REVIEW: ‘Disney Dreamlight Valley: A Rift in Time’ Provides More Disney Magic (PC)

After more than a year of early access updates, Disney Dreamlight Valley released its 1.0 update and a full-fledged expansion with it. Titled “A Rift in Time,” the expansion takes players to a wholly new island with new tools, friends, and problems to discover. Luckily, developer and publisher Gameloft manages to recapture the magic of exploring and beautifying a new locale.

After receiving a holographic missive from newcomer Jafar, players are put on the fast track to unlocking a dock, leading them to the new Eternity Isle. To start this process, players will need to complete a handful of early quests, but once they’re completed, the boat to Eternity Isle is accessible with very little extra work. To ensure players are made aware, they’ll receive an in-game letter laying out the requirements for accessing the expansion.

Upon arriving, players are confined to a very small portion of the isle, but they’re immediately set on a quest path that will unlock more. The isle only features three biomes compared to the base valley’s 8, but the biomes are massive in comparison, and they’re broken into smaller regions with their own landmarks and features. Eternity Isle also features its own copies of the player’s home, Scrooge McDuck’s store, Goofy’s stalls, and Remy’s restaurant. These amenities prevent players from having to travel back to the valley, even though fast travel allows for quick jaunts back and forth between the two locales. Additionally, Eternity Isle has its own network of wells, which can be repaired to enable fast travel to the various biomes. All of these features are welcome to make traversal easier as players dart back and forth across the new map, completing quests.

With one exception, most of the quests in “A Rift in Time” were enjoyable. They provided opportunities to meet and interact with the new characters on Eternity Isle and even provided a few puzzle-filled segments to solve. While they weren’t too difficult, it felt like a nice break from the usual gathering or crafting quests, but even those quests were entertaining due to the new pool of resources to gather, whether it was fishing a scorpion out of quicksand or picking carnivorous plants to make a bouquet. Most of all, Jafar’s presence made the story more enjoyable, with the conniving vizier providing both guidance and the snark that other Dreamlight Valley villains have become known for.

Jafar may be the one to invite you to the isle, but he’s not the only character you’ll interact with. The denizens of Eternity Isle include EVE from the movie WALL-E, Gaston from Beauty and the Beast, and Rapunzel from Tangled. Each comes with a series of quests, both as part of Eternity Isle’s narrative and for their friendship track, like characters from the base game. Fans of these characters or the movies they’re from will likely cherish the chance to befriend them, but given how big the isle is, just three new characters leave the new setting feeling underutilized. Players have the ability to move villagers and their homes between Dreamlight Valley and Eternity Isle, and the addition of new characters in the future will make space for homes increasingly scarce, likely serving as an explanation for the few characters added in the expansion.

One of the major new components on Eternity Isle is the addition of a new tool: the Royal Hourglass. This hourglass on a staff allows the wielder to reach through time to repair dilapidated bridges or pull gifts and materials out of time portals by way of navigating via a sort of radar. The new tool is also narratively necessary for opening new sections of the isle, requiring the use of a new currency to clear the way. While on Eternity Isle, Mist replaces Dreamlight, even presenting its own never-ending list of duties to aid in farming the resource. This presents the biggest frustration with the Disney Dreamlight Valley expansion; instead of unlocking biomes or sections via quests, players are forced to grind through duties to earn enough Mist to clear the way. Dedicated players can earn enough Mist after some time, but it’s unsatisfying and unfulfilling to spend Mist this way, especially when it has other valuable uses.

The Royal Hourglass brings with it a new crafting bench, giving players the ability to create ancient machines. These devices help automate some processes, like watering crops or cooking multiple meals over time, but they require Mist to craft and to function. Gaining access to these machines also requires a substantial investment of Mist to upgrade the Royal Hourglass, granting more crafting recipes. Despite all the work it takes to unlock and craft them, the ancient machines are well worth the effort, giving players the means to automate cooking while they focus on more pressing matters, like playing board games.

The final and perhaps most strange aspect of “A Rift in Time” is a new board game suddenly beloved by the citizens of Dreamlight Valley and Eternity Isle: Scramblecoin. This game sees players challenging villagers to collect the most coins in a match made up of a few rounds. They receive five game pieces when unlocking the game, but more can be earned over time, revealing a massive track that players can advance through with every match, whether they win or lose. Some pieces, like Mickey and Minnie, have very straightforward movement rules, but others like Simba or Ursula can leap across the board or reduce the effectiveness of opposing pieces around them. Scramblecoin is a fun diversion, even if the starting set of pieces feel very weak compared to some of the villagers’ game pieces. Thankfully, new pieces can be earned relatively quickly if players challenge every villager they come across.

With a variety of new friends and new ways to interact with them, “A Rift in Time” provides more of what made Disney Dreamlight Valley enjoyable: fun quests, the chance to befriend beloved Disney characters, and the chance to test your design skills. Despite the hiccup of working to unlock every region, Eternity Isle is another timeless addition to the growing world of Disney Dreamlight Valley.

Disney Dreamlight Valley: A Rift in Time is available now on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, , and Nintendo Switch.