Disney Dreamlight Valley Vs. Animal Crossing: New Horizons - Which Game Is Better? (2024)

The cozy genre allows for comfortable and low-stakes play where you often get to build relationships with neighbors and farm to your heart's content. From indie adaptations to triple-a projects, cozy games have grown exponentially in recent years. When life becomes stressful, you can always return to your little town and find encouragement from the friendly faces that inhabit it.

So, with cozy games constantly releasing, there are two that have emerged and pull upon nostalgia. Is Disney Dreamlight Valley your favorite because you can live out a fantasy life, or is Animal Crossing: New Horizons everything you'll ever need?

10 Role-Playing Elements - Disney Dreamlight Valley

If you're looking for a plot to drive you forward, Disney Dreamlight Valley is the way to go. Animal Crossing: New Horizons is cute, but lacks a compelling narrative that prompts you to act. In Disney Dreamlight Valley, you're thrown into the chaos of the Forgetting and are tasked with helping restore the village and the villagers memories.

This continues throughout the game as you unlock new biomes and characters. As the ruler of Dreamlight Valley, you take on more responsibilities to help lead. Animal Crossing has similar goals, but not to the same effect.

9 Time Traveling - Animal Crossing New Horizons

With games that revolve around real time, it's easy to want to skip around with your system settings to experience more. However, games like Disney Dreamlight Valley are not designed for that, and you can easily cause bugs or corrupt your save data. Animal Crossing: New Horizons is more forgiving in that regard.

While the turnips you buy will wither and die, you can access holidays and missed days to progress through the game by time traveling. This is sometimes frowned upon (depending on who you ask) but the end result is far less devastating than trying it elsewhere.

8 Multiplayer - Tie

When it comes to multiplayer modes, cozy games tend to focus less on story-based objectives and more on sharing your creations with friends. Both Disney Dreamlight Valley and Animal Crossing: New Horizons allow you to open your village to friends so they can see all the work you've done.

Additionally, you can trade items from your inventory and have friends collect items they need from around your own village. Multiplayer is a wonderful addition if you have friends to play with, but it's not always the biggest focus for a cozy game.

7 Farming - Disney Dreamlight Valley

Cozy games are known for the capability to farm and live out a domestic life. With Disney Dreamlight Valley, you can grow all sorts of crops in different biomes and even build relationships with other villagers by bringing them along. These crops are then used for recipes which can be used to complete quests and replenish energy.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons lacks the diversity of growing various crops, which is why Disney Dreamlight Valley shines here. However, you can cut down trees and terraform the island, which is missing in the alternative.

6 Events And Holidays - Animal Crossing: New Horizons

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While Disney Dreamlight Valley has Star Paths and seasonal events, Animal Crossing: New Horizons makes them more engaging. Everyone participates in these events and talks about them, whereas your Disney villagers won't do much outside of their normal routines.

Star Paths are a great addition to the game, but they don't do anything aside from provide new decorations. A few seasonal themed quests are not enough to beat a season full of Animal Crossing events and scavenger hunts. In addition to widely recognized holidays, there are smaller events in between to keep the community lively.

5 DLC - Disney Dreamlight Valley

With DLC, Disney Dreamlight Valley takes the cake. The first Expansion Pass include a completely new map, characters, and many more details to indulge in, in addition to updated story content. The DLC also adds minigames and allows for more crafting and exploration.

While Animal Crossing: New Horizons has DLC, it's not to scale with the amount of content within the alternative. If we include Disney Dreamlight Valley's Star Paths and bundles, there's even more content to enjoy. Both big and small DLC can be purchased to expand your game.

4 Gardening - Animal Crossing: New Horizons

While Disney Dreamlight Valley excels at farming (though it's called gardening), Animal Crossing: New Horizons develops a strong connection with flowers. You can plant them all over your island and develop hybrids through cross-pollination. This takes a detailed level of planning to determine which flowers will create the desired outcome.

Disney Dreamlight Valley allows you to collect flowers, espeically with the Beast's Greenhouse, but you can't plant them or create hybrids. You can craft arrangements with them though, but it's not the same as growing them yourself.

3 Music - Tie

Who can compare reimagined Disney music with the iconic Animal Crossing music? We can, and we've determined it's a tie. Both soundtracks are colorful and catchy, and you'll find yourself humming along even when you stop playing.

Whether K.K. Slider's performances move you to dance or you enjoy hearing an alternative version of your favorite Disney song, you'll have a great soundtrack to listen to. Both games have tunes that will promote a positive atmosphere as you get cozy and explore. They compliment their respective games well and encourage you to keep playing.

2 Customization - Disney Dreamlight Valley

Both games have extensive catalogs of clothing and furniture items to browse, yet despite this, Disney Dreamlight Valley emerges as the winner here. There are several stalls aside from Scrooge's Store, and you can create your own items with the Touch of Magic tool.

While Animal Crossing: New Horizons allows you to customize as well, there are more options and possibilities with the alternative. From customizing your character to your home, and the village at large, you can have a say in almost every instance. You can also customize your village with more than one house for yourself.

1 Neighbors - Tie

Both games have large casts of characters that we know and love, so it's a tie! Each game handles characters differently. While Disney Dreamlight Valley allows you to collect every character and place them in your village, you also need characters you may not want if you want to complete certain quests.

In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, you can only have a select number of characters on your island, but you can change them by evicting ones you no longer want. However, there's no guarantee you'll run into your favorite characters.

Conclusion

Disney Dreamlight Valley is the game for you if you're a big fan of the characters and want a lot to do every day. There's more to do day-to-day and there are plenty of quests to complete to progress the story and build relationships with other characters.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the best if you're looking for something more focused on cozy elements without a series of quests to complete. If you want to unwind and spend time with cute animal characters without expectations, you'll love it.