Disney Dreamlight Valley’s next expansion The Keepsake Sea plunges new depths, but in the best way possible

Trying to decide which games to cover at Gamescom can be a daunting prospect.

With more than 1,700 companies exhibiting their products and just a few days to book appointments, it goes without saying that a media attendee has to pick their titles carefully.

Sometimes they make sense from a content perspective – this year’s Gamescom offered the first hands-on opportunity for Crazy Taxi: World Tour and a lengthy session with Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse, so those two are no-brainers.

Other appointments may be entirely new games (such as RollerCoaster Tycoon Wonderworks), or something you have a hunch may be worth a try because it promises to be interesting (such as Wired Productions’ quartet of horror games, an appointment which paid off because they all look great).

Admittedly, there’s also the odd occasion where you take one for personal reasons, and that’s why one of the very first, cast-iron appointments I made was with Gameloft, to check out the next expansion for Disney Dreamlight Valley.

I live in a Disney household, and Disney Dreamlight Valley plays a big role in that. My daughter and I have clocked in nearly 400 hours between us, and we still haven’t made our way through all three expansions yet.

Personally – and I know it’s sacrilegious to say it in certain circles – I prefer it to Animal Crossing, because while Nintendo’s game is undoubtedly fantastic, my brain responds better to receiving instructions than being given the freedom to do what I want. I loved Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream until I reached the credits by fully levelling up the wishing well, and then I fell off it hard.

Disney Dreamlight Valley, on the other hand, has the creative side of things which my daughter loves (our house is full of rooms specifically themed to each Disney film), whereas I love the enormous helping of quests each of the characters gives you. And when I say enormous, I mean it – there are currently more than 70 characters you can unlock for your valley, each with their own questlines and unlockables.

So – to be blunt – when I got the email inviting me to see the next Dreamlight Valley expansion at Gamescom, I replied with potential dates and times before even reaching the end of it.

Dreamlight Valley already has three paid expansions – A Rift in Time, Storybook Vale and Wishlossom Ranch. The third of these was my favourite, not just because it added the OG Disney Princess, Snow White, but because the ability to ride mounts brought with it two huge quality of life improvements – the ability to run faster, and the ability to water crops by simply walking over them. As a pumpkin farmer (look, it’s easy money) this saved me so much time.

It’s another quality of life improvement that won me over for the fourth expansion, The Keepsake Sea, which is set for release in November (but I’ll get to that eventually). If the name doesn’t make it clear, this is a nautical themed expansion, which adds an entirely new underwater world.

To access it, the game gives you the ability to turn into a mermaid, meaning you can now not only swim on the surface of water, but also dive deep into the sea and visit the new underwater area.

Much like you could customise your mount in Wishblossom Ranch, you can create your own mermaid (or merman) appearance, including your tail, its scales, the fin and the chest piece. And yes, this being Dreamlight Valley there will of course be (optional) paid cosmetics on top of the main selection available.

Because this underwater world acts like the other areas in the game, you can still build and decorate here. Indeed, if you decide the mermaid life is the main one for you, you can even move your house underwater. Other characters from the game can still visit the underwater area, but other than the few who obviously thrive in such conditions (such as Ariel or Ursula), the rest drive around in little submarines instead.

“Other characters from the game can still visit the underwater area, but other than the few who obviously thrive in such conditions (such as Ariel or Ursula), the rest drive around in little submarines instead.”

The underwater section also has some beams of light which take you to other parts of the map, including an entirely new island location where you’ll find the expansion’s new unlockable characters, including Meg from Hercules, Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean and Milo from Atlantis: The Lost Empire. There are more still to be revealed.

So far so good, but what’s this quality of life feature that got me giddy? Well, one of the elements of the existing game that still feels like a bit of a chore to me is fishing. It’s fun enough, but when you’re searching for a specific fish, constantly playing the timing-based mini-game to catch random ones until you get the one you like can take a while.

When you turn into a mermaid in The Keepsake Sea, not only do you get to explore the new underwater area, you’re also able to swim on the surface of any body of water (including the lakes elsewhere in the valley). Much in the same way as your horse can water crops by just walking over them, when you’re in mermaid form you can automatically collect fish by simply swimming around on the surface, which is a brilliantly useful new feature.

There will be a showcase stream on October 21, which will show off more of The Keepsake Sea before it releases in November. From what I’ve seen so far, however, it seems clear that Disney Dreamlight Valley fans will be happy to see the game reaching new heights by, ironically, letting them plunge to new depths.