorm which I briefly mentioned in one of my previous posts about a Nintendo Direct from a few months ago. Speedstorm is also going to be a Free to Play game on multiple consoles, so it's clear that Disney is turning more that way, which isn't too surprising, as they've taken that approach in many cases on mobile devices. It's interesting to note that these new releases will be coming to basically every console though, it inspires a bit more confidence that they'll add some extra polish here when compared to the Mobile releases that they've put out. Mobile games obviously still have a pretty negative bias against them, with them being considered too simple or limited in scope, but look at Genshin Impact. It's a pretty massive game in its own right, featuring a pretty massive open world and a bunch of different playable characters. It's also constantly updating and expanding, which is something that Dreamlight Valley is also promising! At the end of the day, games are games, and while I am still a bit wary of the whole Free to Play model and its potential for predatory practices as we've seen with Fortnite, we'll have to wait and see how the microtransactions play out before saying one way or another. 

    According to the IGN article, Castet says that there won't be many opportunities to spend real world money, as all of the cosmetic options and furniture can be purchased only with in-game currency. The game isn't coming out until next year, but you can pay for a Founder's Pass starting this summer to play in the early access period. If you have Xbox Gamepass, you can also play during Early Access. All of the realm experiences will be able to play for free, though Gameloft did apparently mention to Vega that there are some plans to sell expansions and some cosmetic options further down the road. all in all, this doesn't seem like a horribly exploitative model, but we'll have to see once it comes out. There hasn't been any pricing information about the Founder's Pass, but I hope it won't be too much, since I would like to play and maybe help them test it some by playing the early access version.

    Disney Dreamlight Valley seems to be shaping up to a really interesting time, and I hope it lives up to my tempered expectations, and even exceeds them. There's a lot of promise here, and I hope the folks at Gameloft are able to capitalize on it! I'll be sure to write more once I've played the game, as obviously there's not a ton of information out there in the wild yet.

    Thanks so much for reading this post, friends! Are you excited for this little free-to-play game? I'm certainly interested in it, and I really hope it ends up being something special. If you want to read the articles that I mentioned a lot in this post, here are some links to the IGN Article, written by Jeffrey Vega, and the Dreamlight Valley Blogpost that was written by Community Manager Rachel. I hope you'll all have a good week, and I'll talk to you again soon! This is Jonathan, A Self-Proclaimed Dreamlight Valley Founder, and I'll see ya real soon!