While at the show floor at E3 I got the opportunity to go hands-on with Kirby’s Epic Yarn in the Nintendo booth. When I first spotted the game in the Nintendo Press Conference, I was a little skeptical that Kirby’s newest outing have the cahones to take on the expectations of the hardcore fans, as it looked to appeal to a younger audience with the new art direction. I was completely off the mark. Kirby sews his way into the hearts of any who love the franchise.
Kirby, unlike in previous games of the series, does not possess the usual wholly pinkish, plump physique he sports in the typical quest. Instead he is now a transparent, outlined piece of yarn shaped like the lovable hero put into a world formed by yarn. What initially looks to be a casual, basic rendered game turns to be an adventure more ambitious than anything that the Kirby franchise has to offer.
The most significant change to the Kirby franchise with this new installment is not necessarily the new graphics, though the gameplay. As Kirby’s world revolves around yarn, the whole platforming portion of the game depended on the player using Kirby’s yarn whip to manipulate the environment. For instance, in order to progress in certain portions of the game Kirby must lash out with his whip to tug out zippers and suspended cloth to move the environment into the player’s reach. The world, made completely of yarn, can be molded for Kirby’s benefit, such as using stretching out/tightening the yarn sky to shorten the path and the enemies whipped into projectiles to take down harder foes. The most frequently used ability in Kirby’s arsenal from the previous games, sucking in enemies, has been omitted in favor of a whip that can be used to take out enemies, so it seems as if the mechanic of copying enemy abilities is out. I only got to play the showfloor demo, so there is a possibility that additional gameplay mechanics will be introduced as you progress through the quest.
The co-op mode of the game, the mode I played on the showfloor, offered the same experience as the single player, though introduced another character to tag along in Kirby’s quest. Similarly outlined in yarn, this character possesses the same whip and abilities as kirby, and can add additional support to the first player. New abilities are incorporated, such as using the whip to grasp either player and molding them into a ball to be thrown. At the end of the demo an outlined form of a dragon confronts the two players, and so they must cooperatively take it down by using its fireballs and lashing tongue against it. The whole experience was really fun and the controls were intuitive, though its just unfortunate that the second player and I were not in sync.
Kirby’s newest adventure may have the soft, kiddish exterior of a colorful world of yarn, though the sheer genius of such innovative gameplay shows that Kirby still retains the hardcore aspects tucked tightly within this imaginative world of yarn.
