Disney Illusion Island
Nintendo Switch
A delightful co-op adventure set on an island brought beautifully to life by hand-drawn illustrations.DualShockers was provided with a copy of the game for review purposes.
Simple and clean, I’ve always had a fondness forDisneygames. In the Cadbury days of my kidhood, I’d spend weekends watching my cousin play Kingdom Hearts. In computer club after school, my pals and I would hop on to good ol’disney dot comfor hours of official fun powered by the one and only Adobe Flash (rest in peace).
Disney games never really went awayper se. But you’d have to be living under a rock to ignore the chilling effect that the closure ofDisney Interactive Studiosin 2016 ended up having on the conglomerate’s video game output. It is only in the last two years that Disney games have begun to pop back up again. And it is amidst this renaissance of Disney games thatDisney Illusion Islandemerges on the horizon, illustrious and whimsical and merry.
Developed by Dlala Studios, Disney Illusion Island tells a storybook tale, simple in concept yet embellished with illustration. When Mickey Mouse, Minnie, Donald, and Goofy find themselves on the illusory island of Monoth, a quippy librarian by name of Toku tasks them with a perilous quest: the three magical Tomes of Monoth have been stolen, and would Mickey & Friends be so kind as to get them back?
Disney Illusion Island gives you the option of playing as any of the Fab Four on your swashbuckling adventure. I picked Donald Duck, while my partner (who joined me via the game’s local co-op) chose Goofy, though we also experimented with Mickey and Minnie and other configurations later on. All four of the playable characters in the game handle identically; whether playing as Goofy or Mickey, Minnie or Donald, I was still ground-pounding here, wall-jumping there, skipping and skidding around courtesy of the game’s springy controls.
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The island of Monoth is divvied up into three core biomes, and the 2D platforming is consistent across all three. For the bulk of the adventure, Mickey & Friends will dash across planes, jeté over gaps, and bounce off cushions to reach higher platforms. These core movements had a lovely elasticity—not so loose as to feel sloppy, and not so tight as to feel restrictive. Launching from the ground to the sky ever felt like winding up a tin car and watching it go.
As we ricocheted through each of the biomes, my partner and I both unlocked a variety of additional abilities for our characters: the power to swing across long distances, swim underwater, or jump with a boost. Like the core gameplay, these abilities are available across all characters, however there is variety and flair in how each character pulls them off.
For example, when I used Glide as Donald Duck, he’d flap a set of feathers. When my partner glided around as Goofy, however… let’s just say some very creative use of a mustard squeeze-bottle was involved. These little details delightfully emphasized the unique personalities of the core four. As a result, each character felt that much more distinct to the other even as their core movements and abilities were fundamentally identical.
Disney Illusion Island takes every opportunity it can to shine bright with personality. The hand-drawn sprites snazzily embody each character’s defining traits, and the vocal cast nails the delivery of the already-hilarious script. In not just its dialogue, but in its overall attitude, Disney Illusion Island is a very funny game! Where there’s a gag to be made, the game will not hesitate to make it. Minnie is hilariously quippy, to say nothing of Donald Duck’s ostentatious no-nonsense-ness.
Even the bureaucratic undertones running all throughout the Post Office area of the Engineering biome had me laughing helplessly. As for the biomes themselves, these are whimsical at every turn, from the fantastically galactic Astrono (the biome of Astronomy) to Gizmopolis of the junkyard cogs and engines.
Disney Illusion Island takes every opportunity it can to shine bright with personality: it revels in its palette of brilliant colors.
Each biome branches off from the library where the game begins, and this mutual meeting point allowed us the freedom to leap-frog back and forth as we pleased with no loading screens in between. Moving from Astrono to, say, Pavonia (the biome of Botany) was as simple as platforming our way from where we were, to where we wanted to be. Although at times the map might have skewed a bit too big and sprawling, several teleport points plus a late-stage fast-travel ability helped make the massiveness of the map much more manageable.
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Aside from outlining the multitude of pathways zigzagging between each biome, the map is filled with icons marking the locations of collectibles, checkpoints, and other points of interest. Clearly, the map strove to be thorough and comprehensive. Yet the abundance of markers teetered very quickly into anoverabundance: by the third act, the map was a nigh-incomprehensible clutter of symbols every time we opened it.
Some markers were useful, such as the flags pointing out where our next objective was located. Very helpful! But did we really have to crowd out the map with little Xs to mark the spots where Donald and Goofy both lost their hearts and got a Game Over? And it made no sense to me that the map marked the locations of every single Hidden Mickey collectiblewe’d already found. There was the option to filter out the markers, but to do this you had to open the map first—and the fact that the map would be crowded with markers every single time we opened it up made for a real persistent annoyance.
Setting aside the chaotic map, Disney Illusion Island is otherwise a resounding joy both visually and audibly. From the hand-drawn set-pieces—such as the tranquil Healing Pools and the Mail Railz—to the expressively animated boss battles, the game revels in its lively palette of brilliant colors beautifully composed. These visual elements sing harmoniously with the orchestrated soundtrack, which is a constant throughout the game, no matter whether you’re whirling in adventure, pausing for a cutscene, or embracing your co-op peer in a health-restoring hug.
My partner and I loved co-operatively spelunking through the chutes and narrows of Disney Illusion Island. While the map might not have been the most helpful guide at our disposal, our journey across Pavonia, Astrono, Gizmopolis, and Monoth overall was nevertheless led by a breathless sense of wonder that the game mightily inspired us both to feel. Beautiful and imaginative, freewheeling and magical, Disney Illusion Island has all the makings of a modern classic.
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