Mousing Around - Game Informer - Gamezon

Disney changed its gaming strategy years ago. Recognizing the potential to connect its global audience to the world’s most financially successful entertainment industry, it hired former PlayStation portfolio boss John Drake to lead its games licensing division after years of exclusive Star Wars contracts with EA, movie tie-ins, and mobile releases.

Since then, we’ve received games like Star Wars Jedi: Survivor from Respawn Entertainment, Marvel’s Midnight Suns from Firaxis Games, and more. And with additional games on the horizon, like Ubisoft’s Star Wars: Outlaws and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, the future of games based on Disney properties looks bright. Like most games that use Disney intellectual property, these are also produced via licensing agreements. Disney Illusion Island stands separate from all those with one key distinction: it’s the first to be published by Walt Disney Games, meaning it could be the first dud or hit with Disney’s hand directly on it.

Illusion island is a game that I’ve played for four hours, which included 30 minutes of three-player co-op. I am confident in saying I believe Disney has something special on their hands. Unless something drastically changes after the game’s opening three hours, Disney, platformer, and Metroidvania fans are in for a treat, and their children are, too.

Illusion Island is beautiful, with an art style that sits confidently and uniquely between Mickey’s Toontown aesthetic and the recent excellent Mickey Mouse shorts that have been running for a decade. Illusion Island’s cutscenes are very similar to Mickey Mouse cartoons. Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy all feel like they are alive in the gameplay. Each character performs and moves the same way, but the animation makes each one feel unique. Goofy, on the other hand, moves as though he is a classic animated character. This authenticity is enhanced by having the actors voice these characters.

“I obviously love the new stuff, but it’s Mickey’s entire history,” Dlala Studios CEO and Illusion Island director AJ Grand-Scrutton tells me, explaining how Disney’s entire back catalog of Mickey content inspired the game’s visual style. “I am a massive fan of the ’30s and ’40s stuff where Mickey was quite cheeky […]He is a bit naughty and does things he would not normally do.

“We got to hand-animate four of the most famous characters in history and it was a ton of fun. There are lots of silly animations in there, but really all that mattered to us was joy.”

Dlala created an entirely new Mickey world in Illusion Island, called Monoth. It features many characters that are original. Grand-Scrutton shudders when I ask about adding to Disney’s iconic canon. He says no word terrifies him more than “canon,” but that the team tried creating a “wonderful story for Mickey Mouse and friends to go on,” and if it’s one referenced elsewhere by Disney, he’ll “probably cry for two weeks straight from happiness.”

Grand-Scrutton’s lead designer Grant Allen and the other team members I spoke with exuded joy as they talked about their game. Of course, Dlala’s been working on it since completing development on Xbox’s Battletoads revival in 2020, and it is the team’s commercial product, but I sense genuine love for Disney in every answer I get. It’s clear that the team has done extensive research on Mickey Mouse. They have studied not only his shorts, movies and other media, but he entire character, including the history and theme parks.

Memorabilia Bundles litter Illusion Island’s Metroidvania-esque map, which opens up as I acquire new abilities like an extended boost jump, wall jumping, and ground pound, which unlock pieces of Mickey Mouse history redone in Dlala’s style. I find Pete’s Underpants from 1990’s The Pauper and the Prince and more from 1937’s Lonesome Ghosts (Grand-Scrutton’s favorite Mickey Mouse short).

Beyond making its mark on Disney history with new renditions of classic characters and props, Dlala’s also memorialized various members of the 37-person studio with Tokun cards. They provide information and lore on original characters, creations, and the team. One Dlala artist named Rachel is represented by Keh, who resides in Monoth’s Gizmopolis and draws everyone who enters. Grand-Scrutton gleefully explains the story behind each in-game character’s art and “lore” based on a different Dlala team member I encounter.

As I travel from Pavonia’s Terrarium Town, which feels like a more natural area of Monoth compared to the mechanical underbelly of Gizmopolis, I found Illusion Island’s platforming fun. Illusion Island’s exploration is the main focus of the game, not the challenges. You can collect thousands of Glimt pieces while you platform through Monoth. The more Glimt you have, the greater the amount of lore that you will unlock. You can also find dozens, or even hundreds of other collectibles, such as Memorabilia Bundles, Tokuns, and more.

Illusion Island doesn’t appear to be a nail-biting experience. But I won’t say I didn’t die, or rather, get “stamped.” Because Mickey and friends can’t die, according to Disney rules, they get stamped and are instead turned into mail that respawns within various mailbox checkpoints.

This isn’t surprising, considering a crucial part of the target audience is children. There are features that can make the game harder or easier. You can choose the number of hearts a particular character has when you select them. The game allows you to choose between one, two or even three hearts, though it is possible to set them up indefinitely. In multiplayer, characters can hug each other to gain a heart, jump off each other leapfrog-style for easier gap clears, and drop ropes to players below, letting them skip platforming elements altogether, something fans of 1992’s World of Illusion might find familiar.

Dlala has included several quality-of-life features in Illusion Island’s “Mickeyvania” style map. The team calls it a “hidizard” and it appears when a secret area is explored. When I encounter a pathway I can’t quite explore yet, a question mark appears on the map at that location. When I later obtain the ability I need, I see a new marker there that resembles the ability I now have that’s needed to advance.

Allen told me that Illusion island is not about traditional combat but rather mastering the art of movement. Dlala also said they tried to strike a balance between progression and fun. After playing it myself, that translates to finding joy in the capabilities of Illusion Island’s mechanics. It’s not about running up a hill of countless enemies designed to take you out at the slightest misstep. Most of the enemies I encounter don’t feel like enemies but simply Monoth’s inhabitants that happen to move and react hazardously.

That is until I reach the game’s first boss: a thief who holds one of the three tomes Mickey and friends have been tasked with retrieving for the good of Monoth. The woman is seated in the middle of the screen, holding a shield. To get higher up on the stage, instead of directly attacking her, I use my platform to jump over blades falling and other obstacles. Jumping on the yellow buttons lowers her shield. Once the shield’s down, a hazard falling from above damages her, and after doing this a couple of times, with escalating dangers for me to platform around, the fight is over. This boss battle gives me the feeling of fighting without actually using any combat. I’m looking forward to how Dlala will work around this void.

“I hate boss fights in games,” Grand-Scrutton says. “It’s easier to name your worst boss fight than your favorite, right? For our creative vision […], we go through the goals of what we’re trying to achieve with this feature [boss fight]. The feeling that we are trying to create is one we have taken from Imagineering, because all of us want to emulate them.

“I think what we had for [this boss fight]The idea was to make it feel as if you were playing a miniature level. The idea was to view bosses more as one screen than as enemies that you had to beat. It became more of a combination between movement and abilities, like solving a puzzle. We didn’t miss combat. It just felt right, and it fits with the rest of the game.”

This boss and the rest of what I play in Illusion Island come wrapped in a score from composer David Housden, who also composed the score for Dlala’s Battletoads, and I couldn’t be more impressed with what I heard. It’s immediately memorable and whistle-worthy and is right at home in Disney’s catalog of excellent music. It reminds me most of walking through Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, which starts with magical whimsy on Main Street before diving into other genres as you cross into the parks’ different lands. Considering Illusion Island’s Monoth is split into various lands and biomes, it’s easy to see how Disney’s isolated approach to theme park lands inspires both Dlala’s design and Housden’s score.

This team clearly has the Disney chops; it knows the company’s extensive and memorable history and fuses that with fluid and fun platforming, a vibrant and expansive world, and a new but lovingly crafted take on some of the most popular mascots in the world. So far, it’s working on every level for me, but these types of games are all about the escalation in exploration, and I won’t be able to judge that until Illusion Island hits Switch in July. I’m happy to sit in line and wait until the game is released. It is my hope that the ride I will get at the end of the queue is worth waiting.

The original version of this article appeared in issue 357, Game Informer.

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