Synopsis: Join Mickey and Friends on a brand-new adventure in Disney Illusion Island. Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy embark on a new adventure to find three magical books and save the mysterious island of Monoth.
- Publisher: Disney Interactive Studios
- Reviewed on: Nintendo Switch (OLED)
- Also available for: N/A
- Cast: Bill Farmer, Bret Iwan, Corey Burton, David Holt, Debra Wilson, Kaitlyn Robrock, Kosha Engler, Lucy Newman-Williams, Rasmus Hardiker, Tony Anselmo
- Developer: Dlala Studios
- Written & Directed By: Aj Grand-Scrutton
- Music By: David Housden
- Technical Director: Ben Waring
- Principal Programmer: Chris Rickett
- Lead Designer: Grant Allen
As a fan of the Mickey Mouse and Friends cartoons as a kid and an adult, Disney Illusion Island has an inescapable charm whenever you watch Mickey, Minnie, Donald, or Goofy talk or bounce around in the game. This is a Metroidvania you can play with up to four players and is designed as Mickey’s first Metroidvania, just as much as it is for young players’ first game in the genre. With that comes a lot of appreciated difficulty options and an understandable lack of anything too challenging, but the game still needs a lot that would make it a good entry in the genre. Unfortunately, that is not something the charming cutscenes can make up for.
As with most Metroidvania’s, Disney Illusion Island has played traversing back-and-forth across an interconnected map with several different biomes. There are a couple of boss “fights” and plenty of collectables to find, but players will first notice there’s no combat here. And no, of course, I wasn’t expecting Mickey, Donald, Minnie or Goofy to whip out a gun in the game, but you’re not even jumping on enemies’ heads or anything similar to a Mario game. This would be okay if the platforming were engaging. But it’s not. The first four-ish hours of the game are spent being slowly drip-fed basic abilities, and the platforming sections never get trickier or even more exhilarating to complete as you unlock abilities. The wall jump, grapple hook and more open a way for you to continue to the next section of the map.
In the last couple hours of the game, and in particular, one section I’ll come back to in a moment, things do get more involved where the game asks players to use the platforming skills they’ve been practising all game in more challenging ways. But it’s too little too late as by this point; I had become somewhat bored by the game after playing bland level design for hours prior.
Those last couple of hours are more exciting, and there’s even a moment where the game lifts you out of the Metroidvania design into something that feels like a structured level that ends with Mickey and friends having to sprint through the level to an exit as destruction happens around them. It was a sign of a better game here if a more a-typical 2D co-op platformer had been the direction instead of the uninspired Metroidvania we have got instead.
What’s most confusing is that although I expected the game not to be challenging and target a family audience, the game offers you the ability to, at any point, choose how many hearts your character has between 1-3 or infinite—making the game as difficult or as easy as you’d like. Given this: why not add some slightly more challenging parts throughout the game, knowing players can always fall back on the difficulty options to help them?
For the most part, I played Disney Illusion Island in an unengaged state. The original world of Monoth is as visually interesting as the game design, with an abstract design to the backgrounds, with few and far between things of interest to take your eyes. Many of the sections blur together, and I’d have to open the map constantly to figure out if I was headed in the right direction, unable to use any unique visuals in the design of the world to help keep me in the balance of where I was or headed. Playing on my Nintendo Switch OLED, the colours of the world pop, but they lack substance or intrigue.
Disney Illusion Island begins with a stacked amount of cutscenes and picks up the same pace in the game’s back end. Both were my favourite times as the cutscenes are unbearably charming, with Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy written wonderfully and these feelings-like moments cut out of some cartoon from the Disney Channel. I laughed out loud at more than one joke between the crew, particularly my man Goofy’s daftness, but that’s why we love him. The original characters, too, like the Hokuns, who ask the four heroes to find three magical books for them to help save their world, feel very at home in the Disney/Mickey universe.
Disney Illusion Island has been designed for co-op and families to play together. You can hug characters to give them health back, and the adventure feels complete when you can get all four characters onto the screen. However, in the short time I spent checking the game out in co-op, it weirdly punishes the players lagging by having the camera follow the lead player and forcing those behind to catch up. Of course, a little communication from players on the couch can help alleviate this, but it still felt like an odd choice, given kids will play this and probably want to run off without thinking about their brother, sister or whoever is at the back.
I was playing Disney Illusion Island to reach the next charming cutscene or dialogue interaction between Mickey, Minnie, Donald & Goofy. With an uninspired level design, I sometimes played the game in a zoned-out trance, just mindlessly going through the actions but not caring about what I was doing on-screen. Families can get more out of this as an entry-level Metroidvania. Still, even as much as the game succeeded in charming me at times with the core characters, it’s hard to recommend this to anyone over the many other Nintendo Switch exclusive 2D platformers.
