If Mario is gaming’s longest-serving star, Mickey Mouse isn’t far behind, as anyone who remembers Castle of Illusion from the Sega Megadrive will know.
Of course, Mickey’s games haven’t always set the same high bar for quality, but that’s not a problem for Disney’s Illusion Island, a rare exclusive for Nintendo Switch. Starring Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy, it’s a brilliant, inventive 2D platformer with a hint of indie favourites like Hollow Knight or Ori and the Will of the Wisps. Come for the lovely, hand-painted graphics, and stay for the equally gorgeous gameplay.
The storyline’s more a hanger for an eccentric world than something you should take too seriously. The four friends find themselves lured to a mysterious island, where thieves have stolen three crucially important magical books, throwing its strange civilization into chaos. Our heroes need to travel around a crazy 2D kingdom, completing missions that will bring them one step closer to tracking down the books, and returning them to their rightful places.
That means plenty of running, jumping and dodging enemies, navigating around traps and obstacles in a sequence of well-timed leaps. It also means an awful lot of fetching items for one character, delivering them to another, or clearing blockages and pressing switches. The locals make up in their zeal for delegation what they lack in a strong work ethic.
The real trick, however, is that there are no levels to complete as such, just one massive 2D world that sprawls in all directions. You can’t reach every area at first. Instead, you need to wait until a helpful dragon kits you out with the gear you need to jump from wall to wall, crash through platforms, swing across chasms, float and glide through the air or dive into the watery depths. Cleverly, each hero gets their own variation on each gadget, enabling them to reach new areas in their own distinctive style. With Goofy, it’s all food-related, while Donald gets an oddball range of cranky gizmos that seem designed to aggravate his notorious temper.
Older gamers might recognise this as a ‘metroidvania’ – a game where you keep moving between the same areas to re-explore them with new equipment and open up new regions to discover. These games can be confusing or tricky for less experienced players, but Illusion Island makes things nice and easy. Checkpoints are frequent and your goals are clearly labelled on a map, even if you have to find your own way through some awkward layouts. There are some challenging platform sections asking you to mix up your different abilities, and the odd tough boss battle as you go. Yet there’s nothing really painful that’s going to keep you blocked for hour after hour,
Island of adventure
If you can see the influence of Mario and Nintendo’s Metroid games, Illusion Island is even more indebted to Ubisoft’s underrated Rayman series, not least in the beautiful, nostalgic cartoon visuals and the elegant, flowing movement of the leads.
Once you’ve got to grips with all the gizmos, jumping, gliding, swinging and smashing, its world is a joy. You can also see the Rayman in the imaginative design of the world, where a new contraption suddenly opens up new doors, or what looks like a simple platforming challenge turns out to be a sneaky puzzle. There are even some ingenious sections where one huge area shifts position at the click of a switch, pushing you to find new ways to get around it.
And we haven’t even got to the best bit. This is a fantastic platformer for solo players, but even better if you play it co-op, with up to four players working together as the four heroes. You can give individual players assists or extra health to make the action less challenging, and there are even some clever multiplayer abilities that allow more skilful players to help their hopeless teammates along. All that action on one screen can be confusing, but don’t worry; if your platforming powers are weak and rusty, your kids can carry you through.
There are some minor weaknesses, like the lengthy, sometimes tiresome cut-scenes and the fact that you can’t drop in and out of multiplayer, yet they’re really not a big deal. And while you could whip through the game in a weekend, the world’s crammed with hidden items and Disney memorabilia that will take you much, much longer to collect. It says a lot about Illusion Island that all this exploration never seems a chore. Stuck inside with the kids for another rainy day? This is the escape you’re looking for.
