Disney Illusion Island - Review
It has been 11 years since we last got a game that had Mickey Mouse take a staring role. In 2012 we got Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two and Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion and since then, the mouse has been relegated to sharing the screen as part of an ensemble, or in the case of the Kingdom Hearts series, a non-playable character. When Disney Illusion Island was first announced, my interest was piqued, due to the staring characters, but also the developer. Now that the worlds first Mickey-vania has arrived, is this a game that makes one say Hot Diggity Dog?
The story of Disney Illusion Island is fairly straight forward, Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy have all been sent a map that would lead them to a special picnic. Upon arriving to the location, they discover that the picnic was a lie, and the writer of the maps, Toku has summoned them to be heroes and to help them restore their world. While Donald is not convinced, though he is swayed by promise of a reward, the others are on board right away and together they head off to reclaim the Tomes of Knowledge and capture the thief’s in a magical spell. There really isn’t much more to the story than that, well that I will talk about as I don’t want to spoil things for anyone seeking to discover the mystery of the island. I will say that the story is fairly basic, it does have some twists and interesting dialogue, but the over thread that runs through is what you might expect.
Beyond the main opening cutscene and then some towards the end, most of the story is presented in speech bubbles, usually after meeting someone or taking down a boss. This does undercut some of the tension and serves to undo the work that the wonderful opening cutscene sets up. While the game does sport a visual style similar to the Mickey Mouse shorts that have been airing for a few years now, it is still quite different. The quickest way to describe it is flash animation compared to pencil animation, both are valid art forms, they just use different methods to get their result. The reason why I am bringing this up is that the game really could have made full use of the characters and animated them more, rather than the few scenes we got. But as it’s a game, I can understand their desire to focus more on the gameplay.
Speaking of that, the game is primarily a metroidvania style game, but its very much a lite version of it and by that I mean you won’t spend hours running around trying to find one item to proceed. The game hands you upgrades as you need them, usually by walking into another area, but never more than a few screens. This system will be great for younger players who are just dipping their toes into the genre, but for those players who have invested a lot of time in Metroid, Hollow Knight or any other series over the years, it will feel quite shallow. The games upgrades are also character specific, not in the sense that you need to find one for each character to progress, but thematically. For example Minnie gets items that are actually themed to the upgrade, a climbing hammer for wall jumping. Goofy on the other hand gets a giant fork, in fact all his upgrades are food related, which is quite funny, but Donald getting the dregs each time is perhaps a little funnier.
The game will drop you into the world without any real guidance, except for a giant marker on the map as to where you need to go, the how is up to you. There really isn’t anyway to get lost, as the map fills in as you explore, but younger players may find themselves getting stuck now and again, trying to work their way out of a room. What I found to be interesting is that the games fast travel only unlocks a few specific locations, until the very end, so if you are someone who wants to be a completionist, wait until later. Collecting everything you see doesn’t actually seem all that relevant at first, in fact the game doesn’t explain a damn thing about the items you can collect. When you see a sack on a stick, similar to a bindle, it unlocks little momentos in a menu, Illusion Island style takes on Steamboat Willie or Potatoland. Those are fun and all, but the ones you will see everywhere are the Glimts, these are teardrop shaped and just seem to float in place. Collecting a few hundred will unlock part of an image in the gallery and after the first two I decided it wasn’t worth going out of my way to get them all. There is a reason to get them, once you complete the first page, it gives you an extra heart, something the game literally does not explain anywhere.
Something else the game doesn’t do is allow you to defend yourself by attacking the enemies that dot the world of Monoth. Now I can understand you don’t want to see a character like Mickey Mouse taking a baseball bat towards some little critter, but given we have seen Mickey fight in countless games before see Epic Mickey or The Magical Quest starring Mickey Mouse. While playing solo, dodging a single enemy or even two might be easy enough, once you get the full compartment of four players in the mix, it won’t be so breezy. The boss fights that you encounter are usually just jumping on switches or bashing your head into items, all of which fly up and hit the boss, so there is a version of combat, just nowhere outside of those encounters. I know it feels cheap to complain about lack of combat in a game aimed at younger players, but even if the characters had a shield to deflect some attacks it would have been nicer.
On the subject of nicer, ok not the best segue, but lets talk about the games presentation, the good and the bad. Like I said earlier, the game sports a very similar style to the Mickey Mouse shorts that started back in 2013 and just finished up with their final short the other day. Anyone who has seen any of those shorts, won’t feel too disconnected here with the style, but if you are coming in fresh, this art style is quite jarring and not in the best way. Each of the characters looks good, Mickey has his iconic side profile, Goofy has the hat and ears and even Donald has a few moments of rage. The problem that I have is that they are very basic designs and as someone who has enjoyed all the recent shorts, that feels cheap by comparison. Now when they are in the world and they speak with Mazzy, Uncle Steve, or any of the characters that live there, they fit in just fine, but when the camera gets close up on them, it feels wrong somehow. The world itself is fairly detailed, the game uses its unique art style to the full effect that it can, with large themed spaces and backgrounds that pan at different rates. There are only really a handful of locations and some you will see more than others, but each one is enjoyable.
The games audio is a little more mixed, let me start with the music. The games score features a number orchestral pieces that do fit the world, they are vibrant and upbeat. Now I don’t know if it’s the whistling as part of the score, they do call out the specialist whistler in the credits, but when it kicked in, it and the melody screamed Enchanted to me. The score suits the gameplay, it was epic when it need to be, but honestly it faded to the back more often than not, but your milage may vary. On the games vocal front, the cast is filled out by the actors who actually voice the characters in many other projects, with Bret Iwan pulling duty as Mickey, Kaitlyn Robrock as Minnie and Disney Legends Tony Anselmo and Bill Farmer voicing Donald and Goofy, roles they have done for almost 40 years. All the voices are great, but I did notice that Iwan sounds a little different to a lot of the recent work he has done, if you go to the Mickey Mouse shorts to compare, the character is voiced by Chris Diamantopoulos there. The voice sounds like Mickey, just perhaps not the one some people may remember, but that doesn’t impact the overall experience, just more of a note.
Disney Illusion Island is a solid game, it doesn’t break the mould, offering up a simple gameplay system that players of all ages can enjoy. The game does have issues in its lack of combat, lack of instructions on what things are and at times just feels slow. Where it shines is in the multiplayer, you can play the game solo, like I did, but even jumping in with someone for 30 minutes changes the feeling of the game completely. While the name of the game is never explained, unlike past Mickey Mouse games, what you do get is a solid experience that will delight long-time fans and newcomers like.
The Score
8.0
Review code provided by Disney
The Pros
+The gameplay is basic enough that younger players can pick it up and enjoy it
+The world has plenty of secrets to discover and items to collect…
The Cons
-… the game just fails to explain what most of the collectables are for
-The lack of an attack option feels weird, more so given there are boss fights
