Disney Dreamlight Valley looks like Kingdom Hearts minus the anime nonsense

Move over, Elden Ring, it's time for the adults to have some fun. Disney Dreamlight Valley is a life sim and adventure game that lets you live in a town populated with characters from Disney and Pixar films.

The game's Steam page provides some capital-L Lore: "Once an idyllic land, Dreamlight Valley was a place where Disney and Pixar characters lived in harmony—until the Forgetting." 

Ominous.

The description continues: "Night Thorns grew across the land and severed the wonderful memories tied to this magical place. With nowhere else to go, the hopeless inhabitants of Dreamlight Valley retreated behind locked doors in the Dream Castle."

"The Forgetting" certainly sounds like some proper noun lore straight out of Kingdom Hearts, but the gameplay is looking a bit more chill. An IGN preview goes into more depth on the core loop: Disney Dreamlight Valley begins with adventure levels, traveling to characters' associated realms to right wrongs as part of a story campaign. Four such realms will accompany the game's initial release, with more planned to follow.

Completing these missions opens up more features for the Animal Crossing-style life sim gameplay, which sees you decorating your home in Dreamlight Valley, and engaging in minigames like fishing and gardening. Characters shown off so far include Wall-E, Mickey, Moana, and more, and the game will be adopting a free-to-play model, with cosmetics and premium expansions naturally requiring a real money investment. It's being developed by Gameloft, best known for mobile games like "Pastry Paradise" and "Modern Combat 3: Fallen Nation" that look algorithmically generated.

Disney Dreamlight Valley is set to enter Early Access on Steam this summer.