When a game like Disney Illusion Island puts "Illus??ion" in its name, it immediately evokes a rich legac?y of Disney platformers.

Growing up, I wasn’t exactly a Disney kid. I had nothing against the mouse’s house, I was just more interested in mascot platformers with tragic backstories. Regardless, I loved the heck out of so many 16-bit Disney platformers. Games like Sega’s Castle of Illusion didn’t engage me because of the license, but because they offered their own unique spin on the world of Mickey Mouse. I still remember how Castle of Illusion could effortlessly transition from feeling whimsical, to myste?rious, to kind of ominous when it wanted. Heck, it did all of that in ??the first world!

To its credit, Disney Illusion Island does not wear the “Illusion�brand lightly. Though it bares little similarity to Sega’s seminal title, I could tell how much the developers at DLALA Studios wanted to create a game that could sit alongside the greats in Disney's video game canon. In some respects, Illusion Island accomplishes this goal. I just don't think I’ll reminisce about it 30 years from no?w.

[caption id="attachment_393537" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Disney Illusion Island (Switch)
Developer: DLALA Studios, Disney Games
Publisher: Disney Electronic Content
Released: July 28, 2023
MSRP: $39.99

Everybody's busy bringing you a Disney Afternoon

Illusion Island starts on an unexpected high note. Mickey, Minnie, Donald, and Goofy meet up for a picnic on the titul??ar island, each believing the event was planned by someone else in their crew. But just as many afternoon outings go, the picnic was not planned by friends, but by a race of hamster people who are in desperate need of help. It turns out that calamity is imminent for said hamsters if they?? don’t collect some magic books, and they need help from heroes who can do the job for them.

Naturally they turn to Mickey and friends to handle that adventuring. And I mean, as someone who grew up playing The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse, I must admit the mouse does have some heroic chops.

As basic as this plot sounds, it’s to?ld in a fully voiced, fully animated scene that I found charming. It has a Disney XD vibe, but I genuinely laughed at some lines here. Unfortunately, outside of the final act of the gam?e, most story bits don’t employ this level of production. You’ll mostly stare at unvoiced dialogue boxes that lean heavier on fourth-wall breaking jokes that just don’t land quite as well, whether you’re a Disney fan or not.

This is a small, arguably inessential disappointment. The story obviously isn’t the focus here, I just liked the fully animated stuff so much that most everything after it felt disappointing. It’s a bummer for younger audiences, but I get the vibe that Illusion Island caters more to Disney adults. Especially? when you realiz?e what type of game it is.

//youtu.be/QiUG1YWiMIY

Mouse-troidvania

Disney Illusion Island is technically a Metroidvania. If you told me 15 years ago that the exploratory platformer genre would become so popular that Mickey Mouse would throw his hat into the ring, I would have called you crazy. Regardless, here we are?. Mickey and friends will traverse interconnected biomes across the island to recover the missing tomes, earning valuable movement upgrades along the way. At the start, the mouse's party can do little more than run and jump. By the end of the game, they can double jump, wall jump, and even ground pound to access new areas.

Control and movement lay the foundation for any good platformer, and luckily Disney Illusion Island nails this. It doesn’t lock off your best movement options for long, and everything from jump arcs to movement speed feel great. The game lacks any combat mechanics, so a surprisingly nimble move set keeps the experience feeling fresh. I really enjoyed the game?? when it simply focuses on testing your platforming prowess.

At its best, the level design throws you at challenge rooms that utilize all your abilities. While the game’s hardest is maybe 1/10^th of what something like Celeste throws at you, the difficulty can ramp up nicely in the second half. Platforming newbies may choose to play with infinite health, so no one should expect to get stuck necessarily. But as someone who once spent a summer playing Ninja Gaiden to see if I could beat it without any continues, I was shocked that I died in certain sections of the game. Granted, this was mostly due to my own impatience,?? but more on that in a bit.

While swimming in the latter part of the game can feel a little loose, I felt surprised by how tight Illusion Island controlled. Movement just feels good, with a level of polish typically reserved for top-shelf platformers. This is fortunate, since this counteracts several small stumbles that Illusion Island makes along the way.

[caption id="attachment_393538" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Bouncing here and there and everywhere

The biggest, most substantial question that could not leave my head during the entirety of Illusion Island’s runtime was one I’d never thought I’d ask: why is this a Metroidvania?

Look, I grew up on enough Metroid and Castlevania to absolutely love this genre. I’ve also enjoyed non-violent exploratory platformers too. The thing is, these games only work if they give you incentive to explore, and Illusion Island just�doesn’t have that. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of stuff to collect here. I’d go so far as to call Illusion Island a collect-athon. It’s just that the things you hunt for ??don’t really m??atter.

You have Tokuns, a basic compendium of characters and enemies in the game with some banal flavor text. There’s Mickey Memorabilia, which is literally just Disney references drawn by the art team. Hidden Mickeys are, again, just small pieces of art you can find by spotting Mickey Mouse icons in the wild. And finally we have Glimts, the game’s equivalent of coins which unlock health upgrades. While I’m glad something impacts the play experien??ce, these feel relatively insignificant since the game’s difficulty settings already determine how much health you start with.

I don’t think Illusion Island needs a robust RPG system to encourage exploration. But in a game that has precious few fast travel options until criminally late into the game, why would I want to backtrack just to unlock a picture of the wheel from Steamboat Willie? Honestly, that’s all this format really adds to the game: backtracking. Considering you can't even collect one category of unlockables until you've already explored the first few areas, I did occasionally feel that the game was just tryin?g to pad its runtime.

To be clear, I didn't think the backtracking was necessarily egregious. But I did wish the game? would have gone with a simple level-to-level progression instead.

[caption id="attachment_393539" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

D-d-d-danger! Watch behind you!

I also have t??o discuss the enemy design, which became more and more of a stic?king point as I progressed.

As mentioned above, Illusion Island is a nonviolent platformer. I’m cool with this decision, but you'll still find plenty of enemies determined to smack you. And without combat, the game’s only way to escalat?e challenge from enemies involves making you wait. In the late game, I felt an alarming amount of enemies simply existed to interrupt a player’s natural forward trajectory. You can use acrobatics to dodge some foes, but many just want you to wait until they move or finish attacking. No platforming, no strategy, just waiting.

Like the level design, this isnâ€??™t game breaking. However, I eventually reached a point where I racked up deaths just because I was tired? of waiting for enemies to move and tried to cheese my way past them. Sure, dying over and over to restart at the frequent checkpoints isn’t an efficient way to progress. But I'd rather die on my own terms than let Walt Disney's grunts control how I live.

After a certain point, I felt Illusion Island wasn’t necessarily getting harder as much as it was making it easier to get hit. I’m sure if I didn’t play on the hardest difficulty setting, I probably could brute force through all these obstacles. I just would have liked to have seen more exploration of the core controls over abrasive enemy placement. The developers put all this work into making movement fun, so why would they want players to not move?

[caption id="attachment_393544" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

Side by side wherever we go

I do want to touch on the multiplayer in Illusion Island. While major platforming series like Rayman and Super Mario have embraced local multiplayer, I was still ?excited to test out how it handles?? here.

I had my girlfriend join my nearly complete playthrough for a session, and the results surprised me. Though she's generally unfamiliar with 2D platformers, she was able to wall jump and rope swing at my pace within minutes. This really is a testament to how natural Illusion Island feels to p??lay, and we ha??d a lot of fun running around together.

The problem, again, is that I don’t know why this is an exploratory platformer. While I don’t think anything of frequently opening and closing my map to track where I’m going, that constant pausing really disrupts multiplayer. Illusion Island doesn’t have a mini-map either, so even small forks in the road feel more troublesome than necessary. I mean, at several points in the game, you’ll find several branching paths. But three paths will lead to keys, all of which you’ll need to unlock a door blocking the critical path. Our takeaway joke while we played was "in Illusion Island, the only illusion is that we have any freedom."

I did like that each player could specify their own difficulty level via the health they start with. It makes Illusion Island easy to play with less experienced players when they can just turn on infinite health for themselves. But beyond that, I don’t think Illusion Island stands out as a multiplayer experience un??less you specifically want to get someone into platformers. My partner and I enjoyed our session, but we didn't talk about it after we put our controllers down. And that kind of sums up the game in general.

[caption id="attachment_393541" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screenshot by Destructoid[/caption]

I’m Timothy Monbleau from Destructoid, and you’re reading a Disney review

As much as I’ve focused on nitpicks, I could overlook them all if Illusion Island offered a charming, unique experience like the 16-bit Disney classics. But outside those fun animated scenes, I never saw anything in the game that really stuck with me. All the biomes in the game just kind of blur together, with somewhat differentiated but ultimately unremarkable visuals separating them. Outside of a water zone,? the whole thing just feels like one long level.

Yet despite everything, I still played Illusion Island to 100% completion (which took me just under ten hours). And even after I was left with one small incentive to replay the game, I started a second save file. Illusion Island is undoubtedly a fun game. It plays very well at its core, which is hard for me to wax poetic about. But the game does deliver? on that, especially?? when its level design lets those core mechanics shine.

I’d compare my experience to getting a burger from a nice fast casual restaurant. It’s not the best you’ve had, but it’s good in a pinc??h and you’re glad you had it. And sometimes you need a diversion to entertain you and possibly a family member for a weekend.

Disney Illusion Island won’t go down in history like the best Disney platformer classics have. But it’s still a fun, if not forgettable, romp starring Mickey and friends. Those who are newer to platformers or want to get someone in on the genre will be primed to enjoy this title. Also, while I don’t think the exploratory angle does the game any favors, it may appeal to collect-athon fans. Otherwise, Illusion Island is just a reliable g?ame for a rainy day. A perfect seven if there ever was one.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Disney Illusion Island appeared first on Destructoid.

Take a breather

Gaming hasn't slowed down since 2023 be??gan. Hit after hit after hit has ensured that cash has been frequently relinquished from our wallets. Fortunately, the industry is cooling down a little with these July 2023 ga?mes.

[caption id="attachment_387557" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Image via Disney Interactive[/caption]

Disney Illusion Island (Switch)

Publisher: Disney Interactive
Developer: Dlala Studios
Price: $29.99
Release Date: July 28
Trailer

Mickey Mouse is a keyblade wielder, a mascot at Disney's theme parks, and a part of the Funhouse Friends, but he hasn't been in a platformer for a long time. Thankfully, he and his pals are featured in an all-new 2D adventure on the Nintendo Switch. Developed by Dlala Studios (Battletoads), Disney Illusion Island's visuals are brimming with color. In fact, the Nintendo eShop listing states that you can "?be a part of an authentic Mickey cartoon." With four-player co-op, you can bring friends and family to an island that has running, swimming, swinging, and jumping platform action along with bosses to defe?at and puzzles to solve. There are also "hidden secrets" to find along the way.

[caption id="attachment_387560" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Image via Capcom[/caption]

Exoprimal (PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC)

Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Capcom
Price: $59.99
Release Date: July 13
Trailer

Sometimes it's cool to mix two unlikely things together. Pineapple and pizza, carrots and peanut butter, and fries with gravy are all examples of this. That's also the case with Exoprimal as it features mechs fighting massive waves of dinosaurs. The mixture perhaps shouldn't work, but the intense action of gunfire and high maneuverability of the mechs seem to work well against the rampaging dinos. There are three classes to consider as well, adding more depth to the seemingly simple gameplay. The game's coming to Xbox Game Pass, so hopefully, you can team ?up with your Xbox b??uddies and succeed.

[caption id="attachment_387675" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Image via Netflix[/caption]

Oxenfree II: Lost Signals (Switch, PS4, PS5, PC, Netflix)

Publisher: Netflix
Developer: Night School Studio
Price: $19.99
Release Date: July 12
Trailer

One of the most anticipated July 2023 games in the indie scene is Oxenfree II: Lost Signals. In this sci-fi follow-up, you will meet and shape the stories of those around the protagonist Riley. "Your choices impact who Riley becomes, your relationships, and the story options available to you at every turn," says Netflix on the game's Steam page.

Thankfully, for myself and others, you don't need to play the ori??ginal to understand the sequel. However, Netflix suggests you'll be able to "dive deeper by playing the original." You'll explore the town of Camena, will discover the strange source of radio signal disturbances, and will try to thwart the Parentage from making a new portal. It sounds like an exciting, narrative adventure full of danger and mystery.

[caption id="attachment_387677" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Image via Nintendo[/caption]

Pikmin 4 (Switch)

Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo
Price: $59.99
Release Date: July 21
Trailer

The long-awaited Pikmin 4 finally touches down on Switch systems next month. In this adventure, you'll be creating your own explorer and, with the help of the Pikmin, rescue others like yourself. The unique spin on this sequel sees players explore a world of huge household items. Plants, benches, binoculars, you name it. You'll be collecting treasures and taking them to your ship as you solve environmental puzzles and have the Pikmin escort your objects sa?fety.

The new ice Pikmin freeze enemies and immobilize them quickly. There's also a space dog named Oatchi who can take out obstacles in your way. It's not my personal cup of tea, but hopefully, the long wait for Pikmin 4 wil?l be worth it for fans. Let's gather in the "Forest of?? Hope."

[caption id="attachment_387678" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Image via Gearbox Publishing[/caption]

Remnant 2 (PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC)

Publisher: Gunfire Games
Developer: Gearbox Publishing
Price: $49.99
Release Date: July 25
Trailer

Remnant: From the Ashes kicked ass when it released in 2019. The follow-up is hoping to continue the excellent third-person shooting gameplay. Each biome requires different gear and weapons as you approach "cunning enemies and large-scale boss battles," according to the game's Steam page. The sequel touts "endless replayability" as there are branching quest lines, lots of crafting options, and like many other live service titles, awesome loot. Gearbox Publishing says that "playthroughs will feel challenging, varied, and rewarding as players succeed against unrelenting odds." Hopefully, it wi??ll live up to the fantastic first game when ??it releases in July.

[caption id="attachment_387679" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Image via Thunderful Publishing[/caption]

Honorable Mentions

• Atelier Marie Remake: The Alchemist of Salburg (PS4, PS5, Switch, PC) - July 13
• Jagged Alliance 3 (PC) - July 14
• My Friendly Neighborhood (PC) - July 18
• Viewfinder (PS4, PS5, PC) - July 18
• Punch Club 2: Fast Forward (PS3, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, PC)  - July 20
• The Expanse: A Telltale Series Episode 1 (PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC via Epic Games Store) - July 27

The post Most anticipated game releases – July 2023 appeared first on Destructoid.

Do a wall-jump, Mickey

Mickey, Minnie, Donald, and Goofy are setting off on a new adventure for the Nintendo Switch. Disney Illusion Island is a new co-op platformer for Nintendo Sw?itch, ??starring the Disney pals and arriving sometime in 2023.

Revealed during the Disney and Marvel Games Showcase as part of D23 Expo, Disney Illusion Island looks to ??be a 2D platformer where players can opt to play as Mickey, Minnie, Donald, or Goofy.

The art style is the same as the current run of Mickey's animated offerings. But the gameplay seems similar to something like New Super Mario Bros., in the way it has four players naviga??ting the screen tog??ether.

Here's the trailer:

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=pM_PCKwC484

The plot seems to ??follow the Disney pals helping out a group of adorable furballs who need some help. The team? will need to unlock special abilities, solve puzzles, and take on bosses to save the island of Monoth. By retrieving all the books from all the biomes, they can save the day. And maybe run into some cartoon-y hijinks along the way.

Co-op platforming adventures

Disney Illusion Island is in development at Dlala Studios, whose previous work includes the 2020 Battletoads reboot. Although that got some mixed reception, I'm actually pretty interested in Disney Illusion Island.

The newer art style of Mickey, Minnie, and the gang has grown on me. Though that's probably due in part to some clips making the rounds on social media.

And?? a chill, family-friendly co-op platformer seems like a decent time too. I could see?? this being an obvious pick-up for Switch owners with one kids.

As it is now, we'll see more of what Disney and Dlala have in store sometime in the future. Disney Illusion Island is set for Nintendo Switch in 2023.

The post Disney Illusion Island is a co-op platformer with Mickey and pa??ls appeared first on Destructoid.