Kirby’s Dream Buffet | Review – A blood sugar boost

Those who know Nintendo well know that, from time to time, it does his utmost in actions such as the one that led to the publication of Kirby’s Dream Buffet. A video game that, in all probability, you are hearing about now for the first time.

This is because the Big N announced the title just over a month ago without too many preambles and a release date other than a “summer 2022”. Said in the height of summer.

The inspiration for Fall Guys is pretty obvious, but we didn’t actually know what the title could offer again. At least until a few days ago when, with an almost textbook shadowdrop , Nintendo made Kirby’s Dream Buffet available exclusively on eShop .

Maneuvers of this kind, made above all by large companies with such important brands, usually presage that the product in question is minor , or certainly an output on which not to rely too much in terms of quality.

After the excellent Kirby and the Lost Land comes the dream buffet with nice courses but quantity… so-so.

Kirby’s Dream Buffet is the tastiest multiplayer there is

Kirby’s Dream Buffet is a multiplayer focused title . An interesting experiment in merging the aforementioned Fall Guys with a pinch of Mario Party and Mario Kart .

There is no story or adventure to undertake this time around, just frantic races and mini-games with the aim of gulping down more strawberries of all. Something that Kirby does well given his malleable and very tender body.

In fact, the title proposes the same idea as Fall Guys : a series of consecutive races from which a winner is then released. The only difference is that it’s not a knockout show but, in fact, a series of minigames with different rules and structures.

The first race is always a race in different tracks every time that, using foods of all kinds, creates obstacles and paths in which a group of Kirbys compete for the final trays full of strawberries that provide a bonus to the points. The slides are made of churros, the trampolines are fried eggs, the barriers to be destroyed are crumbly and greedy biscuits, and so on.

It must be admitted that, although the routes are naturally very similar to each other, the few differences given by the construction of ramps, obstacles and jumps of all kinds are constructed and positioned in such a way as not to be a copy and paste.

The mini -games that are interspersed until the final battle, a royal rumble in which to give a lot of reason with a full stomach, are quite fun even if not very complex. Basically it is always about picking strawberries (which often rain from the sky), pushing and annoying the opponents in every way.

In all this some interesting ideas are inserted that demonstrate how effectively Kirby’s Dream Buffet is clearly a minor project, but not for this treated with less care by the development team.

The more strawberries you pick, the more massive Kirby gets. This means more weight to push opponents and take down obstacles, but also difficult maneuverability and less time to be able to float in the air and return to the field after being kicked out.

In addition, along the way you can collect the proverbial classic upgrades of Kirby , this time declined in a gastronomic key. You can turn yourself into jelly to disappear into the ground, or into a solid chocolate bar to throw your opponents away, just to name two examples of the seven upgrades available now.

It’s not from a gameplay standpoint per se that Kirby’s Dream Buffet doesn’t work, then.

Although the game is inevitably repetitive due to the existence of this single game structure, which is slavishly replicated even in local multiplayer (up to two players plus CPU), one cannot but admit that the experience built by HAL Laboratory is fun.

The problem is that after the first games moved by the novelty effect and a sincere fun, it is difficult to return with joy to take on the soft clothes of Kirby.

There would be the many collectibles including colors for the character, funny hats and decorations for the cake in the main game menu, but they can’t be greedy enough (to stay on topic) to push a return to the game for a long time.

The strength of Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, well before it became free to play, was the ability to always offer something new to players. A path with a variant that they had not seen, or simply a new costume to unlock (and not buy, as now) in the rotating shop.

This type of formula is not currently adopted by Kirby’s Dream Buffet , we do not know if and how much Nintendo will support it in the future , but it would definitely need it.

Also because it is not even a free-to-play title . Although it is sold for a meager fifteen euros, it is still a purely multiplayer online video game with a high risk of emptying the servers, among other things.

We see that this is a well-kept title on the gameplay side . We can easily imagine the developers intent on understanding “the effect it has” trying the path of mass multiplayer with such an important intellectual property.

We imagine just as easily how this formula can be transferable with some other Nintendo brand. Imagine, I know, an ever-updating free-to-play Donkey Kong multiplayer with minigames, costumes to unlock and timed activities.

In fact, the idea of ​​Kirby’s Dream Buffet works. On paper, the title is a winner on every front, but pad in hand we find ourselves having very little motivation to ring one game after another.

More variety was needed in the paths , very strong attractions to keep players coming back every day, and maybe push further on the offline multiplayer component.

It has always been the strength of Nintendo’s designers, and it’s hard to think that there have been no valid ideas for a series of exclusive minigames to play in the company of friends (more than two possibly), from the same minds that produce the Mario Party series. .