Kirby and the Forgotten Land review – a mouthful of magic

When Masahiro Sakurai first drew a couple of stumpy arms, big feet and blushing cheeks on a little pink blob, he was answering a call within Nintendo to make a game for everyone; a game, like the adorable Kirby himself, with no hard edges, where those who found Mario a mite too masochistic might find refuge. Ever since then Kirby has presented a refreshingly casual brand of adventure, serving breezy platformers where there’s never even the threat of falling off a ledge; you can just puff yourself up with air and float away.

Kirby and the Forgotten Land reviewPublisher: NintendoDeveloper: HAL LaboratoryPlatform: Played on SwitchAvailability: Out March 25th on Switch

Such effortlessness might be boring, were it not for the effort put in by the designers at HAL Laboratory to keep presenting new ideas to keep you entertained. Kirby, at its best, is a procession of new toys to tinker with, new mini-games to be distracted by and new enemies to ingest so that you might take on their powers. They’re bountiful things, the maximalist approach part of their magic.

Which goes some way to explain Kirby and the Forgotten Land’s new mechanic, a simple case of asking Mouthful mode sees you swallow up whole vending machines that spit out cans, a big bouncing ball of water that spurts jets, and – as you’ve no doubt seen – an entire actual car so that you can zoom from point to point. Yes, this Kirby is also .

Mouthful Mode is one big idea in a game that’s bustling with lots of other little ones, many of them ushered in by the fact this is Kirby’s first real 3D outing to date – something quite remarkable, really, given how long the series has been running. The results are a very different feeling Kirby game to what’s gone before, even if there’s the familiarity and fuzzy feeling of playing a 3D platformer that’s as generous and inventive as anything from the genre’s golden era. The Forgotten Land plays an awful lot like what might have happened had our collective wishes for a 3D Kirby been answered back in the GameCube day.

Kirby and the Forgotten Land – Announcement Trailer – Nintendo Switch Watch on YouTube

Which is high praise, of course – indeed, if you’re of a certain bent, there’s no praise higher. Kirby and The Forgotten Land’s a gloriously traditional platformer, and contrary to some beliefs around its reveal it’s not open world, or even semi open world. It is, instead, a collection of self-contained levels, all selected via a slowly unfurling world map where they’re clustered in themes. There’s ice levels! Beach levels! Fairground levels! All, somewhat bizarrely, served up with light post-apocalyptic undertones that come with the Forgotten Land’s story (which I won’t spoil here beyond saying it’s a nice excuse to see some old favourites in a new context).