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Trip Down Memory Lane on Mobile | Disney Dreamlight Valley "Arcade Edition" Review

1K View2023-12-20

🎮Game: Disney Dreamlight Valley "Arcade Edition" (Apple)

⭐️Score: 8/10

📖Premise

Dreamlight Valley was a world where all Disney characters, regardless of how evil or good they are, lived in harmony. However, this peace was broken when the Forgetting came along.

We find out that Dreamlight Valley was a special place from our childhood, where our imagination gave birth to this special haven for our favorite Disney characters. But once we grew up and left our childhood behind, the Forgetting set in, causing our Disney friends to slowly forget their purpose and our town to be overrun with thorns.

Once we make our way back, it is our job to whip up the town back into shape. We as Dreamlight Valley’s ruler possess the power of Dreamlight to wash away the Forgetting and revive our friends’ memories.

How do we go about doing this? With some basic chore labor.

🎮Gameplay

Like I said, the similarities to Animal Crossing, especially New Horizons, cannot be overstated here. You have your usual activities of fishing, harvesting, and cooking, and there’s an in-game economy to contribute to jumpstart your town.

Gameplay across the Apple Arcade version and the console version is mostly similar. The only difference is the smaller resolution of phones and condensed UI for mobile compared to the console iteration.

Committing yourself to any specific prompts and actions will cost you energy points. When you run out, you will need to replenish it with food or a brief rest at your house. After that, the grind continues.

But what are you grinding for? In Animal Crossing, it’s usually to pay off your massive debt to Tom Nook and expand your village.

In Dreamlight Valley, it’s to reunite familiar Disney faces with their memories and bring them back home. Seeing your friends awaken from their depressing amnesia and return to their more whimsical selves did manage to crack a smile from me. Each character has a quest line and a relationship gauge that progresses based on how you interact with them. Gain enough favor and they will move right into Dreamlight Valley.

⭐️Dreamlight’s Magic

Despite being a chore simulator, there is a certain satisfaction that comes from cleaning up your town and returning it to its old glory. It’s the same satisfaction that comes from cleaning up your room for the first time in a while. You find misplace things and notice things you haven’t in a while.

And, in a way, Dreamlight Valley’s gameplay loop is about reigniting memories of our childhood, buried beneath the great many things we have learned since then. It’s about reconnecting with an innocence we still have within that we may have forgotten. For that alone, Dreamlight Valley is quite magical.

📊Issues

What isn’t so magical are some early gameplay gripes that kinda broke my gameplay pace. Inventory management sucks. You start with way too little space and even the storage in your house feels shallow. The UI could also use some condensing and organization to make navigation much easier.

✨Conclusion

If Animal Crossing vibes with Disney superstars sounds like a grand old time to you, take a trip down memory lane to Dreamlight Valley.