Review: Disney Illusion Island is a charming but basic family-friendly Metroidvania

videogameschronicle.com:

You don’t have to search too hard to find high quality Metroidvania games these days, but finding one that’s child-friendly is a much harder task.

Disney Illusion Island is an attempt to fill that niche, offering a more colourful take on the genre and including Mickey Mouse and his chums as playable characters.

The game sees Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy travelling to the island of Monoth, where they meet a little creature called Toku.

Toku is the leader of the Hokuns, and they want Mickey and pals to find the three mystical Tomes of Knowledge so they can be put on a giant magical bookshelf to protect the island.

Each Tome can be found in a different biome, and is being guarded by a different boss, so it’s up to the player to traverse the game’s sizeable map, defeat the bosses and recover each Tome.

This plot is told via a relatively lengthy cutscene with dialogue that feels a bit hit-and-miss. While it’s clearly aiming to be clever and self-referential, a number of the jokes fall flat, which ultimately set the tone for the rest of the game – at times you’ll be chuckling at funny lines, while other lines feel like they’re trying too hard and don’t land as a result.

Gameplay is mostly as you would expect from a Metroidvania title – your chosen character starts with a very basic set of abilities and over time they’ll earn new ones from Mazzy, an inventor who – in one of the game’s funnier recurring jokes – gets noticeably more exhausted every time they hand out new skills.

Notice: To display this embed please allow the use of Functional Cookies in Cookie Preferences.

These abilities are generally quite straightforward – there’s a double jump, a wall jump, a ground pound and the ability to swing on grapple hooks, glide and swim