It's basically the love child of Disneyland and Animal Crossing

Cozy farming and community simulators are some of my all-time favorite game genres. At the best of times they're a fun, relaxing world I can get lost in, and at the worst of times, they feel like a lifeline that's keeping me from spiraling out. First it was Stardew Valley, then it was Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and now Disney's Dreamlight Valley has taken over my gaming time. It's got everything you could ever want: adorable critters you can pet, delicious foods that'll have your mouth w??atering (I'm looking at you, Peanut Butter Waffle), and of course, all of your neighbors are beloved Disney characters.

With a whole flood of farming sims taking over in the past few years, we've seen a lot of different takes on the tried-and-true farming, fishing, foraging, cooking, and mining mechanics. Purely from a game design standpoint, Dreamlight Valley has to be one of the best representations of the genre I've seen in a good while. There are tons of ??little quality-of-life features that you may not notice if you're not looking for them, but over the course of a playthrough, they really start to add up.

[caption id="attachment_357172" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

It's the little things

For example, the map shows exactly where every character is at all times. It's a really simple thing, but being able to know where someone is when I need them for a quest makes a world of difference when you'd otherwise be wasting time checking a wiki or running around the map trying to find them. My absolute favorite feature, though, is that with the exception of a few key tasks tied to main questlines, you can access everything in you have in storage, as well as your inventory, while crafting items or recipes. This is huge for someone like me �my chest organization is basically non existent, and trying to juggle what I need to bring with me to complete objectives usually brings on a headache. Thank you Gameloft, because that sole mechanic made Dreamlight Valley one of my favorite cozy games on principle.

While the developers clearly some really smart decisions during Dreamlight Valley's design process, the game's premise alone is enough to get players to buy in. In today's world of Disney adults, who doesn't want Mickey and co. as their next door neighbors? I can't speak for everyone, but I know that for me, Disney p??roperties are comforting because they're always upbeat and light-hearted. Those are usually the characteristics you're looking for if you li??ke farming/community sims anyway, so it was basically a match made in heaven.

Dreamlight Valley clearly saw a surge in players once it was released in early access and it dominated the news cycle for a bit due to how loveable it is, but it has since quietly stepped to the background. The thing about this genre, though, is that they have a tendency to draw cult followings that stay loyal for a very long period of time. For instance, Stardew has a thriving modding community, and players spent thousands of hours in New Horizons decking out their islands to their exact specifications. I think Dreamlight Valley will have a similar staying power for the exact reason it caught our eye in the first place: ??the properties. It's a game worth playing in and of itself, but Gameloft has yet to scratch the surfa?ce of the company's most beloved characters.

[caption id="attachment_357173" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

The well goes deep

As of now, the game features characters and items from a total of ten different films, not including the classic characters who are filed under "Mickey & Friends"??:

• The Sword in the Stone
• Wall-E
• Lilo & Stich
• Moana
• Ratatouille
• The Lion King
• The Little Mermaid
• Frozen
• Tangled
• Toy Story

There are plenty of other movies referenced in different clothing and furniture you can purchase as well, like Monsters Inc., Wreck-It Ralph, Cinderella, and Beauty and the Beast. Scar from The Lion King and Buzz and Woody from Toy Story were added after the game's early access launch as expansions, so it's clear Gameloft will be releasing content featur??ing more and more of Disney's most famous films as time goes on.

On top of that, most of ten movies that are highlighted in the game right now only feature one character from their respective film, so there's tons of potential in introducing more of those personalities as well. (At least, that's what I'm holding out for because Tangled is my absolute favorite �so far we have Mother Gothel, but no Rapunzel or Eugene yet). One of the Memories you collect in the game shows the Beast from Beauty and the Beast, Eve from Wall-E, and Vanellope from Wreck-It Ralph hanging out in front of Remy's restaurant, and if that's not proof??, I don't kn??ow what is.

[caption id="attachment_357171" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Disney's not-so-secret weapons

With even more potential storylines from Disney/Pixar favorites like Aladdin, Peter Pan, Mulan, The Princess & the Frog, The Incredibles, and Finding Nemo, just to name a few, Gameloft should have enough content for the rest of the decade. If, however, for some undecipherable reason, new updates with the mainline Disney properties aren't enough to pull players back in, they could always break out the big guns: Star Wars and Marvel.

This seems to be the exact same strategy they employed for Magic Kingdom and California Adventure by adding Galaxy's Edge and the Marvel Campus respectively, which may have been met with mixed results, but if you ask me, they've still done a lot of leg work when it comes to the parks' branding. Pulling from those properties would open up their own Alice in Wonderland-esque rabbit holes, and while I doubt the developers plan to dr??aw on them any time soon, I imagine it's a nic?e comfort knowing they're there.

Maybe all of this is wishful thinking born from my own love of Disney's Dreamlight Valley, but then I remember the company didn't become as successful as they are by chance. As long as the powers that be continue to care about the game, they're going to do everything they can to keep players? happy and engaged, which is easy when players love the gimmick so much �myself included. All they have to do is keep it coming. They have gold with the solid ga??me design and properties to pull from, and now I'm just hoping they'll keep spinning it into thread for the sake of our happily ever afters.

[Featured Image via Gameloft]

The post I think Disney’s Dreamlight Valley will be sticking around for a while appeared first on Destructoid.

Welcome to Moonbury

I make it no secret that farming/community simulators are one of my favorite genres, and this year has been full of sweet little games for me to cozy up on the couch with. Potion Permit is one of the titles I was looking forward to ever since I saw the first trailer, which showed off the game’s beautiful pixel art and colorful cast of characters. When it came to the gameplay itself, it looked to be pr?etty standard fare for the genre, with the exception of the farming side of things. In its place, the foraging and combat take center stage, as well as character-driven questlines.

Fortunately I was able to get a Switch copy of Potion Permit, because it’s one of those games that feels like it was made for a han?dheld console. It’s a great game to play when you have a few minutes of downtime, because it’s easy to pick it up and continue right where you left off. At the same time, it’s also one of those games that you can get sucked into for?? hours on end. Basically, if you love simulators, you’re gonna have a good time.

Potion Permit (PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch [reviewed])
Developer: MassHive Media
Publisher: PQube
Released: September 22, 2022
MSRP: $19.99

The premise of the game is that the player takes on the role of a chemist, a kind of doctor who makes potions to help others with any kind of ailment they might have. When they moved to Moonbury from the big city, the player learns that the townspeople have a vendetta against chemists, as the town’s previous chemist caused an ecological disaster t?hat destroyed some of the local flora.

It’s up to the player not only to cure the townspeople when they get sick, but also to win them over. The main gameplay consists of going out into the wilderness to gather ingredients, using those ingredients to cr??aft potions to heal anyone who’s sick, and upgrading your tools so you can access new areas, which have new ingredients. You can also buy some ingredients, but if you like the grind, you’re gonna spend a lot of time out in the wilderness foraging.

Let's talk NPCs

The backdrop for all of this is the quaint town of Moonsbury itself, which of course is where you’ll meet and befriend all of the townspeople. Players endear the townspeople to them by giving them gifts that they earn by completing various tasks. Reaching a high enough friendship level opens up a unique friendship quest for that character. The quests actually have a surprising amount of depth to them, and for t??he most part, it feels like you’re gett??ing to know the characters as they reveal details about their pasts, struggles, and dreams. Usually completing the quest involves making the characters custom potions, or gathering a certain number of ingredients for them.

The characters are a whole lot of fun as well, but I have to inform you that one of the NPCs you can befriend is a cat. Like fully just a cat. It’s as adorable as it sounds. You also have a sweet dog companion who follows you around everywhere, and while you have to feed the dog every day, i?t can lead you to any NPC on demand, which is one of the most useful fea??tures I've seen from a community sim I've seen as of late. Well done there.

Obviously you can romance some of the characters, although there are only six to choose from â€?three men and three women. While having some weaker side characters in a game with over thirty NPCs is excusable in my book, having romanceable characters?? who are boring is not. There were only a couple that I actually liked, and one of them is a sexy pirate lady, so that’s a given just on premise alone.

One other note I have about the character quests: some of them are really sweet, some of them I found kind of boring to be honest, but there are a few that made me?? downright uncomfortable. For example, one of the characters has you make him an appetite suppressor so he can lose weight, and I’m honestly shocked to see something like that in a game that came out in 2??022.

Mini-games galore

The potion-making mini-game was a highlight for me. Each individual potion has a unique pattern that you have to fill in completely in order to make it. All of the ingredients are also uniquely shaped, kind of like Tetris piece??s, so filling in the required shape with as few pieces as possible becomes a fun chall?enge. 

I was afraid that I was constantly going?? to be running out of pieces I needed, but I found the game was well-balanced in the?? sense that I almost always had the ingredients I needed to make it work, but it was never so easy that I lost interest in doing it. You can also sell extra potions for some extra cash, which came in handy for me quite a bit.

There’s a fishing mini-game, of course,? because it wouldn’t be a community sim without one. I’m personally a big fan of Stardew Valley’s fishing mini-game, because it requires precision (?and ??a lot of it, in some cases). In Potion Permit, you cast out, a fish hooks on, and then it’s a cycle of the fish getting “angry�and pulling on the line, and then ?briefly tiring itself out. If you pull too hard when it’s “angry,�the fish gets away, so you can only pull in short bursts when it’s tired.

I think in theory, this idea works fine, it just didn’t shake out in the execution for me. I would be making good progress, but when the fish got angry, it pulled my line all the way back out almost to where I started. This makes catching a single fish take forever, and if you get impa?tient and acciden??tally pull when you’re not supposed to, you lose the fish entirely. I stayed away from the fishing unless absolutely necessary, which is a bummer because in other sims I’ll spend all day fishing because I find it so fun.

If all of that isn’t enough to keep you busy, there are also plenty of other, smaller tasks you can take on around town. The church, post office, and police station have mini-games you can partake in, which award you with some money but take two hours of your time. Then there are the requ??ests, which, similar to Stardew Valley, you pick up from a board and re?quire you to deposit foragables in exchange for cash.

You can also up?grade and decorate your house, which I didn’t really do at all because I was having so much fun following the main quest and progressing to the new area??s of the wilderness. That’s also because a lot of the character quests coincide with unlocking the new areas, as well.

I usually like to take my time w??ith games like this, but I felt that Potion Permit really incentivized me to go full steam ahead on this one. Let me put it this way? �it’s? fun if you like feeling busy and productive (like I do), but if you’re looking for a game that will let you slow down to a snail’s pace, it might not be your favorite.

Bugs... bugs everywhere

Okay, I’ve been dr??eading this part, but we need to talk about the bugs. Potion Permit is a very, very buggy game, and from what I can tell fro?m looking o?nline, the Switch version is even worse. I’m sure some of the issues have been patched by now (some of them were even patched while I was in the middle of my playthrough), but it had some pretty big issues.

Quests sometimes wouldn’t complete, or even trigger at all �I never ended up able to get the advanced fishing rod because the quest never p?opped for me, for example. Other times it would assign me quests I didn’t accept. Sometimes the alarm would go off that there was someone sick that needed care in my clinic, only to find it empty upon entering. I had to re-meet some of the NPCs, and lost a few days�progress in getting to know them. For a while there was an issue where using the fast travel points entirely broke the world, so you’d be running around a glitched-out, semi-empty space. I could go on.

The worst offender of them all, though, was that every few minutes or so I would get some screen hitching on the Switch version, to the point that it would interfere with what I was doing. While many of the bugs I encountered came and went, this one was per??sistent throughout the entire playthrough. I think it’s fair to say that at the ti?me I played Potion Permit, it was not reall??y to launch, at least on the Swit?ch.

In conclusion

Even wit?h all my complaints, I real?ly enjoyed playing Potion Permit. While there isn’t much of a post-game, I think I’ll be replay??ing? it sometime in the future. I grew pretty attached to the characters (especially the few that I wanted to romance), and the setting scratches that cozy, small-town feeling you look for in games like these.

It brought a unique spin to the community sim genre while still giving me what I love most in these kinds of games, and I’d definitely recommend it to ??anyone interested in playing. I’d just wait until some more bug fixes come through, first.

The post Review: Potion Permit appeared first on Destructoid.

After years of anticipation, I'm pleased to say Ooblets was well worth it

Ooblets is one of those games I followed from its announcement all the way back in 2016 up to its release, so it suffices to say this was a highly anticipated game for me. Stardew Valley meets Pokemon is a hell of a logline, and the combination of those gameplay elements compared with the game’s cute, colorful art style basically made it feel like it was made specifically for me. The game went into early access in 2020, but this month it got its?? full 1.0 re?lease.

You’ve got all the usual mechanics you’d expect from a game like this �farming, fishing, foraging, cooking, befriending villagers �as well as some new twists. You can see clear inspiration from farming sims like Stardew, and yet Ooblets still manages to feel entirely unique in that regard. I am absolutely Ooblets�target demogr?aphic, ??and I am pleased to say that I found it to be an absolute delight. Let’s talk about it.

Ooblets (Epic Games Store [reviewed], Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S)
Developer: Glumberland
Publishers: Glumberland
Released: September 1, 2022
MSRP: $29.99

The premise of Ooblets is that it takes place in a magical land called Oob, which is populated with creatures called�you guessed it:? Ooblets. At the start of the game, the player lands at a scenic seaside town called Badgetown, having left the big city for the countryside where Ooblets run free. Naturally, they take up residence in a run-down old shed, and begin their new life as the local farmer.

Badgetown is as cozy and quaint as you’d expect, complete with a coffee shop, barber shop, clothing store, seed store, town hall, and more. The residents are a ton of fun and have some of the most distinct personalities I’ve seen in a community sim since the early Animal Crossing days. Some of their dialogue ??was so ridiculous and cleverly written that it genuinely made me laugh out loud, which made the friendship part of the ?gameplay loop something to look forward to.

In fact, all of the dialogue, item name?s, and descriptions are written in a goofy tone that feels reminiscent of the 2010s “sO rAnDoM XD�humor, but like, actually written in a way that feels fresh and funny rather than cringy and grating?. I got the feeling when I was playing that the style might cause some players to bounce off, but I found it charming as all hell �do with that what you will.

They've got the moves

But let’s be real, the real pull to Ooblets is the promise of Pokemon-style battles �don’t worry, there’s plenty of that. Soon after their arrival at Badgetown, the player is tasked with selecting one of the four local Ooblets clubhouses to join based on their values (I joined the cute club Frunbuns, naturally), and by ext?ension choosing a starter Ooblet. With your starter in tow, you can enter battles with wild Ooblets to get seeds from them. After planting those seeds and growing them on the farm, players then have their very own Ooblet of that specific type. Ta-da!

It is also crucial that I mention that your Ooblets run along behind you, following you everywhere, and there is no shortage of cute accessories to dress them up with. Finally, a game that understands my needs.

As for the dance battles themselves, well, those were yet another pleasant surprise. Rather than a typical fight where your pets are beating the crap out of each other, all of the combat in Ooblets takes the form of dance battles, an idea that made me absolutely giddy the first time I saw it. The battles are car??d-based, a??nd each unique Ooblet gets their own special cards added to your deck as they level up.

You can either battle o?ther citizens of Oob in the Dance Barn or in the other regions, or the more common means of battling is with the wild Ooblets that run around the different environments. Gotta catch ‘em all, right? Each type of wild Ooblet requires a different item in order for you to battle them, which can range from foragables to crops to processed food.

Each match sets a score somewhere between twenty and forty, and the first team to earn that number of points wins. Players earn points from cards, and there are also modifiers in play like Hype, which allows you to earn more points; Fluster, which makes you earn fewer points; Stun, which makes one of your Ooblets miss a turn; Trepidation, which adds useless cards to you or your opponent's deck; and so on. If you’ve played any card-based battler from Hearthstone to Slay the Spire, you’ll be right at home.

Sometimes a bit offbeat

The battles are easy with a few exceptions, and a lot of times a win or loss can come down to the luck of the cards. Considering Ooblets is a chill game, I didn’t mind a bit of RNG, lest I won every single battl?e with no p?ushback.

I have a few qualms with the battles �that there wasn’t a way to look at or modify my full deck, which would have been a nice touch. Sometimes the animations for the moves could be a bit slow (which is also a problem the more recent Pokemon games have had).

The other thing is the Dance Barn battles, which are unlocked after you repair the said Dance Barn in town. It’s a tournament-style setup where you go up ?against other townie??s in 1v1, 2v2, and 3v3 battles. I tried to do them as often as I had time for, and let me tell you, I only won one or two of the tournaments ever.

Jokes about my gaming abilities aside, it’s because some of the Ooblets have stun abilities. This is no problem when you’re batt?ling with teams of four or six, but if you’re unfortunate enough to get stuck in a 1v1 with an opponent that can stun you, it’s literally game over �they stun lock you the entire ma??tch.

??There are special game modes in the Dance Barn, including one where players can only use their Ooblets�special cards, which is kind of a problem when you realize the one Ooblet you?? picked doesn’t have a way to earn points without the point-earning cards from the deck. Either way, I had a lot of fun with the battles, and would often go out of my way to do them just for fun.

To-do lists, but make it fun

I feel like Stardew Valley is one of those games that strikes the perfect balance of giving you just enough to do without you ever getting bored, while at the same time not overwhelming you with too much. One thing I didn’t particularly love about Ooblets was that it became a bit of a grind, requiring players to collect a ton of different items to prog??ress the story and complete tasks.

There are like seven different entities that can give you tasks to do, not including the smaller errands imposed by your friends around town. In the early game, I was thankful to have clear objectives to get me going, but after a ??while, it was hard to keep track of just how many things I was trying to accomplish at the same time.

Of course, you can play at your own pace, but for someone like me who loves checking things off lists, I couldn’t stop myself from going as hard as possible to efficiently progress through all of my tas?ks. If nothing else,? it kept me super engaged the whole time, although part of me felt like the game was insecure that I wouldn’t find enough to do on my own.

You can also have up to five or six pretty involved tasks going at the same time, and as someone who struggles with multitasking, I did find it a bit overwhelming at times. This issue isn’t helped by the fact that everything in the game has a silly name �little springs y?ou use to build things are called nurnies, for example �so I would often have to keep checking what it is I was actually looking for in the first place.

Thankfully, though, I happen to love the foraging aspect of these types of games, and boy howdy, a ton of Ooblets is running around and collecting stuff. If that isn’t your thing, you might get a bit ??frustrated, I’m not gonna lie.

Exploration

A few hours into the game, you meet a local named Gimble who owns a hot air balloon. After repairing it with a whole slew of supplies, she can take the player to different regions of Oob, where they’ll gather more supplies, partake ??in dance battles, and progress the main story quest. Each region has its own unique foragables, seeds you can take home and grow on your far??m, and of course, Ooblets to collect.

I found that each region had some fun theming, and I always looked forward to seeing a new place and what surprises it had to throw at me. I don’t want to give too much away, but the area called Port Forward was?? a real standout for me as a lover of minigames.

I was also really pleasantly surprised with the game’s main story, which really doesn’t come together until the very end. Most farming sims�stories are pretty bare bones, but Ooblets presents you with a mystery from the very beginni?ng �and seeing the culmination of that mystery in the game’s last few hours is a b??last.

Another element that gets added later is your very own store, where?? you can sell items that you coll?ect, build, or cook, and it’s easily the best way to earn money in the game. Of course you can upgrade and decorate your shop over time, too. Once I reached this point, I got that feeling again that there’s a little too much going on in the game, but it wasn’t a deal-breaker by any means.

In conclusion

Overall, Ooblets absolutely met the expectations I had built up for it over those six long years of waiting. If you love the farming/community sim genre, it’s an absolute must-play, and I think it’ll be a game that sticks arou??nd for years to come.

I played it on PC for this review, and I’m looking forward to trying out some mods that the community will cook up, but I have to say that this is a perfect Switch game. In fact, after I go back and drive this save file into the ground, I plan on buying the Switch version to replay all over again, much like I did with Stardew. Gotta support the indie games you love, right?

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Ooblets appeared first on Destructoid.

A flood of cozy simulators in the wake of Stardew's success

It feels like with every new batch of gaming news streams we get, they’re accompanied by memes about whichever game genre dominates the announcements and updates. Over the summer, there was an endless stream of dark space marine shooters, and after the news streams that rolled through this week, it seems there’s a new genre taking over the industry for the next few months: farming simulators.

Ooblets, I Am Future, Dreamlight Valley, Potion Permit, Bear and Breakfast, Witchbrook, My Time at Portia, Wytchwood, Homestead Arcana, Little Witch in the Woods, Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life �the list of upcoming or newly released farming/community sims never-ending these days. This is excellent news for me, considering it’s one of my favorite genres ever, and you can bet your bottom dollar I’m playing as many?? of them as I can.

Why was Stardew so popular?

While farming/community sims have been around for a long, long time, I think we can accredit a lot of their recent resurgence to the success of one stellar indie game: Stardew Valley. It’s one of those games that’s simple enough to pick up and start playing regardless of your skill level and even regardless of ??where you are in any given save file, yet still complex enough for players to challenge themselves and min-max the crap out of it if they want to.

The controls are simple and you can run it on anything, which means it’s available (as well as affordably priced) on every conceivable platform. The game has fostered a rich modding community, who enjoy putting?? a fresh spin on the gameplay, story, characters, aesthetics, and so on.

Plus, it’s the passion project of a single developer, and has all of the charm and care you might expect from someone who truly loves what they’re making. All of these elements came together to not just create an unforgettable game, but a full-on cultural phenomenon that swept through the industry and made Stardew one of the most bel??oved and successful indie games of ??all time.

Cause and effect

If my hypothesis is correct, that means that now over six years after its release, we are seeing Stardew Valley’s influence ripple through the industry �hence the wave of cozy farming/community simulators. Of course, we have to give credit where it’s due to series like Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons for paving the way for this once niche genre to break further into the mainstream, but I truly believe Stardew is what pushed it over t??he edge due to its uni??versal appeal and subsequent popularity.

So now we have a wave of all kinds of games that are putting their own spin on the?? classic farming/community sim formula, which is a ton of fun to see. Just like shooters or RPGs take the mechanical motifs of their genre and try to do something no one has quite seen before down to the most minute level, simulators are seeing the same level of impassioned scrutiny.

Video games are still an incredibly young medium compared to film, television, literature, or?? even their older cousin, tabletop games. As someone who has studied patterns and whole movements that form in media, I can’t express how cool it is to see developers explore the intricacies of a newer genre and create something new.

Carving a new path

So for example, most of these games are going to have mechanics like farming, mining, fishing, cooking, crafting, befriending townspeople, etc., but the combination in how these mechanics are implemented and?? influence each other will always be unique. Each game will have different economic and social systems for the?? player to interact with that will lead to different outcomes.

It’s like how a lot of games like BioShock, Mass Effect, and Dishonored, for example, have some kind of magic mechanic to supplement weapons that we know and recognize, like guns, daggers, etc. While we’re familiar with the motif of magic supplementing familiar weapons, each game that implements its own kind of magic will use that magic slightly differently �what the magic can do will be different, the cost of that magic will be different (usually utilizing some kind of man??a system, which can also have an infinite number of variations), and so on. There are a lot of layers here.

My ??point is, we have enough farming simulators now that by nature of a saturated (and nearly oversaturated) market, developers are forced to think cr??eatively when it comes to using the mechanics in the toolbox of their genre to create as engaging of an experience as possible.

Then we get games like Cult of the Lamb or Ooblets, which combine community simulation with an action roguelike and farming simulation with Pokémon-style animal companio?n batt??ling, respectively. Like storytelling, the key to making fresh and exciting games is finding new ways to combine and implement elements we already love.

It’s one thing to study that phenomenon in retrospect, but it’s another to see ?it happen in real time. Regardless of what some people say, I think this is ?a very, very exciting time for games �especially farming simulators.

The post How Stardew V??alley ushered in the farming sim renaissance appeared first on Destructoid.

Dreamlight Valley: where all of our dreams come true

If you're a fan of farming/community sims, there is no shortage of awesome new games to try. One of them is Dreamlight Valley, Disney's answer to the Stardew Valley-inspired craze. In the game, you play as a character who finds themselves in a magical land in ruins after an event known as "The Forgetting" �which is just as ominous as it sounds. Players are tasked with ridding the land of the insidious night thorns, as well as doing the usual fare for these kinds of games:?? farming, fishing, cooking, mining, digging, and filling requests for the townspeople (who also happen to be beloved Disney characters).

The siren song of another cozy simulator game is enough to draw out gamers in droves, but add on the juggernaut that is the Disney brand? Yeah, it's no surprise that this game is seeing the success that it is. So much success, in fact, that Dreamlight Valley has managed to accrue over a million players only ten short days after its release.

Dreamlight Valley was developed by Gameloft, which has been notable in the mobile market for decades. This certainly isn't their first wider release for?? consoles, but I think it's fair ??to say that this is the studio's most notable release so far.

I'd consider myself to be a casual Disney fan, but this is a game I certainly can't wait to try for myself. The idea of?? seeing a bunch of my favorite characters in a game genre I already go out of my way to play as much as possible, well, that's just something I can't resist.

From the classic characters like Mickey and Donald all the way up to new characters like Elsa and Moana, the roster is pretty stacked. All I had to hear was that the Tangled characters were included to know I was on board.

The post Dreamlight Valley?? hit over a?? million players in ten days appeared first on Destructoid.

You had me at Stardew meets Spirited Away

Simulators are a huge part of the g??aming industry, and they've especia?lly been seeing some love for the past few years after the success of games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Stardew Valley. This year it seems like there are more sims than ever, and simulators are ??one of my all-time favorite gaming g?enres, so I'm over the moon about it. Out of all the trailers for simulators we've seen this year, one that caught my eye was Spirittea, which is being developed by Che?esemaster Games and published by No More Robots.? The logline is that it's Stardew meets Spirited Away, which was automatically eno??ugh to get me on board. I ??played the demo, and so far, things look pretty promising.

What's Spirittea's premise?

It's the classic moving-from-a-big-city-to-a-small-town story that community sims tend to have, only when you get there, you drink some special tea that allows you to see into the spirit world. Spooky! After drinking the tea, an adorable floating cat friend named Radish (how adorable!) comes to greet you, and tells you that you?? have been tasked with running the bathhouse on the mountain that has stood abandoned for years.

From there, most of the demo is your first day of working at the bathhouse, which le??ans heavily into management simulator territory. You are tasked with keeping the boiler full of fresh firewood to warm the bath water, washing and drying towels for the guests, showing guests to the bath, putting salts into the bath water�you get the idea. I used to play a lot of those Diner Dash ??beauty salon spinoffs on my iPod Touch back in the day, so it was pretty famili??ar territory there. 

A relaxing management sim

There's a mechanic in there too where each of the spirits that visits you corresponds with a season, and the spirits have a preference of where they sit in the bath (and who sits next to them) based on that season. It's up to the player to figu?re out which season goes with which spirit and keep them happy according to their category. I didn't have enough time to figure all of that out while playing the demo, but I kn??ow it's an extra level of management sim challenge that I'll be looking forward to contending with in the full game.

Spirittea also alludes to being able to purchase upgrades to make your bath-tending life easier, and I imagine those become pretty handy when there's a lot of game left to explore. Outside of the bathhouse, there's a whole, adorable little town to explore that's full of townspeople. Unfortunately, none of them would talk to me during the demo because I had important bathhouse duties to tend to. That leaves yet another feature of Spirittea to look forward to, because making friends in community simulators is one of my favorite things about sims ga??mes.

Much more of Spirittea to look forward to!

I also have to mention the art and music �the whole time I was playing, I was bopping along to the soundtrack because it was just delightful. It fit the atmosphere perfectly, and it was catchy enough that I noticed I was enjoying it, but not so much that it was distracting. The pix??el art was also gorgeous, and definitely had me looking forward to spending more time exploring the town and the surrounding area.

I still have a lot of questions about Spirittea, and the jury's?? still out on whether it will fully scratch my Stardew itch, but from what I've seen so far, I'm excited to give the full game a shot once it's out. All we have by way of a release date right now is a "Coming Soon" on the Steam page, so for now, it'll just be sitting pretty on my wishl?ist.

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All it took was a little faith and some pixie dust

As both a diehard Stardew Valley and Harry Potter fan, Witchbrook has been my most anticipated game for years now. While it was officially announced back in 2020, whispers of Witchbrook have been circulating since as early as 2017, so the wait has been long for this one. Although the game isn't even out yet, there's a whole subreddit dedicated to tracking any and all news that updates the fans on where Witchbrook is in development?, and just when it might be coming out?.

It was looking pretty bleak on there for a while without any official updates from developer and publisher Chucklefish for months at a time, but after fear that the game would be silently canceled so that the studio could focus on other projects, we've finally received some good news: Witchbrook has finally been listed on Steam.

It's a smal?l update, sur??e, but it means they're for sure moving forward with development, so we can all breathe a sigh of relief there.

This also means that the game is available to wish list on Steam, and, my personal favorite part, we got a bunch of new screenshots from the game. It's not the biggest deal in the world, but those of us who have been following Witchbrook for a while h?ave been staring at the same two screenshots for years now, so this feels like?? a win.

The Steam page also gives us a greater glimpse into what the gameplay might be like than we've ever seen before. Players will partake in activities like brewing potions, having races against classmates on broomsticks, customizing their clothing and homes, photography and gardening, and one of the blurbs that there will be "post-graduate life," which is our first hint at what might be some post-game content in Witchbrook.

I kind of keep waiting for this game to let me down, because honestly, the more I see of Witchbrook, the more excited I get about it. Adorable life simulators seem to be on the rise these days, but there's something about a community simulator s??et at a magic school that I'm particularly thrilled about.

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It's hitting pre-alpha soon, too

Singularity 6, a new studio made up of developers from companies like Blizzard, Riot, Epic, Zynga, and Sony, has announced their first game: an MMO with a bit of town life called Palia.

As shown in the short trailer released today, Palia sees players awaking as a human in a world and venturing out towards a quiet town. Humanity was once a legendary race, but in Palia it disappeared thousands of years prior.

Given a plot of land to build their ho?me in, they'll have the chance to establish themselves in this village, while also uncovering the greater narrative mysteries.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=lP009fvbt8c

In this "community sim," players can create their own character??, decorate their home, and participate in activities with others. Fishing, cooking, and other ventures look to be available, and according to a press release, players can "meet, befriend, and romance" a compelling cast of characters.

It gives me major Stardew Valley MMO vibes with a fantasy twist, and the idea of creating a Neighborhood (Palia's version of guilds) with my friends and building our community together sounds like a great way to burn hours upon hours together. The mixture of massively multiplayer adventures and community with the town life of an Animal Crossing or Harvest Moon could be pretty rad.

Currently, Palia is looking to launch into pre-alpha this summer on PC. You can sign up for that pre-alpha on the Palia site here.

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