Disney Epic Mickey's E3 demo was split up into three areas. The first part was the quest section of the game, where you walk around environments solving puzzles and helping out the denizens of different locations. The location shown was Ventureland, the game's take on the popular Disney theme park section Adventureland. A mess of Peter Pan pirates populate the gloomy, dark area, and you wind up talking to Smee, Hook's only hand man (I can't take credit for the joke; the game actually makes it).

Mickey and Gus talk in jibberish sounds in these concept art-inspired cut scenes

Smee tells you that Hook has gone off the deep end and sent some of his crew to Skull Island where they were turned into evil Splatters. Mickey and his companion Gremlin Gus, who is from an old Disney cartoon, have to now find a way to Skull Island. Shortly after this, you talk to another pirate who says he'll give you a compass if you find his lost treasure.

To get to this treasure, you have to climb a series of platforms, some of which are invisible. You can spray them with paint to make them visible. This introduces the game's main mechanic: paint. You can resurrect areas by spraying them with paint, or destroy them by spraying them with thinner. It controls very easily, as a button on the Nunchuk represents one, and a button on the Wii Remote represents the other. The things you can interact with this way are brightly colored compared to the rest of the environment, which makes it easy to spot what you can interact with. You can even melt other cartoon characters by spraying them with thinner.

After getting the pirate's treasure, you find out where to go. This leads you to the next style of the gameplay: the side-scrolling travel zones. These are based off of old Disney cartoons, and the one shown was from Steamboat Willie. Apparently there are two ways to go through these areas; there is a hard way that takes longer and features more unlockables, and an easy way that is quicker. The Steamboat Willie level was rather short, but the graphical style and environment was awesome.

The final part of the gameplay is the action areas, which seem to be the main aspect of the gameplay. Here, you went around an environment, in this case Skull Island, and solved puzzles, fought enemies, and saved the area. Your task in this level was to raise a ship and turn the pirates normal. You had to raise the ship by finding anchors throughout the level, most of which were obscured by environment hazards that had to be thinned out.

The enemies could either be defeated by being hit with thinner, or they could become your allies by hitting them with paint. Depending on how much of each you use, a little guardian will follow you. It could be a green blob who will randomly hit enemies with thinner, or a blue blob that uses paint. You can also pick up power-ups that will attack or distract the enemies in a different way. The TV set, shown in this level, will distract most enemies, since everyone loves watching old Disney cartoons.

Without paint and thinner, Mickey is kind of useless, which is unfortunate since you can run out of both liquids. Still, the mechanic is very cool, and the varied gameplay is fun. The camera was a bit of a problem in the demo, and while it could be centered with the press of a button, it was still janky at times.

From this early look, it looks like it will be good. All that we need to find out is if it will be great. We'll find out for sure when Disney Epic Mickey comes out this fall.