Disney Illusion Island

Genre: Metroidvania

Players: 1-4 Co-Op (Local)

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Review:

Disney Illusion Island is a family-friendly Metroidvania released in 2023 on Nintendo Switch and ported in 2025 to PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. This game has players taking the role of Mickey, Minnie, Donald, or Goofy as they arrive at a strange and magical island where they’re asked to retrieve three stolen magical books purportedly needed to restore peace to the island.

It’s not very inspired, as stories go, but thankfully it’s given a good amount of charm and humor with some clever writing and solid voice acting from long-running Mickey franchise voice actors Bret Iwan, Kaitlyn Robrock, Tony Anselmo, and Bill Farmer, along with some excellent additional voice work from veterans like Corey Burton.

The rest of the presentation is very good as well, though perhaps divisive. The simplified designs used for the characters are closer to more recent interpretations of the characters like The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse, rather than the traditional style these characters are usually depicted with. What’s more, Disney Illusion Island doesn’t seem interested in referencing any of these characters’ long histories – pretty much all of the enemies and characters they interact with are all-new. As a result, long-time fans of these characters may be left feeling cold with this modern take on the Mickey Mouse franchise.

However, putting aside the stylistic choices, what we have here are some wonderful fluidly-animated 2D characters in an imaginative, colorful 2D world. This game’s creators stated that they took inspiration from Rayman Legends, and it shows… though I would still say Rayman is still more fluid and visually-striking. These visuals are backed by an excellent orchestral soundtrack that doesn’t always seem to fit the mood of the current locale, but is nevertheless well-crafted.

For the gameplay, this game’s title evokes the classic Mickey Mouse games Castle of Illusion and World of Illusion, and while there are elements that hearken back to those games, Illusion Island is largely its own animal. In this case, that animal is a platforming-focused Metroidvania, where players evade enemies rather than attack them, and even boss battles tend to take the form of platforming and hitting switches rather than directly confronting the enemy.

With Platforming being such a strong focus, you would hope that it’s some top-notch Platforming, and as it happens the platforming in Disney Illusion Island is… fine. It’s not especially well-crafted, I even noticed some input delay, and there’s not much in the way of originality here, but what’s here works well enough.

I think the Metroidvania elements actually fare a bit worse. While collectables litter the world, there’s little joy of discovery at finding them, and as a result there’s little drive to explore here. Actual meaningful upgrades that improve your abilities are parceled out somewhat sparingly too, and while you’ll certainly return to areas with new abilities that allow you to reach previously-inaccessible places, it feels like mostly the Metroidvania elements just make for tedious backtracking rather than anything that greatly adds to the gameplay.

Having said all of that, Disney Illusion Island is still a polished game with decent core gameplay, and players who enjoy Platformers will likely still find this to be enjoyable, especially younger and more casual players who are looking for something less-challenging, and in particular those who are a fan of Mickey and his friends. However, I think most players are better off with one of the numerous other better Metroidvania games on the Nintendo Switch, or one of the various better platformers, including the aforementioned Rayman Legends.

tl;dr – Disney Illusion Island is a family-friendly Metroidvania starring Mickey Mouse, Minnie, Donald, and Goofy as they search an island for missing magical books. The core gameplay here is polished and enjoyable, but doesn’t do anything special, and this game doesn’t make very good use of its Metroidvania mechanics. If you’re looking for an enjoyable Platformer for younger kids this may be worth a look, but most players will find they have better options on Nintendo Switch.

Grade: B-

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