One of my mistakes in 2025 was that I bought too many games. The only solution is to keep clearing the backlog, by going through the quicker ones first. Gotta start somewhere!
Disney Illusion Island, developed by Dlala Studios, was first released on the Nintendo Switch on July 28th, 2023. It was then released to other platforms (PS5, PC, Xbox) on May 30th, 2025. I found the Switch version in the wild, it looked fun, and there I was, with one more game. I’m incorrigible. But hey, it’s Disney and it’s got a cool art style, so why not. The game’s name is a reference to Mickey Mouse’s Castle of Illusion on SEGA systems and its follow-ups. But this time, we can play as Mickey, Minnie, Donald or Goofy – or up to all four at once!
Heroes Wanted
Our game begins as Mickey makes his way to a picnic destination on an island, indicated by a map sent by Minnie. Or so he thinks. After he’s found the spot, he’s joined by Minnie, who says HE sent her a map to this spot. Donald and Goofy, who were also sent maps, show up. All four are puzzled, so they investigate a twinkling sound coming from a nearby area.
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Ah yes! Toku, the benevolent quest giver! Disregard the
eye twitch, totally normal benevolent response to annoyance. |
They trace the sound to a red bush, and after crossing it they find a large library with an open bookcase. They are greeted by furred creatures known as the Hokuns and their leader, Toku, who welcomes them to the magical world of Monoth. Toku is the one who sent the maps, as he needs their help. Donald is enraged to find out there won’t be a picnic, but the team stays and listens. Toku explains that the three magical tomes of their bookcase have gone missing, stolen by three thieves inhabiting the three biomes of Monoth, and this could endanger their world. The Hokun doesn’t seem to know that the Mickey cartoons are in-universe fictions, in which the group only pretends to be heroes – but Mickey and his friends agree to try and be real heroes for once.
This intro is great. Toku losing patience over Donald and Goofy’s silliness is hilarious. But there’s something… dubious about the little guy. The way he reacts feels like he’s hiding something. Or that he’s not as benevolent as he appears. (Honestly, that’s an obvious twist. It’s more fun to play this story having seen through the façade, and just waiting for the reveal to drop!)
Mickey, Minnie and Goofy agree instantly. Donald doesn’t and is ready to leave, but he returns at the promise of a reward. They are given magic words to utter when the book thieves are dazed, which will turn the thieves to stone, and they are told to look for the first book in the western region.
An Adventure Across Realms
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Multiplayer Metroidvania, on its own, is already a concept I
have seldom seen before, if at all. |
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The tone is set when the first "enemy" you properly encounter
has spikes all over its body. Better not stomp that. |
As the gameplay quickly shows, this isn’t a platformer, but a Metroidvania. And it’s about as classic an example as can be, with just a few things setting it apart. As you progress, you’ll find places you cannot access yet; and down the line, you’ll gain abilities that allow you to reach those previously inaccessible areas and find more stuff. Classic gameplay, really.
However: Mickey and his friends never gain an ability that allows them to harm an enemy directly. This Metroidvania is as close to pacifist as it can be. The bosses need to be harmed, but that’s done through platforming puzzles that make heavy items fall on their heads. Outside of that? You’re defenseless against every little threat in your way. I’ve tried; even abilities that could be used offensively (like the floor-breaking stomp) won’t work. The skills you gain help reach new places, and that’s it.
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Zoom in. I swear, Mickey has way too much fun breaking
through the barrier floors. |
The first skill gained allows our heroes to “double jump” (though the second jump is more like a short boost forward than upwards). Then, they learn to wall jump. After that, they gain the tools to smash through weak floors. Further away, they become able to grapple hanging chandeliers to swing around. Later, they obtain gliders to float upward wind streams. And so on! These upgrades are received from a crocodilian inventor who goes by Mazzy, who is met in specific areas. The fun part is that, for every upgrade, each character gets a different item that will achieve the same goal. And every time, Donald gets the suckiest item of the four.
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| Admirable alliteration, my alligator-ascendant ally! |
Design-wise, I love that detail – not that Donald gets the short end of the stick, but rather, that the developers at Dlala went through the trouble of not just having four different characters, but also have them use different tools each… And yet, they all play the same, without any differences physics-wise. I can’t begin to imagine the amount of work this must have required. It helps give the game its own feel and showcase its creativity. I love it.
Collect-A-Go-Go
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Looking for Tokuns? Follow the Glimts!
That sentence makes no sense without context. |
If you don’t go around looking for upgrades to weapons, then what exactly can you explore for? Simple: Collectibles, collectibles, collectibles! Of course, since this is a Metroidvania, many of these are stuck in areas you can’t explore yet at the start of the game, and you’ll be encouraged to return later to hunt them down.
The first collectible is Tokuns, cards that make up the Tokupedia of Monoth’s inhabitants. Each card has a quick bit of info about each character, with a few that can only be obtained from fulfilling additional quests, some of which open after the story has been finished.
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A lot of collectibles are hidden in secret areas denoted by a
chip in an element of the décor. And once you've collected the
items there, a green bug appears on that element, so you know
it's done and collected. |
The second is Glimts, which aren’t in-game currency but are scattered as if they were! Always found in packs of three, these items are used to unlock extra worldbuilding information in the Collections menu; collecting enough Glints unlocks parts of images of this world’s biomes, and each completed picture grants Mickey and his friends an extra heart for their health bar.
Next up is Memorabilia; these items are tidbits of Mickey Mouse’s animated history, with three items of Memorabilia for each cartoon represented here. Much like Tokuns, these tend to be hidden in areas off the beaten path, inaccessible until the correct ability has been obtained.
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| Ta-daah! ...Donald, you didn't even smile! |
The last major “collectible”, so to speak, is Hidden Mickeys. It’s a Disneyland tradition to hide the silhouette of Mickey’s head and ears in various places so that parkgoers can have fun looking for them. This game adapts the concept through a side-quest where Mickey and Co. are given a camera and are told to be on the lookout for the symbol, which will pop up. A lot. When the heroes are near one, an indicator will appear over the player character’s head; reach the Mickey, press A, and the heroes will pose for the picture!
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The postgame quest "Mystery in Monoth" utilizes backgrounds
in a way that I think is very clever. |
The map in the Pause menu can toggle all of these on or off for ease of research; also, in late-game you gain the ability to teleport to any checkpoint you’ve found, making the hunt for everything less tedious.
Still itching for more? A few side-quests open after completion of the story. You can help an investigative reporter dolphin with cases scattered at the four corners of the map, solving mysteries by looking for background elements. There are also time-based races across specific areas of the map.
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| I can smell the treasure from here! It smells like... fruit??? |
The most interesting bonus, however, was added in a 2025 update. The team meets Uncle Scrooge, who hires them to dig the depths of Monoth for treasure. This part dips into Roguelite territory. You dig for several floors, collect treasures, then use Scrooge’s hat-shaped teleporter to return to the surface. The money obtained is spent at Scrooge’s shop, increasing the time limit or boosting the power of the shovel so it can break harder rocks. Scrooge has missions for the team, and you can also buy upgrades to increase the cash reward of those missions. The old duck is as much a miser as ever, huh?
True Heroes
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You are goikng down, you thief who seems to be...
protecting the Tome of Knowledge with her life?? |
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All bosses are fought through platform puzzles, and they make
the battlefield tougher to navigate after every hit they take. |
Mickey and his team find and defeat the book thieves, turning them to stone with Toku’s spell. They eventually find a giant, heroic portrait of the first thief they battled. They later learn that those thieves weren’t thieves at all, but the original heroes of Monoth, who were guarding the books. Toku is working for a fourth hero, Greyzar, who turned evil in a quest for ultimate knowledge. Realizing how badly they screwed up, Mickey, Minnie, Goofy and Donald decide to set things right.
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Just because we are on a quest to correct our mistakes, doesn't
mean we can't stop for a Tokun or two on the way. |
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I know they are pretty, but please do not approach the
magenta death rays. |
They reverse the magic spell, free the heroes from petrification, and rally them to fight Greyzar. The rogue hero turns out to be… Mazzy, the inventor who’s been supplying all the upgrades? He is fought in a pocket dimension in which he had been imprisoned. What Mickey and Co. really do is knock away the hat on Greyzar’s head, which had brainwashed him. The three-eyed croc had just enough of himself remaining to send a part of the real him to Monoth to help new heroes. While Greyzar exits the pocket dimension to make amends for his unwilling acts of evil, the Disney heroes confront the true force of evil: Toku, to nobody’s surprise, who was the one to brainwash the inventor in the first place.
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| Making a note here to never piss Minnie off. |
But we don’t get to fight him; Minnie just punts him away. With the spells broken and Greyzar freed, the pocket dimension falls apart. Mickey’s team makes a run for it, escaping just in time and trapping Toku back there with a horde of Hokuns very angry at their boss. Like Scar with the hyenas. The mice and their friends are rewarded handsomely for their efforts, even getting the picnic they had been promised.
Bit of a convoluted plot, but I like it just fine.
Final Words
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Mickey using a pencil to cling to walls makes so much
sense, cartoon-wise. |
Oh, this one’s fun. I wasn’t too sure just how much value I could find out of a Metroidvania with no offensive skills, but I was pleasantly surprised. This game compensates through its collectibles, a great incentive to be visiting that world for a while. With the 2550 Glimts to collect, the Tokuns, the Memorabilia, the Hidden Mickeys, and the side-quests on top of everything else, there’s a lot to keep a player busy.
The story mode will make you visit most of the map, setting aside secondary paths and areas only accessible after picking up the necessary skill. I do like that despite their different designs (and items serving for abilities), the four playable characters are identical when it comes to physics; the only difference is their sound effects.
Instead of having a character be easier or harder to use, the game favors dynamic difficulty by letting each player (multiplayer is available, and up to four players can explore Monoth together) choose how many hearts of health you want your character to have when beginning to play. You can play a no-death mode where the characters are impervious, or start with 1, 2 or 3 hearts. You will get more as you progress through the game, but fewer hearts means lower chances of survival as threats pile up. For the true daredevils, an extra-hard mode is unlocked after the main quest, in which the game must be beaten without ever taking damage.
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| The spikes do get more and more frequent past a point. |
Good luck for that last one; when I started playing it, I thought the game was on the easy side, almost like the perfect entry into the Metroidvania genre for a beginner. Later portions shed that impression; though the game never becomes ungodly hard, it certainly ramps up the difficulty a decent bit.
Aside from that final death mode, though, the game is very forgiving. The map is generous on checkpoints, so deaths don’t set you back by much. Even bosses are split into phases; you restart at the current phase if you die. Some collectibles are a bit of a pain to find, but that comes with the territory. I guess I would have preferred some combat options because enemies later in the game can be very annoying, but that’s not the tone the game was going for.
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The Hidden Mickeys are undoubtedly the trickiest
collectible to find. But the photos are really fun to see. |
The music’s good, but what’s best is, without a doubt, the art style. This game is beautiful. It’s got the flair of 2D cartoons, and there are lots of detail to all the sprites. Showing off the animation was the reason why every playable character gets different “items” to serve as their platforming abilities. The backgrounds always have something to look at, even in the empty spaces. And if that doesn’t wow you, the game has over 30 minutes of fully animated cutscenes in a style somewhere between the old classics and the more modern Mickey shorts.
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Once again, Donald gets the worst item. It's never easy for
the duck, is it. |
And of course, I greatly enjoyed the story. It takes the classic set-up of a video game quest, cracks meta jokes about it, and adds the sarcastic cynicism of Donald and the wide-eyed dumbness of Goofy. With the tone the plot was going for, it made sense for Toku to be easy to tell as the villain, and to realize our heroes are doing bad deeds for him. In a story like this, there is greater interest not in keeping it a secret to the audience, but making them wonder how long it will take for the heroes to figure it out. And that’s done well here, with enough crumbs to let us see them putting the pieces together. So damn fun, and the humor’s great.
Yeah, fun one! That’s it for today, so… see you soon for something else I guess.
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