We spent an hour with Kirby and his friends' latest quest, enjoying the teamwork, transformations, and Triceratops present in an one of Epic Yarn's themed worlds. Join us on the adventure.
What we're talking about: Kirby: Epic Yarn, the fabric-festooned platformer featuring Nintendo's iconic pink powerhouse.
Where we saw it: At Nintendo's Redwood City office, where a member of the company's Treehouse team served as player two, commanding the stately blue ball of fabric, Prince Fluff.
- Cut-scenes punctuated the beginning and end of the demo. Both featured storybook-style narration, with a mixture of drawings and yarn shapings that didn't animate but moved about the screen in various ways, much like how a paper puppet would move. In the intro, Kirby ate a creature called a Metamato that sent him to an alternate world in which he and all of the other creatures were fashioned out of yarn, rendering his sucking skills useless but increasing his ability to transform. Upon entering the world, Kirby meets the similarly shaped Prince Fluff and agrees to help the royal blue circle of yarn to help find the patches that keep his kingdom together. After we cleared the demo, we saw a cut-scene of Kirby and Prince Fluff celebrating as the Hot Land part of the game was sown to the next section of the game, Treat Land.
- We tackled four stages in the game's Hot Land world: Pyramid Sands, a level set among fabric-styled tombs; Lava Lands, an stage with dangerous burning rivers and tempestuous volcanoes; Cool Cave, a stage featuring tunnels so tiny the duo had to turn to string to navigate them; and Dino Jungle, a stage filled with dinosaur-themed obstacles like chomping T-Rexes, spinning Triceratops heads, and Parasaurus that carry you across bodies of water when you jump on their heads.
- Each of the initial four stages share a few similar elements. All have a transformation section in which Kirby and Prince Fluff engage in a different method of movement for a short period. The first stage has Kirby acting as a giant circular hover tank while Fluff mans one of the arms. The next stage has each of the duo turning into firetrucks, driving throughout the section, shooting threads of water (you aim by tilting the Wii Remote). The third stage has Kirby taking the form of a race car while Fluff handles boosting, and the final stage turns the two into mechanical moles that can burrow through mounds of fluff, Dig-Dug style.
- The final stage of Hot Land pits Kirby and the Prince against the world's boss, Hot Wings -- a giant, angry phoenix. Hot Wings' primary attack involves shooting fireballs across the screen at the duo. In order to defeat Hot Wings, Kirby or Fluff has to catch the fireballs with their string of yarn and fling them back at the baddie. After that move temporarily stuns Hot Wings, one of the heroes has to then fling the fowl across the screen.
- Another fun link between the stages is the way that the patches earned at the end of each stage unlock the next stage of the overworld map. A giant genie uses his magic, a boxer punches the side of the stage, and a sleepy dinosaur sneezes to reveal new parts of the map. While the stages are fun enough to play through and provide plenty of surprises, seeing these crazy stage reveals serves as extra motivation to keep playing through the game.
Point in development cycle: Kirby Epic Yarn is due out in a little over a month on October 17, but this felt pretty final, as the gameplay and cinematics are already pretty refined.
My take: Nintendo knows it struk gold with New Super Mario Bros. Wii, because I felt a similar vibe when playing Kirby's Epic Yarn. The cooperative gameplay, extravagantly colored design, and the deftly mixed new and old gameplay elements (like stage-altering and jumping attacks, respectively) are similar to last year's biggest Wii title, while adding a much more user-friendly experience with Kirby's slower style of play. While I'll get my hands on Donkey Kong Country Returns soon enough to provide a more defined opinion, it looks like the three franchises may have provided Nintendo a formula to keep 2D platformers alive and thriving on its home consoles.
