Years ago, Disney reshaped its approach to games. Realizing the potential to connect its global audience with the most financially successful entertainment industry in the world, it hired former PlayStation portfolio manager John Drake to lead the game licensing division. play after years of Star Wars exclusivity with EA, movie link and mobile release.
Since then, we’ve received games like Star Wars Jedi: Survivor from Respawn Entertainment, Marvel’s Midnight Suns from Firaxis Games, etc. And with additional games coming soon, like Star Wars: Outlaws and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora by Ubisoft, the future of games based on the Disney property looks bright. But those games, like most games using Disney’s intellectual property, are produced through licensing agreements. Disney Illusion Island is set apart from all of that with one key difference: it’s the first to be published by Walt Disney Games, which means it could be the first, or by Disney’s hands, directly. hit it.
© 2023 Disney
After playing Illusion Island for about four hours in an exclusive hands-on preview, which included 30 minutes of 3-player co-op, I can confidently say that I think Disney has hit it off. Unless something dramatically changes after the game’s three-hour opening, Disney, platformer, and Metroidvania fans will enjoy, and so will their children.
Illusion Island is beautiful, with a confident and unique art style between Mickey’s Toontown aesthetics and the recent excellent Mickey Mouse shorts that have been running for a decade. As a result, the cutscenes in Illusion Island feel like a Mickey Mouse cartoon. In the game, Mickey, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy feel alive. Although each character moves at the same speed and performs the same movements, the differences in animation give each character a distinct feel. Example: Goofy limps as he stands up while Mickey moves like classic cartoons come to life. These characters are voiced by official actors which adds to the feeling of realism.
“Obviously I like new stuff, but that’s the whole history of Mickey,” AJ Grand-Scrutton, CEO of Dlala Studios and Director of Illusion Island, told me, explaining the entire content catalog. How Disney’s Mickey behind inspired the game’s visual style. “I was a huge fan of the 30s and 40s when Mickey was pretty cheeky […] and quite naughty, doing things he might not necessarily have to do now.
“We’ve hand-animated four of the most famous characters in history and it’s been fun. There’s a lot of silly animations in there, but really all that matters to us is fun.”
© 2023 Disney
Dlala also created a new world for the larger Mickey canon on Illusion Island called Monoth, complete with many original characters. Grand-Scrutton shivered when I asked about adding to Disney’s iconic standard. He says there’s no word that scares him more than the word “canon,” but the team managed to create a “great story for Mickey Mouse and friends to continue,” and if it’s a word that Disney mentioned elsewhere, he “will probably cry for two weeks out of happiness.”
Grand-Scrutton, lead designer Grant Allen, and the rest of the team I spoke to all expressed joy in talking about their games. Of course, Dlala has been working on it since finishing development on Xbox’s Battletoads revival in 2020, and it’s the team’s commercial product, but I sensed real love for Disney in every answer I get. And the team knows its stuff, researching not only short films and movies about Mickey Mouse but also the entire characterization surrounding the character, from history to theme parks, etc.
Memorabilia packs dot Illusion Island’s Metroidvania map, unlocking as I gain new abilities like extended booster jumps, wall jumps, and earth smashers, which unlock remade-style Mickey Mouse history pieces by Dlala. I found Pete’s Underpants from the 1990s The Prince and the Poor and more since 1937 Lonely ghost (Grand-Scrutton’s favorite Mickey Mouse).
© 2023 Disney
In addition to making a mark in Disney history with new versions of classic characters and props, Dlala’s also commemorates the various members of the 37-person studio with Tokun cards. These collectibles provide lore about the original characters and works, as well as information about the team. A Dlala artist named Rachel is represented by Keh, who lives in Monoth’s Gizmopolis and attracts all who enter. Grand-Scrutton happily explains the story behind the art and “legend” of each character in the game based on another Dlala team member I met.
As I traveled from Pavonia’s Terrarium Town, which felt like a more natural area of the Monoth than the mechanical foundations of Gizmopolis, I found joy in the background of Illusion Island. If this is any indication, Illusion Island is more about the joy of discovery than the challenge. There are thousands of Glimt coins to pick up while platforming through Monoth, and the more you collect, the more lore you unlock. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of collectibles like the Memorabilia Pack and Tokun that can be found.
Illusion Island doesn’t seem like a nail-biting experience. But I will not say that I am not dead, or rather “stamped”. Because Mickey and Friends cannot die, according to Disney rules, they will be stamped and instead turned into reincarnation mail in various mailbox check points.
© 2023 Disney
This is not surprising, since an important part of the target audience is children. But there are built-in features to make the game more or less challenging. When you choose a character, you choose how many hearts they have. You can choose one, two or three, but you can also set unlimited hearts. In multiplayer, characters can hug each other to win hearts, jump off each other in a preemptive short to cross distances more easily, and drop ropes to players below, allowing them to ignore the background elements altogether, something fans of 1992’s World of Illusion may find familiar.
Dlala has included several quality of life features in Illusion Island’s “Mickeyvania” style map. A small creature that the team named a hidosaur appears to indicate that a hidden area has been discovered. When I come across a road that I can’t fully explore, a question mark will appear on the map at that location. Later, when I get the ability I need, I see a new marker there that matches the ability I currently have needed to advance.
© 2023 Disney
Without traditional combat, Allen told me that Illusion Island is about mastering movement, and that Dlala tried to strike a balance between fun and advancement of abilities. After playing it yourself, that means finding joy in the possibilities of Illusion Island mechanics. It’s not about running up a hill with countless enemies designed to take you down with the slightest mistake. Most of the enemies I encountered weren’t like enemies but simply residents of Monoth that happened to move and react dangerously.
That was until I encountered the game’s first boss: a thief who holds one of the three books that Mickey and friends have been tasked with retrieving for the sake of Monoth. She sits in the middle of the screen with a shield. Instead of attacking her directly, I bypassed falling blades and other hazards to climb a little higher on the vast arena-like stage. There are yellow buttons I jump on to lower her shield. When the shield is lowered, a danger falling from above will damage her, and after doing this a few times, with the dangers escalating for me to stand around, life war is over. I love how this boss fight provides a rush of combat without directly using combat, and I’m looking forward to seeing how Dlala addresses that gap in other scenarios.
Grand-Scrutton said: “I hate boss fights in the game. “Naming your worst boss battle would be easier than your favorite game, right? So for our creative vision […]we will look at the goals we are trying to achieve with this feature [boss fight]. This is the feeling we want players to feel, and we steal a lot of that feeling from the Fantasy approach because we all really want to be like the Fantasy People.
© 2023 Disney
“I think what we’ve got for [this boss fight] is that it needs to feel like an embodiment of a small level. It’s about viewing bosses in a single screen instead of seeing the boss as an enemy you have to defeat. And it became more about combining abilities and movements into something like a puzzle. We did not miss the battle. It just feels right, and it matches the rest of the game.
This boss and the rest of my play on Illusion Island are wrapped up in a score by composer David Housden, who also composed the music for Dlala’s Battletoads, and I couldn’t have been more impressed with what I got. listen. It’s instantly memorable and whistle-worthy and sits right at home in Disney’s stellar music catalog. It reminds me most of walking through Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, which begins with the whimsical wonders of Main Street before diving into other genres as you traverse the various lands of the Disney World. park. Considering Illusion Island’s Monoth is divided into various lands and biomes, it’s easy to see how Disney’s isolated approach to theme park lands inspired both design Dlala’s score and Housden’s score.
This team clearly has members of Disney; it knows the company’s deep and memorable history, and combines that with a flexible and exciting platform, a vibrant and expansive world, and a lovely new way of crafting that brings some The most popular mascot in the world. So far, it’s been working on every level for me, but these types of games are all about escalation in exploration, and I won’t be able to gauge that until Illusion Island hits the Switch next month. Seven. That said, consider I’m happy to be in line between now and release. I just hope the full ride that awaits me on the other side is worth the wait.
This article originally appeared in No. 357 of the Game Information Provider.
