My first Metroidvania was Super Metroid, and incidentally, it's also still my favorite. As a seven year old, I had never known true terror before being trapped in Kraid’s lair as the massive beast emerged from the floor beneath me. The tone and atmosphere influenced so much of my taste, and the music is seared into my memory. I learned so many fundamentals from Super Metroid that I’ve been able to build upon throughout my game-playing career, and I don’t know if I would have developed such a passion for games had I not had such a formative experience playing Super Metroid.
But, also, Super Metroid makes me feel like shit. I started playing it when I was seven and didn’t actually finish it until I was a teenager because parts of that game are almost impossible. To this day I still struggle jumping out of the quicksand in Miridia and escaping through the one-block wide hole in the ceiling. I get just as mad trying to make that jump now as I did when I was a little kid. I also get just as lost. Despite completing the game at least a dozen times over the years, there's still times where I end up wandering around without a clue of where I'm supposed to go next. I still use a guide to play Super Metroid all these years later, and it makes me think I must be a moron.
A lot of people don't like Metroidvanias, and I bet it's because they tried Super Metroid when they were a kid and it kicked their ass. Over the years the genre has stuck pretty closely to the level of challenge that Super Metroid established. Hollow Knight, Ori, and Cave Story are all considered Metroidvania masterpieces, but they're all incredibly mechanically demanding and somewhat unapproachable.
Kids and other inexperienced players deserve an intro to Metroidvanias that won’t beat them to a pulp, which is why I’m so excited about . I spent some time with Dlala’s new co-op platformer at Summer Games Fest’s Play Days event last weekend, and I came away thinking that it’s the kind of game we’ve always needed, but for whatever reason have never had before. Disney Illusion Island’s interconnected world and freedom of exploration has the power tꦉo instill the s🦹ame love for Metroidvanias as Super Metroid did for me, without making you feel like you suck at video games.
As you might imagine Disney Illusion Island isn’t pure Metroidvania. In fact, the developers at Dlala prefer the term Mickeyvania (and they’d really like it if we could all make that a thing). Its familiar elements are its big, continuous map, and its﷽ item-based progression and gating. There’s lots of exploration, lots of power-ups, and lots of backtracking to reach new areas that were previously inaccessi🐬ble.
What it doesn’🌸t have is any kind of combat. Lead designer Grant Allen explained that early in de📖velopment the team had a white board covered in post-it notes labeled with all the design elements they needed to tackle, and as they checked things off their list one by one, the post-it labeled ‘combat’ eventually became one of the last ones remaining. Upon reflection, they determined that the only reason they even wanted to include combat was because it’s a staple of the genre. They agreed that it wasn’t actually a good fit for the game, so Disney Illusion Island doesn’t have any combat.
The game is entirely built around strong platforming and the fluidity of movement. The developers envisioned each of the the Fab Four as a toy: Mickey is a bouncing ball, Donald is a sl𒉰ingshot, Goofy is a slinky, and Minnie is a paper airplane. Those objects inform each of their animations and the energy with which they move around the world. They all have the same abilities and earn the same upgrades throughout the game, but their personalities are expressed through their movement, and it really brings these familiar characters to life.
Allen and I ran through a few different biomes while we chatted about the development process, and I was struck by how much fun it was to just run around together. I n🎐ever looked at the map and I didn’t know where we were going - luckily, Allen did - but I had a ꦆgreat time just running, wall-jumping, and platforming around the world while we looked for switches to activate and keys to collect. I could have wandered Illusion Island for hours without any direction or fear of failure, just enjoying how tight the platforming is and how interesting the world is to explore.
Approachability was built into the foundation of Disney Illusion Island. There’s a huge menu of customization features that will let you adjust things like the number of hits you can and the number of jumps you have. Eaཧch player gets to customize the game their own way, so the amount of challenge can scale up and down for everyone, even when they’re playing together.
As a certified Disney Adult I have a lot of reasons to look forward to D𓃲isney Illusion Island, but as an elder gamer I also care a lot about the kinds of gaming experiences kids are exposed to today. Illusion Island is an amazing gateway into hardcore Metroidvanias like Metroid and Hollow Knight, and I wish I had had this kind of onramp when I was growing up, instead of blowing my thumbs out while trying to spin jump out of quicksand. Disney Illusion Island is coming exclusively to Nintendo Switch on July 28.