Disney Dreamlight Valley made a measurable splash in the crowded life simulation market with its early access debut last summer, and now that the game has properly launched, fans can find a worthy new frontier in its A Rift in Time expansion.
The first act of this new paid expansion adds the Eternity Isles, a whole new destination separate from the Dreamlight Valley mainland itself. Existing players are familiar with the effects of the Forgetting, which put the Valley into a magical slumber and scattered the Disney legends who called it home to the four winds; Eternity Isles went through a similar catastrophe, as Merlin informs us, and it’s up to the player to help rebuild there as well.
Where the original setting was overtaken by massive, magical plants, A Rift In Time has a strong focus on… well, you guessed it, time. The Eternity Isles introduce players first to Ancient’s Landing, an intriguing change of pace with its “lost civilization” aesthetic. There, players must obtain and master a new tool, the Royal Hourglass, to find treasures lost in time rifts all over the island or remove chronological abnormalities that block your paths forward.
For the most part, Disney Dreamlight Valley: A Rift in Time reskins familiar elements from the base game with a coat of time paint. Instead of Night Thorns, “Splinters of Fate” will spawn at random daily and must be dispelled with a simple command; instead of the larger thorn vines that blocked biomes in the main hub, there are time distortions like swirling spouts of sands. It’s not reinventing the gameplay loop in any sense of the word, but the practice does help keep things consistent while giving the new locales a unique character.
There are three new biomes in this first Act of the expansion: the ruins of Ancient’s Landing, the jungles of Wild Tangle, and the sandy Glittering Dunes. Each has unique new flora and fauna—meaning a whole new batch of items to harvest, recipes to craft, and critters to befriend. And of course, each has a new villager: EVE from Wall-E, Rapunzel from Tangled, and Gaston from The Beauty & the Beast.
Of the new content in A Rift in Time‘s roster, the Royal Hourglass is perhaps the most intriguing. The Hourglass can be used to remove time-based obstructions, but more interestingly, it can also seek out rifts that conceal items. Wave the hourglass’s staff around, and it will point you to the nearest rift in a quick game of hot or cold. Many of the rifts you find this way contain new crafting parts related to the lost civilization of Ancient’s Landing, a massive new furniture theme. The tool makes a worthy addition to your Royal Toolbelt, which to date has only included the standard suite of life-sim gadgets.
“It would’ve been easy for Gameloft to copy-and-paste some new content together with different characters, but they’ve truly broadened Disney Dreamlight Valley’s horizons instead.”
The new biomes are welcome variations for Disney Dreamlight Valley‘s environment as well. The jungle and desert are especially large and robust locales that feel broader and more intentionally designed than the first biomes of the base game. Ancient’s Landing could have used the same sprawling treatment.
Of course, as any existing player knows, opening a new biome comes with a certain amount of requisite coursework, and A Rift in Time is no exception. To get their full utility, one must unlock the same facilities on the Eternity Isles that they have back home: Goofy’s stalls, Scrooge’s store, and Remy’s restaurant, as well as the magical wells and regional branches of Goofy’s mercantile empire. For Ancient’s Landing, this entails several “get to know the new items” fetch quests before you can fully feel established in the new land (without persistent fast travel back to the homeland).
It’s this kind of chore work that simultaneously extends and bogs down a life sim’s playability, and Disney Dreamlight Valley hasn’t exactly rebalanced this element in A Rift in Time.
To the expansion’s credit, new players are able to hop into its additions from a very early point—basically, just after the first few tutorial quests, if they feel so inclined. Yet, I can’t recommend doing just that without making considerable progress in the base game first, unlocking more spots in both your personal and home storage and getting some means of cash flow started.
I recently started over on the PlayStation version (which, bafflingly, doesn’t support cross-progression) and remembered the bitter conflict between saving for desperately needed space in my backpack, home storage, or community investments. A Rift in Time does very little to support brand-new players in this regard; in fact, if you try to balance quests for both the Isles and the Valley, you’re going to handcuff yourself to full inventory warnings and repeated backtracking.
(To speak of Disney Dreamlight Valley itself in broader strokes for a moment, now that early access is over. In reviewing the original early access launch for Switch, I highlighted the “friction” between the in-game economies, inventory management, and other investments—and regrettably, Gameloft still has hurdles in this department over a year later. I saved the remarkable 12.5k Dreamlight to access Belle and the Beast’s mini-realm, did their fetch quest… and still had to fork out 20k in gold to actually build their home.)
“Disney Dreamlight Valley still feels unique and individual when it would have been very easy for Disney to copy Animal Crossing New Horizons’ homework closer, and that alone makes it worth a look for Disney fans.”
Much like the game’s early access debut, however, these foibles drifted toward the wayside the more I played A Rift in Time, and the imperative to do “one more task” pulled me further in. Disney Dreamlight Valley still feels unique and individual when it would have been very easy for Disney to copy Animal Crossing New Horizons‘ homework closer, and that alone makes it worth a look for Disney fans.
A Rift in Time supports this formula with a healthy infusion of content with its first act alone. Again, it would’ve been easy for Gameloft to copy-and-paste some new content together with different characters, but they’ve truly broadened Disney Dreamlight Valley‘s horizons instead. The hourglass and larger new biomes bring welcome and holistic diversity to the gameplay loop, which always helps in a grindy genre like this. I hope to see this trend continue as the next acts arrive.
A Rift in Time also introduces a new minigame, Scramblecoin—a bit like chess with a coin-collecting twist. Players deploy tokens depicting villagers, each with their own movement styles and special abilities, and try to secure as many of the randomly spawning coins from the board in the small handful of turns available. Wins earn more ranking points, which unlock more pieces and, in turn, more diverse strategies.
While I don’t personally foresee myself getting too invested in this particular racket, an addition like Scramblecoin makes a perfect change of pace in a game like this. I could see it gaining a small yet mighty following or just becoming a fun way to pass some time while waiting for objectives to spawn elsewhere.
It’s unclear what the next two acts will bring in 2024, but if it’s on par with this trio of biomes, fans should be eating well for the game’s second year. The price of admission for the whole pack—a modest $29.99—should surely prove worthwhile for those who have already fallen under this life sim’s spell, while newcomers will have an even richer experience (once they eventually head to the Eternity Isles).
