Every time I play a new video game, I try to capture that feeling of playing when I was younger. That feeling when you’re staring at the screen and nothing else around you matters.
After years of trying to regain this magic, I finally found it when I picked it up Disney’s Dreamlight Valley (opens in new tab).
Growing up as an only child living with a single parent who worked full time made me very familiar with the feeling of loneliness. I often looked to the media around me for some form of comfort, and since it was the 1990s, that media had something to do with Disney. Disney was everywhere at the time, from the Saturday morning cartoons I wore, the movies I watched at the cinema, and the video games I played.
ringing of the Packard Bell
One of my earliest gaming memories is playing games Capcom’s Aladdin on the SNES (opens in new tab). The movie the game was adapted from was the first movie I ever saw in the cinema. I was obsessed, right down to the Genie backpack I proudly carried to school every day.
This obsession led to video games becoming my favorite pastime at the time, as well as my number one source of comfort. I spent hours and hours throwing apples at enemies and swinging from platform to platform as Aladdin while listening to beautiful 16-bit renditions of the film’s catchy musical numbers.
While my school friends would personally visit Mickey Mouse and his friends at Disneyland during the summer, I spent my vacations visiting my favorite characters through the video games I played.
I stayed with my grandparents every summer and was fixated on my grandfather’s Packard Bell PC and played games like Disney’s Magical Artist (opens in new tab) And Disney’s Storybook: 101 Dalmatians (opens in new tab). Again, I could sit for hours staring at the PC monitor and finding solace in the characters I knew so well.
Disney and gaming are almost synonymous with each other
Eventually, I lost the ability to fully immerse myself in video games. I still played them, but the older I got, the more responsibilities and realities of the world around me would prevent me from experiencing the media I once admired. I also started noticing that I wasn’t the target audience for a lot of Disney content anymore.
Sometimes you just have to accept that Disney Princess: Enchanted Journey (opens in new tab) for the Nintendo Wii isn’t for you, and that’s fine. There were games like Kingdom Hearts (opens in new tab)which I was and still am a fan of, but the feeling I had interacting with my favorite characters wasn’t the same now that the realities of adulthood had set in.
Then, years later, Disney’s Dreamlight Valley happened.
“..ydeserve a break from life’s commitments, arrive at a familiar place,” says the opening narrator when you start a new game. It’s almost as if the developers at Gameloft knew exactly what gaming experience I was looking for.
Disney’s Dreamlight Valley is a hybrid of a living and farming simulator, think Animal Crossing, but with a Disney twist. When you start playing, you’ll have your own little house that you can decorate with Disney-themed items, allowing me to create a space not too dissimilar to my own bedroom when I was young.
The main goal is to help the Disney characters get back their memories since they have been cursed. The more I helped the characters to remember, the more I remembered that wonderful feeling of playing Disney games on my grandfather’s PC. Although the PC I was using now was much more advanced, the feeling of staring at the monitor was all too similar.
What makes Dreamlight Valley different from the Disney games I played when I was younger is that now I can play as myself. Instead of playing as my favorite Disney hero or villain, I can hang out with them as myself. I can chat with Mickey Mouse, go fishing with Goofy or just hang out with my favorite Scotsman, Scrooge McDuck.
As I took control of the game’s version of myself, the immersion I’d been missing came back with every step I took into the valley. Dreamlight Valley also allowed me to embrace my childhood in other ways. Since playing the game for the first time, I’ve started repurchasing many Disney toys that I used to own when I was younger. From a Snow White bubble bath figure to Pride Rock playsets to the very Aladdin backpack I took to elementary school all those years ago. My home office now has a shelf that will fit all of my Disney memorabilia.
Where I used to be afraid of still liking the things I did as a kid, Dreamlight Valley has allowed me to embrace the things that make me happy. My relationship with Disney Media has definitely changed. I’ve been more aware of her past since I was an adult, and since I enjoy consuming media through a critical lens, I can’t consume her media with the ignorant bliss I had when I was younger.
However, playing Disney’s Dreamlight Valley brought back a feeling that was missing in my life. That feeling where nothing else matters but you and the game you’re playing. Every time I visit the Valley I am reminded of all the days I spent staring at my grandfather’s PC and for those hours I can feel like a kid again.
