Disney Dreamlight Valley | Video Game Review

I have recently become rather addicted to Disney Dreamlight Valley, a new video game from everyone’s favorite mouse. It is currently in early access, which means there are some bugs to work out. Here, let me tell you about it.

Disney Dreamlight Valley is a simulation game, somewhat akin to The Sims or Stardew Valley. Your character is having a difficult time in life so they return to a play area they frequented as a child. Suddenly, your character is thrust into a world of magic with Mickey Mouse and Merlin. Their world has been overtaken by The Forgotten. It is your job to help them rid the world of evil Night Thorns and bring their Disney friends back to Dreamlight Valley.

While I’m not a huge Disney fan, I was intrigued by Dreamlight Valley when it was first announced. I am a big fan of Stardew Valley so I was happy to hear about another game in a similar format. Though I will admit that I was afraid that the game would be too ‘kiddified’ to be any good. Boy, was I wrong.

One thing that I really love about the game is that you get guidance on how to proceed but you don’t necessarily have to follow that guidance. My husband, my daughter, and I are all playing the game and we have very different play styles. There are two types of quests in the game - Realm Quests (where you are bringing characters back to the valley from their realm) and Character Quests (where you are strengthening your friendships with characters in order to get new things for the valley). The two quests do overlap a little. For example, in order to proceed in Goofy’s quests, you need to bring Remy to the valley. I made it my goal to proceed as far as possible in the Character Quests without doing the Realm Quests. I actually got pretty far before I had to go to any of the other Realms.

My husband, meanwhile, has played the game a little more straightforward. He rescued Remy at the “correct” time and, I believe, has rescued all of the currently available characters from their Realms. I have rescued Remy, Moana, and Maui but, as of this writing, I have not rescued Wall-E. These differences don’t change the game play a lot but rescuing the Realm characters does make some of the other quests a little easier. I just chose a more difficult path.

Now for the bugs. My husband and my daughter have played the game on the Nintendo Switch, while I have stuck to only playing on my PC via Steam. None of us have played on the Xbox or the Playstation. If you are playing on the Switch, the game does crash fairly frequently. Since the game auto-saves every five minutes, you can lose up to five minutes of progress when the game crashes. I haven’t experienced that issue on the PC but sometimes the Disney characters will get stuck in a wall when they are helping you with a task. Sometimes you can fix the issue by transporting your character to another place on the map but sometimes the only fix is to restart the game. Other than those two issues, I don’t think I’ve found any other bugs. Sure, the characters sometimes get in the way when you are trying to do something but that is the life of an NPC.

Everyone in my family has found Dreamlight Valley to be tons of fun. And while it might help to be a Disney fan, interacting with your favorite characters, I don’t think that not being a fan would detract from the gameplay. If you are into sim games, especially Stardew Valley, this is the game for you. There are a lot of similarities to Stardew, except the NPC characters are a lot more interactive. Currently, you do have to pay for the early access to the game. Depending on the edition you choose, it can cost anywhere from $30 to $70. However, the game is supposed to be free-to-play when it goes live in 2023. Either way, I think a lot of people would really love the game. It is a ton of fun.

Game review: Artist Colony

Since we were snowed in all weekend, I decided to waste some time playing Artist Colony. It looked a lot like Virtual Villagers. Since I really enjoyed that series, this should be fun too, right? Well, it's mostly fun. As with most simulation games, there is a set of goals that the characters need to finish. The story is about a group of artists coming together to rebuild an old artists' colony. (There's a backstory about friendship and love, but it's not really all that necessary to the game play.) You get money to complete tasks by selling the artists' works. Since you begin with only two artists, it's a little difficult to raise money. However, once you start attracting new artists to the colony, things can really get moving. Then it ends up being a little difficult to keep track of everyone. On top of that, I found myself getting bored with the tedious task of training the artist and having them create masterpieces to sell. Perhaps if the selling part went a little faster, the creating part wouldn't be so dull. As it was, I ended up with artists that couldn't create anything because I filled up my gallery yet no one was coming to buy anything.

Overall, it was a decent game. There were little annoyances, but I could easily overlook them. If nothing else, I wanted to see what the end result was.

Game Review: Restaurant Empire

I turned on GameTap the other day, which is rather rare for me, and decided to give one of the simulation games a try. Restaurant Empire seemed to be the best choice at the time. You have just graduated culinary school and are about to take over your uncle's restaurant. From the furniture and design of the restaurant to customizing the food you serve your customers, the future of the family business is in your hands. There are some good and bad things about this game. I like that you get a lot of control with the culinary recipes. You can change up the minor ingredients to change how the food tastes but that also takes the chance that your customers will hate it. On the other hand, you don't seem to get a lot of control on the floor of the restaurant. I frequently had customers complaining that their food was taking too long. Meanwhile I had a ton of servers but I couldn't hire any more cooks. I'm assuming my guy can only cook so fast. There should be a better way to deal with customer complaints. I know I can't make all of them happy but the complaints that I can fix seem to be extremely difficult to fix on the first level.

I'll probably keep playing it for awhile to see if it gets any better. I passed the first few levels though I imagine the challenges will get harder in the later levels. Hopefully the game will help a bit more with the waitstaff and customer complaints.

Game Review: Escape from Paradise

While browsing around Yahoo Games, I came across Escape from Paradise. The description on Yahoo is: "A luxury cruise ship crashes on an uncharted island in the Pacific Ocean. Lead the survivors of the shipwreck, set up camp on the island, and build a rescue object to get your friends off the island. Escape from Paradise is packed full of different games to play. Explore the five islands surrounding the main island and unlock new games that will help you gather resources and aid you in your quest."

This is pretty much a Sims game. First you design your character then you are tossed onto a deserted island with one other character. After a bit of instruction from the Tiki Man, you are given some goals to complete. The first goal is "Gather 50 pieces of wood." So between your character and the computer-generated character, you must cut 50 pieces of wood as well as gather enough food so the two of you don't starve. The goals gradually get more difficult but it isn't anything you can't accomplish with a little bit of time. In between the main goals, you'll have the chance to play mini-games such as marbles. (Well, it's not called marbles but it's the same concept.) In my opinion, the mini-games aren't really necessary and end up being more difficult than the reward is worth. I'd rather just stick to the main goals of building houses and wells.

Overall, this game is just OK. It's not extremely difficult so a casual player would probably like it. However, it's rather tedious until you get a few more people in your village. I don't think too many people would stick with this beyond the 60-minute demo.