Gameloft shows us A Whole New World with Disney Dreamlight Valley 

Last week, the folks at Gameloft announced their new collaboration with Disney called “Disney Dreamlight Valley”, an upcoming free-to-play life-simulation adventure game for PC, Mac, and consoles. The trailer for the game gave us a glimpse at life in the titular Dreamlight Valley, where a dark and mysterious event called The Forgetting has taken place. It’s up to us, the players, to “uncover the mysterious secrets that led you to this new world and explore diverse realms inspired by classic Disney and Pixar worlds, while helping the iconic inhabitants of the town recover their lost memories.”

In order to restore the Dreamlight Valley, we’ll be teaming up with a variety of Disney and Pixar characters from Mickey & Friends to Disney’s The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, and Moana to Disney and Pixar’s Toy Story and more! The trailer shows off fishing with Goofy (with silly antics to ensue, I’m sure), gardening with Wall-E, and even cooking with Remy! To me, this kind of feels like a mix of Animal Crossing meets Kingdom Hearts, only without the complicated backstory.

Adventuring to restore the memories of your classic Disney and Pixar pals isn’t the only task, of course. You’ll be restoring and rebuilding Dreamlight Valley itself by decorating and upgrading your own personal player home, as well as decorating the world around you. Maybe you’ll place a beautiful park with a fancy fountain, or theme your plaza to look like a tropical hideaway à la Adventureland. Dreamlight Valley looks to offer various customization options to ensure your world is tailored to your specific vision.

“Our development team is a big family of Disney and Pixar fans and have poured all of our passion into the development of Disney Dreamlight Valley, especially in the way we depict characters and their story arcs,” said Manea Castet, Game Manager of Disney Dreamlight Valley at Gameloft Montreal. “We can’t wait for fans to join the Early Access this summer and help us bring this new ever-evolving Disney and Pixar-inspired world to our excited community.”

Disney Dreamlight Valley is scheduled to launch next year, 2023, as a free-to-play game. Although, if you’d like to get ahead of the curve, Early Access will be available this summer for anyone who purchases the game’s Founder’s Pack or gamers who are subscribed to Xbox’s Game Pass service. During this early access period, players will be the first to explore Dreamlight Valley, as well as receive exclusive rewards they’ll be able to keep once the game officially launches next year. This early access will be supported across all platforms including PC, Mac, Nintendo Switch™, PlayStation®5 (PS5™), PlayStation®4 (PS4™), Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and Xbox One consoles with the PC and Mac versions available on Steam, Epic Games Store, Microsoft Store, and the Mac App Store.

This trailer caught me by surprise, and as a huge fan of Disney, I look forward to building my own version of Dreamlight Valley and teaming up with my favorite Disney and Pixar characters. I can’t wait to learn more about this title and check it out for myself when the Founder’s Pack becomes available this summer.