Epic Mickey Rebrushed is a much improved platformer

When Epic Mickey was originally released in 2010, it marked something of a bold new direction for Disney’s most beloved mascot.

Developed by Junction Point, the studio run by Deus Ex director Warren Spector, Epic Mickey game was a darker look at the history of Walt Disney, a peek beyond the company’s celebrated IP and a story that focused more on its forgotten creations.

While the game was praised by many for its unique tone and its willingness to explore the less glamorous side of Disney, its Wii exclusivity led to a number of issues with camera and controls that kept it from being considered a true must-have.

Fast forward nearly a decade and a half and Epic Mickey is back. Junction Point’s closure in 2013 means this remake of the original game is handled by Purple Lamp, an Austrian studio best known for SpongeBob games up until now.

By opting to focus mainly on the issues of the original release rather than completely overhauling everything, the studio has delivered a version of Epic Mickey that offers a far less frustrating experience, allowing its design to finally take centre stage.

If it passed you by the first time around, Epic Mickey sees the titular mouse exploring a special world created by the sorcerer Yen Sid for all of Walt Disney’s forgotten creations to live in.

When Mickey messes around in Yen Sid’s workshop, he accidentally spills magic paint thinner on the sorcerer’s model of this world, turning it into a grim and grotesque environment called the Wasteland.

It’s up to Mickey to enter the Wasteland and use Yen Sid’s magical paintbrush to right his wrongs and restore the world to something a bit more appealing for the retired Disney characters.

While there he also has to deal with the Blot (an evil creature created by Mickey’s brush) as well as Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a character who Disney had just regained the rights to when the game was originally in development on Wii.

Oswald was one of Walt Disney’s early creations, and when Universal muscled away the