Review: Disney Illusion Island’s Characters Carry the Game

It’s great to have more cooperative action games. It’s a space begging for more titles that could genuinely be challenging, but are also open to allowing more experienced players and newcomers of any age to enjoy an adventure together. We saw this with the great Rayman Origins and Nintendo titles like New Super Mario Bros. Wii or Kirby Star Allies. Disney Illusion Island offers its own approach to the idea in a charming way with charismatic characters. While it can be quite a challenge and fun, certain design elements keep parts of the adventure from being as memorable as its contemporaries.

Mickey, Minnie, Donald, and Goofy all find themselves lured to a mysterious picnic as Disney Illusion Island. Except there isn’t one. Rather Toku, leader of the Hokuns, summoned them all there to be their heroes and recover three missing tomes taken from Monoth’s library. The thieves spirited them away to the regions of Astrono, Gizmopolis, and Pavonia. The quartet, desiring to become actual heroes after their adventures where they played at them, agree to retrieve the missing books. So, we venture off alongside them to explore a massive, 2D map with eventually seven sorts of abilities.

It’s that story and the way in which both new and classic characters are depicted that make Disney Illusion Island so much fun. Mickey, Minnie, Donald, and Goofy feature personalities similar to their more modern cartoon depictions, which means some traits are a little more exaggerated than usual. NPCs are quite funny, from the gradually growing more exhausted abilities inventory Mazzy to the mayor in one region who just wanted to have a “hide and seek day” festival to give him some me-time from his five very energetic and talkative kids. It extends to the bosses as well. However, it’s also handled in such a way that it is friendly for players of all ages. So like cartoons with well-written scripts, it would appeal to younger kids and the adults playing alongside them.

So Disney Illusion Island is a platformer with some Metroidvania elements. However, its gimmick means that it can feel like a muscle memory action game more so than either other genre. You can’t attack enemies. There’s not even a way to directly damage bosses. Instead, it’s all about avoidance. You need to find a way to jump, and later double jump, swing, or glide, over these moving, changing, and shooting hazards. This gradually scales in difficulty as you proceed through later areas. It’s fine, but it gradually gets a bit taxing and frustrating.

Especially if there’s a cheap shot from a new enemy you haven’t encountered before or that you didn’t notice, considering you might have the invincibility option off and only three hearts. There were certain later spaces where the frequency of opponents, moving platforms, and disappearing jump pads meant I just wasn’t going to potentially lose all my health on a small space and went for that extra protection to get through that space. While this is a colorful “kids” game, it can demand perfection sometimes!

The boss fights you face basically take that and build on making sure you remember critical movements when jumping around a small space. These gradually build in intensity. Because while the boss itself won’t be attacking, they’ll summon new enemies and hazards to appear in the area, and you’ll be expected to parkour around these new configurations to reach the specific places or use certain abilities to cause outside forces to damage them.

It does help that yes, you are gradually earning more abilities. You get a jump extension that isn’t quite a double jump right away. A grappling hook comes up. There’s a glider that can be used for jumps or to ride air gusts higher up. It builds on abilities in a helpful way. People can head to the accessibility options to adjust how many hearts you have at any time, even turning on invincibility if you’d prefer. You can also add more or fewer people to a save whenever you hop into it, in case you want someone around to assist with reaching areas or getting hearts.

What bothered me a bit is it didn’t feel like the character uniqueness and personality didn’t extend to the areas. Yes, Disney Illusion Island is this colorful and vibrant game. There are different biomes to explore. The thing is that the accents that set them apart aren’t all that detailed or distinctive. Sure, you have the “nature,” “industrial,” and “space” ones, which might have some plants, machines, or star decorations and gimmicks. But it isn’t like a Shantae, Rayman, or Castlevania game where you can really revel in how different each one feels and special spaces are. Everything is so similar that I felt it bleed into each other. And since I was constantly jumping along to where the flag said to go next, it never really captivated me.

I think another part of that has to do with other design choices. For example, there are a minimal number of fast travel points. But fortunately, they only really tend to come up when you happen to need to suddenly teleport across the map to a past area. Since there weren’t any collectibles the game made me care about acquiring, I only needed to backtrack (something that happens surprisingly regularly) when the the story demanded it.

Also, while I get the zoomed-out perspective would be necessary for a game with more players, it can make it difficult to appreciate any special touches that are there. Sure, it makes platforming easier since you can plot out your jumps, but it means your character is quite small and it’s easier to overlook enemies. This also means there’s a lot of empty space in every “screen” you explore. I kept feeling like that could have been put to better use.

Disney Illusion Island is a game where I can remember specific quips from characters and story beats, but actual adventuring runs together. It entertaining and well-paced, but doesn’t stick with me in the way something like Rayman Origins or Kirby Star Allies did. It is clever in its way though, and someone who runs through it alone or with friends will definitely have a pleasant time being a “hero” with Mickey and his friends. Especially since it’s more challenging than I expected in a good way, even if some enemies do get in some cheap hits in certain situations.

Disney Illusion Island will come to the Nintendo Switch on July 28, 2023.

---