Every game needs a moment – a moment that only it can provide. I think of the fuse blocks in Lumines, where you link a color to a lot of blocks, then you set them on fire, and then you realize the whole game is actually laying out dynamite tunnels. Or the cute ripple rumble in WarioWare Twisted, where you can turn the entire GBA to send a capsule toy from the chute into your hand. (Random example; I played it all over the weekend.)
Kirby’s dream buffet had that moment. It had a moment that belonged purely to Kirby’s dream buffet. It comes at the end of one of the games. You’ve battled your opponents and made your way through twisty, sinister tracks made of waffles, bacon bars, Victoria sponges, and pools of chocolate icing. You’re ahead of the crowd, so when you get to the finish line, you can jump into that very, very large bowl of strawberries. then? And then you turn the left stick – I think it’s the left stick; at this point, I’m always getting carried away by the syrup – and eat all the strawberries. cough cough cough. This is great stuff. The last strawberry before we die!
At first, this moment was just a bit of business in a game of business. In fact, in the beginning, you’re not playing Kirby’s dream buffet, but rather being there through the onslaught of color and comical sound. However, slowly, slowly and steadily, structure emerged. But even inside the structure, there is still a certain wildness. As with house cats, you can never quite tame Kirby’s dream buffet.
The idea here is a mix of Fall Guys and Katamari and a few other things that pop up from time to time. I should add that the Fall Guys element had to be pointed out to me because Kirby’s own aesthetic was so overwhelming that I didn’t spot it. The theme is pudding, breakfast and lunch – sponge burger buns and butter pancakes. This is what the world is made of. In each Grand Prix (center mode here), pudding, breakfast and lunch form two tracks for you and three other players to traverse, eating strawberries and growing up. Then it forms the arena of mini-games and climactic battle royale. Whoever eats the most strawberries — and grows the biggest — wins in the end. complete.
The game is very interesting. The tracks are creative and crafty, like throwing into an asparagus corner, or a mountain of waffles that you might run up to after getting help from a rebound on the yoke of an omelette. Items litter the field, like those that turn you into a racing donut wheel, and those that let you set your enemies on fire. Drop it and you get a kind of Yoshi float to get back on the track.
Confusingly, you don’t just have to sprint to the finish line. For the most part, you’re also trying to eat the most strawberries, and those – along with the odd blueberries and whatnot – are scattered all over the place. Why do you want to race because the first person to get to the finish line eats a whole bunch of strawberries — cue the iconic moment — but there’s still a point, not exactly tactical, but tactical powdered sugar bro. Take your time and buy as many strawberries as you can, or zip up and cash out on the big strawberry bowl at the end? Like many conundrums in life, I’m still thinking about this one.
Between matches, you get mini-games, which tend to be top-down and pretty chaotic. Collect strawberries that fall from the sky or spawn in a teacup! Defeat enemies while collecting strawberries! As with the climate battle royale, you can bounce enemies off the map to make them lose the strawberries they’ve collected, it’s worth getting bigger, and eating strawberries makes them bigger. So I guess Kirby’s dream buffet has a rich theme, or at least a strong focus: ABES, like someone from Glengarry Glenn Ross might yell at you between threats to fire: eat strawberries forever.
It’s a stepping stone, and it’s at its best when it embraces chaos rather than precision. The lessons are tight and quick, and the mini-games are full of unexpected disasters. With various bonuses applied and the biggest Kirby win, it all ended with four Kirby likes. The four players made up a very tight match, and when it came to the top spot, there was a lot of back and forth. I had so much fun that Kirby put aside Mario 3D World as the multiplayer game of choice to play with my daughter for a few nights.
You can play online – as far as I can tell, has a decent player base – or play against CPU opponents. You can also play two-player local vs. online or CPU, each holding a Joy-Con, or four-player local, but each will need their own Switch and copy of the game, which I think is optimistic even as a Kirby fan . Between Grand Prix, you can tackle individual matches and mini-games, knock on doors in free play, and see what unlocks you’ve collected, which I think can be used to decorate a cake or turn your character into a pirate, etc. Jazz .
I think it’s funny: a budget Kirby about rolling and annoying your friends, a funny bouche, which may or may not be how the phrase is spelled. I’m afraid it won’t be long before our family’s rankings drop and disappear from the Switch home screen, but it’s going to leave some lovely sweet memories. Perhaps there is also a subconscious desire to eat a lot of strawberries.
