Disney Dreamlight Valley pitches itself as a “life-sim journey recreation”, in which you’ll return a cursed land to well being whereas hanging out with characters from throughout the Disney pantheon. I’m skeptical of it in a number of alternative ways, however there’s now a free character creator to obtain and check out forward of its launch subsequent month, and hey, I had enjoyable with it.

You’ll discover the character creator over on Steam. It lets you create your avatar for the complete recreation, which you do by deciding on from round a dozen preset characters after which swapping out their constituent components by way of a menu of options. There aren’t any sliders or extrudable meshes, so you are not capable of create something monstrous, however you’ll be able to create a convincing additional from a Frozen film by pick-and-mixing physique shapes, hairstyles, eyes and ears and mouth shapes, and make-up. It’s removed from versatile, however to its credit score it does not restrict what customisation choices you need to use on which physique kind.

Once you are finished, you’ll be able to then go additional by creating your individual textures for the garments you are sporting. I knocked collectively the skeletonberry within the screenshot above in a few minutes, however the device seems like one thing which, in additional decided fingers, might be used for precise creativity.

Once your match test is full, you’ll be able to take a selfie with Mickey. Taking selfies appears to be an enormous a part of the Disney Dreamlight Valley gross sales pitch, if the sport’s trailers are to be believed. It’s a part of my skepticism. Dreamlight Valley to date appears to be like much less like a “life-sim journey” than a sequence of licensed minigames, and it is being developed by Gameloft, who primarily produce free-to-play cell video games like “Modern Combat 5” and “War Planet Online: Global Conquest”.

I due to this fact do not have a whole lot of hope for Dreamlight Valley as a deep, beneficiant expertise, however we’ll know extra when it launches in Steam Early Access on September sixth. Until then, the character creator is a pleasing diversion, as most character creators are, and the 2GB obtain gave me quarter-hour of enjoyable.