When some sort of tragedy changes the world of Disney into a wasteland, it’s up to none other than Mickey Mouse to save the day. Armed with nothing more than a few paint brushes, Mickey is the only one who has the power to restore things to normal, while fighting the classic (but obscure) villain, the Phantom Blot, ensuring the future of this animated universe.

As you travel through the various worlds available in the game, you’ll visit areas that mimic the various worlds of Disney, even borrowing from the real world theme parks to create its settings. However, the premise of the game uses the notion of an altered world, so the places you’ll visit won’t necessarily be called the same thing and the areas you’ll need to fix have some visual tarnishes, creating zones that are certainly familiar, but decidedly askew.

To do battle and bring things back to normal, Mickey is armed with brushes that use paint and paint thinner as ammunition, and they’ll be able to alter portions of the game world, just as they’ll be able to fell any adversary in your path. You’ll be able to manipulate the environments in different ways, using thinner to reveal hidden paths or destroy obstacles in your way, or use paint to rebuild structures, or fill in gaps in the environment, allowing you new or different avenues to accomplish a goal.

There is a difference and some thought required when using your attacks as paint-based attacks will try to restore or improve things, or changing enemies into allies to help you in your fight, while the use of thinner will completely obliterate your target. Along with these attacks comes with a sort of morality meter, but Mickey Mouse is a hero through and through, so rather than use good or evil to polarize things, it’s a matter of whether or not your actions are mischievous or studious.

With this morality meter comes improvements to your standard abilities. For the most part, they seem to be simple and obvious – things like stronger attacks or the capacity for more paint or thinner before you need to recharge your stores are about the extent of it, save for one big point. As you delve deeper into a given morality path, you’ll also gain familiars dubbed either turps (aka: turpentines) to compliment your mischevious, paint thinner way of achieving your objectives, or tints, which will help you out with a more constructive way of going about things.

In the example I saw, turps would attack enemies, weakening them, or destroying them altogether, while tints would often bombard an enemy, stunning it and keeping it out of battle, or simply befriending it, causing it to help you out in battle. This morality meter isn’t meant to punish you or force you down a pre-determined sequence of events that you can’t recover from. Instead, it will constantly ebb and flow throughout the course of the game based on your actions, so you’ll never be stuck with a given play style should you want to change.

From what was previewed, Epic Mickey is shaping up to be a decent adventure. While the setting and devices used are clearly for younger audiences, there’s still plenty here for older players, with loads of slick touches that are sure to instill some nostalgia for those familiar with the world of Disney.