The title Animal Crossing series with Disney and Pixar characters. The life-sim game will see players foster a community of characters while customizing the setting of the game, Dreamlight Valley. And though Animal Crossing is a great series to emulate based off of the success of New Horizons alone, there are still pitfalls the new Disney game should avoid.
Disney Dreamlight Valley is already adding elements to differentiate itself from the regular Animal Crossing title. On top of the community building and life-sim aspects of the game, Disney Dreamlight will also have an adventure component to the game. Players will explore caverns and complete challenges Disney and Pixar heroes and villains alike, all in the goal of freeing Dream Castle from the ominous force called the Forgetting. The game will thus have a story component that the Animal Crossing series lacks, in turn making it more accessible to mainstream audiences (even though Animal Crossing is already mainstream itself).
But when it comes to the specifics of the gameplay, Disney Dreamlight Valley has a lot to learn from the mistakes of the Animal Crossing series. In particular, Animal Crossing: New Horizons can serve as a great model for what to do and not do when creating a life-sim or even an adventure game. The remote islands, holiday events, and design options from New Horizons appear to have direct parallels with aspects of Disney Dreamlight Valley, so the latter game can ensure to avoid anything that went wrong with its predecessor.
Disney Dreamlight Valley Can Make Collecting Characters Better Than In ACNH
One of the most important things Disney Dreamlight Valley can learn from Animal Crossing: New Horizons is to make character collection engaging and fun. Just like Animal Crossing's villagers, the characters of Disney Dreamlight Valley are at the center of the game. Recruiting them to one's community should thus be an exciting and unique experience.
This is an area where Animal Crossing: New Horizons really missed the mark. Villager hunting is a laborious and monotonous process that involves hoarding Nook Miles tickets to fly to remote islands where players can find random villagers. Because of how expensive Nook Miles tickets are, how many villagers are in the game, and the length of loading times, completing a villager hunt can take days if not weeks of grinding. This is particularly bad, as the entire purpose of Animal Crossing: New Horizons is to relax and wind down, not feel pressured to work hard.
Disney Dreamlight Valley already looks like it has a promising future in this regard. While it is not certain how players will gain characters for their island, one of the possibilities is that it is related to the caverns noted on the game's website. The caverns are said to have challenges from Disney and Pixar characters. What could help the game avoid Animal Crossing: New Horizons' villager problem is making the rewards of these challenges the character who created them. This would make collecting characters in Disney Dreamlight Valley much more engaging than in Animal Crossing.
Disney Dreamlight Valley Should Skip Animal Crossing's Holiday Events
Another mistake Nintendo made in Animal Crossing: New Horizons that Disney Dreamlight Valley should avoid is the holiday events. While holiday events can be a great way to reinvigorate gameplay and in on festivities, Animal Crossing: New Horizons made a mistake with its events. The game's most famous blunders is, of course, the terrifying Zipper T. Bunny and Bunny Day. Instead of lasting a day, Bunny Day actually lasts an entire week. This unnecessary elongation of what is supposed to be a one-day event creates a false sense of pressure for players to collect as many limited-time items as possible over the course of a week. Adding to this pressure is the plain creepiness of the event's mascot. Though no dialogue confirms it, it is an unspoken truth that Zipper T. Bunny is a person inside of a costume, likely hiding from the law for the horrific crimes they committed.
Disney Dreamlight Valley should find the happy medium that Animal Crossing: New Horizons was unable to find. Placing holiday events on a singular day puts an immense amount of pressure on players to make the most out of it. Simultaneously, making the events last a week or more can turn what was supposed to be refreshing into something stale. Disney Dreamlight Valley should thus find a three to five day range for its holiday events that will keep them both fun and low stakes. Additionally, Disney Dreamlight Valley should rely on unique characters for these events in the same way Animal Crossing does, but they should ensure that they pick the best of the bunch (or at least anything unlike Zipper T. Bunny).
Disney Dreamlight Valley Animations Can Learn From Animal Crossing
Finally, Disney Dreamlight Valley should avoid the long animations of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Whenever crafting, planting, or shoveling in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, players must experience a long animation that is impossible to cancel once it is started. While this may not sound like a huge deal at first, it becomes one when the game is centered around extensive and repetitive processes like the Animal Crossing series is. These long animations reveal the fun tasks of these games for what they really are: glorified chores. And most video game players do not turn their consoles or computers on to do more chores.
Disney Dreamlight Valley should instead follow the like of Sims. With the Sims series, inputs are often ed instantly without an animation, so decorating, planting, and other tasks are much less annoying to do in repetition. This can arguably remove some of the character from the game, as the animations of the Animal Crossing series are part of what makes it unique. Nevertheless, Disney Dreamlight Valley should still forego long animations for actions that are expected to be used a lot.
Even if Disney Dreamlight Valley chooses to learn nothing from Animal Crossing: New Horizons' mistakes, it automatically does one thing better at the very least: price. The life-sim game will have its free-to-play launch in early 2023, and it will be available even earlier for those with Game . Nevertheless, the Disney title has a promising future with its clear inspiration from one of Nintendo's best series.