Review: Disney Dreamlight Valley is a wonderful Animal Crossing alternative
When covering a life sim, it can be hard to fully sum up its pros and cons after just a couple of days of analysis.
Games like this, where checking in regularly and establishing a daily routine is part of the design, require the player to invest a reasonable amount of time before it’s clear whether the gameplay loop will hold their attention over the course of multiple sessions.
We’ve now been playing Disney Dreamlight Valley – Gameloft’s answer to the question “what if Animal Crossing had Disney characters in it” – for a month, and the fact we’re still enjoying lengthy sessions on a daily basis means we can now come to the conclusion that yes, this one has us hooked.
The Animal Crossing comparison may be reductive but it’s appropriate, since so many elements of Dreamlight Valley feel a lot like Nintendo’s global blockbuster.
It’s still about the player’s character arriving in a village, getting a modest home and then being given free reign to play the game how they see fit.
There are still villagers to interact with, and some of these are still anthropomorphic mice and ducks (albeit more globally recognised ones this time).
There’s still a money-hungry entrepreneur in the village, but this time instead of Tom Nook and his family it’s (rather appropriately) Scrooge McDuck who runs the shop and deals with upgrading your home.
Despite all this, it should be noted that this isn’t simply a shameless clone of an immensely popular game. While there are certainly plenty of similarities with Nintendo’s lockdown-easing escapism sim, to dismiss Dreamlight Valley as a simple imitation would be to do it a massive disservice.
For starters, the game is far more mission-focused than Animal Crossing, giving players an actual plot to follow
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