The mouse is no stranger to video games, nor platformers. Though this time, I suppose Mickey and friends finally star in their first-ever Metroidvania title. Brought to you by Dlala Studios and published by the House of the Mouse (Disney), ‘Disney Illusion Island (Starring Mickey and Friends)’ has players take on the role of Mickey, Minnie, Donald, and Goofy in their current-generation toon style as they all get together on a supposedly secluded island to hold a picnic. But of course, nothing goes to plan—turns out this place is inhabited by furry creatures who actually tricked the gang into coming, because they need help!
Four player cooperative platforming awaits players in Illusion Island, and unfortunetly that’s really the best way I could describe this game.
In Disney Illusion Island, players can choose between all four titular animation heroes to play as. You can also adjust the number of hearts a character can hold as a difficulty option, which is much appreciated as this way you can offer a baseline difficulty for all players without leaving someone behind. And beyond being a coop-focused platformer, you can complete the game just fine without anyone else. Heck, if you simply can’t handle platformers, there is a peaceful option of sorts that dispels the concern of dying a bunch of times to roaming baddies, which is great news for anyone new to the genre or for the kiddos this game targets.
The character controller is solidly built. Moving and jumping about as all the characters feels great and none of them have any advantages or disadvantages. You can even get a boosted jump by doing everyone’s favourite forward, backward, and jump command. This being a Metroidvania, of course, you’ll be unlocking new skills that are required to progress forward in the story to collect the rest of the tomes and pick up more collectibles. These new skills you obtain border between working as expected and not really performing as well as you’d hope—one of those being the grapple hook, which allows players to swing off certain parts of the environment to get across gaps and the like. This thing only really works if you fall under the specified range (indicated by a rainbow) and this thing’s really small. It can be annoying to try and hook to a grappling point and honestly, compared to other titles in the genre, there really shouldn’t be a reason for these tiny limits for grappling.
Level design is serviceable, and objectives are repetitive. The former offers a solid challenge for the platforming newcomer without being overbearing. At most, you’ll have to time some jumps against disappearing platforms and/or face enemies that you cannot retaliate against, an aspect of the game that I actually am all for. Non-violent encounters forces players to reconsider their movement in ways that isn’t possible in others game where enemies can be tossed out of the picture through player action.
On the other hand, I take some issues with how the platforming flows. A key aspect of a good Metroidvania, in my eyes, is to not break player flow. As in, I should be able to get from point A to point B without slowing down significantly unless said slowdowns are because of a lack of mechanic proficiency. Illusion Island’s biggest toe stubs are due to how enemies are placed and the way many of the game’s platforms. Because of how baddies roll around stages and how they’re not timed to disappearing platforms, what ends up happening is the players will be forced to wait for the “perfect” time to make a jump. Sometimes that window is short and sometimes that window is far longer than it needs to be. This makes it so that skill doesn’t really matter but you also end up with long sections of waiting (and even running between challenges have long sections of nothing to them) that really aren’t present in some of the even poorer Metroidvania titles out there.
To that point, it’s also worth noting that Illusion Island’s only progression blockers are related to skills and finding keys to open doors a la ‘Doom’ and the coloured doors. Rarely is there anything else which doesn’t help alleviate the boredom I felt exploring the game’s overworld. Now for what it’s worth, it was fun hunting down the various Mickey Mouse ears in the backgrounds—by finding one and “snapping” a picture of it, you’d get a cute picture of the gang posing in front of the Disney World theme park tradition. Plus, by collecting the various blue orbs scattered about, you’d unlock concept art and I’m a sucker for that sort of stuff.
Speaking of which, I think the game’s best aspects are its animations. Dlala Studio has pulled no punches in offering animated cutscenes and spritework that does no disservice to the current Mickey cartoons. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about the levels themselves—Illusion Island appears to be coated in pastel and oils that do not fit our playable cast at best and at worst make it difficult to know where a player is. As you explore the map you’ll notice that environments all look the same (sans for a few select places, like the zone prior to the Planetarium) and the only way you can tell them apart is based on the hue of the skybox once you cross borders.
I think Disney Illusion Island is built on a solid foundation, but sadly everything around it (be it level design, art, and objectives) are underwhelming. This is a game for the Disney faithful at best, because even for young children, there are an overwhelming amount of fantastic 2D Metroidvania titles to choose from. Unless you really like Donald Duck (and I solemnly raise my hand for the walking TNT box!), Illusion Island likely isn’t going to be worth your time. ■
Disney Illusion Island Starring Mickey and Friends
Played on
Windows 11 PC / Xbox Series X
PROS
- Lovely character art and animation work.
- Strong character controller.
CONS
- Level design is marred by flow-breaking disappearing platforms and enemies you can only avoid.
- Overworld art and enemy design doesn't do enough to differentiate from the cast. It is hard to look at at best and evokes a sense of blandness at its worst.
- Repetitive objective design.
