Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed brings Warren Spector's platformer to PC for the first time
With modern graphics and controls
Epic Mickey, Warren Spector's action-platforming love letter to early period Disney, is heading to PC more than a decade after its original Wii exclusive release. It'll arrive as Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed, a "remake" with modern graphics and controls.
Here's the trailer, which recreates the original opening cinematic from the game:
Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed | Announcement Trailer
Epic Mickey sucks its titular character into the Wasteland, a crumbing world of forgotten Disney characters like Oswald The Lucky Rabbit. Players are armed with a magic paintbrush that can change the environment, spewing out paint to rebuild parts of the world or turn enemies into allies, or spewing out paint thinner which destroys the world and wipes away enemies entirely. The story, world and music then change and adapt based on your playstyle, giving you character upgrades that fit your style, and a more downbeat soundtrack if you were a world-erasing fiend.
Aside from remade art, and improved controls, Rebrushed will expand on Mickey's platforming moveset, adding a "dash, ground pound and sprinting", according to its Steam page. The remake is being handled by Purple Lamp, the studio behind recent Spongebob Squarepants remakes like Battle For Bikini Bottom Rehydrated.
Epic Mickey has a mixed reputation, for fair and I think unfair reasons. Some of the criticism of it is directed towards lackluster platforming and camera problems, which is legitimate, and the kind of thing a remake can hopefully resolve. At least some of the criticism stems from people wanting Warren Spector to go make something more akin to Deus Ex instead of a family-friendly Wii platformer, however.
Spector summarised that response in an interview with RPS in 2013 as, "'What do you mean you’re not making a game about a guy wearing a trench coat and sunglasses and wearing a gun? Go back and make the kind of games you always used to make.'" He was personally satisfied by the project, however.
"A lot more people saw eye-to-eye with the vision than didn’t. Mickey 1 is the best-selling game I’ve ever worked on in my life. Mickey 2 [released 2012] is the second-best-selling game I’ve ever worked on in my life," said Spector. "I have more fan mail and more heartfelt fan mail from more people of different genders and ages than I’ve received for every other game I’ve worked on combined. Disney fans loved the games, and there are a lot more Disney fans than you might think. So on that level, from a commercial standpoint, I don’t consider them failures."
Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed doesn't have a release date yet but is aiming for 2024.