When Disney closed its in-house game development and publishing division in 2016, one of the big casualties was an unannounced project created by indie studio Dlala. But now it looks like at least some form of the game that was canceled at the time is finally seeing the light of day.
Dlala’s first joint project with Disney was never officially announced. With his reboot of one of Disney’s biggest IPs, the four-player couch co-op platformer is an “episodic Metroidvania-style affair” with hand-drawn characters. I know that.And we know Dlala signed a $3.5 million deal to make it. But when Disney stopped publishing, Dlala’s game came together with Disney after his year and a half of work.
Dlala was able to keep some of the payments, but plans had to pivot very quickly to keep the studio viable in the long term. And he has found success through contributions to games such as Team17’s The Escapists, Modus’ Lost Words: Beyond the Page, and his recent project Battletoads.
But now Dlala is back in partnership with Disney for a game that has at least some of the DNA of the canceled 2016 game. We featured his Disney Illusion Island, which was unveiled today at the Disney and Marvel Games Showcase. Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Donald He is his 4-player co-op platformer featuring Duck.
Speaking to IGN, Luigi Priore, vice president of Disney, Pixar, and 20th Century Games, said that while Illusion Island is different from the game Dlala had to cancel years ago, it “does a lot of the basics. elements” remain the same. He says the original game didn’t have a name or story yet, and was primarily focused on the characters. But both games share his Dlala DNA of multiplayer co-op that was also present in Battletoads.
“Disney is in a different place now,” says Priore. “Is it the exact same game? No. Dara? Yes. Do they bring creativity to it? Yes. was [Senior VP, Walt Disney Games] Bringing in people like John Drake on the business development side, we already knew [Dlala CEO] A.J. [Grand-Scrutton] The team at Dlala and we knew they were doing a great job, so we wanted to start the project and work with them to create this new game. “
Disney Illusion Island is coming exclusively to Nintendo Switch later this year. For more information, you can read all the other announcements from today’s showcase in our News Roundup.
Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. you can find her on her twitter @duck valentine.
