Gaming | August 12, 2023
A resounding disappointment. That’s what we experienced with Disney Illusion Island. Because nostalgia is a double-edged sword. If you create a 2D Mickey Mouse platformer and name it Illusion, you have our attention. However, you also have our expectations, playing with our hopes for a new and fabulous installment of the series. But that’s not the case. What we found this time was a bland, uninspired, and unchallenging project.
The game was developed by Dlala Studios, the ones responsible for the controversial return of Battletoads, and there is no better introduction because the current experience offers the same issues as that one. Disney Illusion Island doesn’t do anything particularly wrong, but at the same time, it lacks standout elements and gets a bit lost by focusing on certain ideas (in this case, trying to be a metroidvania). There comes a point where, just like with Rare’s toads, its art style raises doubts and doesn’t seem very inspired.
Although from the trailers and its four-player cooperative mode, it might seem so, no one should go to Disney Illusion Island expecting a proposal similar to the one offered by the sensational Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends. We are not dealing with short, dynamic, and visually varied stages, but rather with an endless and unimaginative maze whose platforms would only serve as a tutorial in any other game of the genre. Mickey Mouse’s adventure and company are basic and boring. The “family-friendly” label shouldn’t be used as an excuse or synonymous with simplicity. We’ve tried it alone and with people of various ages, and it hasn’t quite captivated anyone.
The only surprise of Disney Illusion Island lies in its metroidvania formula, but even that ends up working against it. Yes, it’s a metroidvania, how curious and charming, but now, is it a good metroidvania? Not by any means.
The game is full of secrets (that must be acknowledged), but the map design falls short. It’s chaotic, and, for example, the different zones and sections, besides not being well visually differentiated, don’t connect with each other, leading to all sorts of dead ends and the tiresome need to backtrack. Getting lost is frequent (requiring opening the menu and pausing the game), and when it doesn’t happen, we’ll be repeating the same pattern over and over again: “find three keys to open this door.” Exhausting.
Moreover, the exploration never becomes entirely rewarding. The abilities we unlock to discover new secrets and map locations are as original (note the irony) as gliding and double jumping. Disney Illusion Island doesn’t offer a single new idea throughout its 5-6 hours of gameplay.
Despite all this, the characters are agile, each with personalized and finely crafted animations, and moving and jumping around the game world is quite satisfying with the controls. The gameplay foundation is solid, and in co-op, the experience adds interesting options. We can hug each other to restore health, drop a rope for others to climb up to our position if they fall behind, and even choose how many hearts each hero has (somewhat alleviating the difficulty).
Regarding the visual aspect, the game is visually appealing at first and looks sweet and charming, but it’s true that its lack of ideas also infects the art. There comes a point where the scenarios are indistinguishable from each other, and the animations seem scarce. For example, enemies are limited to moving from left to right and vice versa. We don’t have to fight them, just avoid them. Their designs, color palette, and variety contribute to making the overall experience somewhat monotonous.
Lastly, Disney Illusion Island comes with Latin American Spanish dubbing and features cinematics and monologues that are so lengthy that Hideo Kojima could be behind them. Whether they are entertaining or tiresome, we’ll leave that up to you…
Disney Illusion Island is not a disaster, but it’s hard for us to find anything remarkable about it. Neither as a platformer nor as a metroidvania. Don’t expect anything similar to Mickey Mouse’s adventures in the nineties or the latest Rayman games. It’s a project with gameplay that is satisfying with the controls but also incredibly conventional and repetitive. It lacks ideas, challenge, and excitement. We even question whether it can entertain kids for more than a couple of afternoons, and they are the only audience to consider for it.
