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You can play Disney Dreamlight Valley on Apple Arcade, plus 200+ more games, for $8.99 CAD/month ($6.99 USD/month), with a 30-day free trial if you are a new user. The best part? Apple Arcade strips ads and microtransactions out of their games entirely, making it the best place for a cozy, distraction-and-annoyance-free experience.
Here are my favorite cozy games on Apple Arcade, if you are looking for a place to start.
I’ve never been a Disney girlie (though I appreciate their repertoire of tangential properties at this point: Marvel, Star Wars), but Disney Dreamlight Valley seemed like a pinnacle title for the cozy game space. I didn’t buy it on day one because we were initially promised that it would move to free-to-play, which was a decision management later walked-back. (Boo.) Free-to-play made sense for Disney Dreamlight Valley, which is loaded with microtransactions and pay-to-play DLC that could support the ongoing development of the game a thousand times over.
Disney Dreamlight Valley has been criticized for overdoing it on the microtransactions. After all: it’s no longer a free-to-play download, and it’s directed at kids. Plus, gamers can only take so much. Neat add-ons turn into expensive FOMO, so persistent across every screen and storefront that it ruins the whole experience. Every additional ad and in-game currency makes things feel a little less comfy chic and a little more capitalist hellscape.
Eventually, I decided I wouldn’t buy or play Disney Dreamlight Valley. The combination of a high priced game + constant bombardment of buy more, more more just wasn’t appealing. Not when so many indies games do life sims better these days.
But Apple Arcade changes all that. For the 30-day free trial, I could enjoy Disney Dreamlight Valley as much as I wanted without a cost in the world. And $8.99CAD/month afterward meant I could keep visiting my save file when I had the urge while also getting access to titles like Stardew Valley, Cooking Mama, and Wylde Flowers on top of that.
But by far the best element of Apple Arcade was not having ads or microtransations crammed into my game. It feels fair: I pay for something, and I deserve to not be menaced by ads and upsells constantly. It’s a philosophy that subscription services were built on…but so many of them lost their way for the sake of maximum profits. It’s good to know that Apple has stuck to a core Steve Jobs philosophy for all these years:
“Our DNA is as a consumer company for that individual customer who’s voting thumbs up or thumbs down. That’s who we think about. And we think that our job is to take responsibility for the complete user experience. And if it’s not up to par, it’s our fault, plain and simply.”
Stay cozy, gamers!
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