Hopefully, the latest game in the "Kirby of the Stars" series, Kirby of the Stars: Discovery, will finally be released on March 25.
In the eyes of players, what is the biggest feature of the "Kirby of the Stars" series? The protagonist Kirby is cute and the overall style is relatively young, but when it comes to the game design itself, the most voices are still gathered in one word - simple.
Simplicity has always been an immutable feature of the "Kirby of the Stars" series. From the very beginning, Masahiro Sakurai, a producer who worked at the HAL Research Institute at the time, wanted Kirby to be a game that "anyone can easily enjoy." As a platform action game, "Star Kirby" has always been more tolerant of players, with a high fault tolerance rate and no heavy punishment for failure. Although there have been some works like Rolling Kirby, which is difficult to operate due to sensors, or somewhat complex maps like Kirby of stars: The Great Labyrinth of Mirrors, most of the Kirby of Stars is simple for the average player.
Completing Kirby of the Stars: The Great Labyrinth of Mirrors requires sorting out the relationship between the doors
The simple quest of "Star Kirby" reached its peak in the previous game of the main series, Star Kirby: Nova Alliance, where players can complete levels without operation if they recruit 3 AI companions, or even rely on the automatic battle of their partner characters most of the time. Although the latest work in the series, "Kirby of the Stars: Exploration and Discovery", is not as exaggerated as "Kirby of the Stars: Nova Alliance", the two-player mode will not be as simple as before, but it is definitely not difficult, if you just want to complete the game, in fact, there is no difficulty at all.
From the perspective of game design, we can put forward a lot of reasons to argue "why we need a certain degree of difficulty in the game", such as "motivating players to challenge" or "providing a sense of achievement for players to work hard", etc., these truths have almost completely convinced us, let us believe that the game is not difficult to have fun without a little difficulty, but "Star Kirby: Exploration and Discovery" does not have such difficulty, there is no process for players to struggle to barely pass.
But it's also fun. "Star Kirby: Discovery" is very simple, but it is not a brainless knife 999 mowing, nor is it a "nanny feeding", all the level card mechanisms are taught to you, "Star Kirby: Exploration and Discovery" has its own "Star Kirby" style of play fun, it even goes beyond the past 2D "Star Kirby" design, making it difficult to imagine that this is the first real 3D "Star Kirby".
How exactly does the HAL Institute do all this?
Difficulty of the "Star Kirby" level
At the beginning of the game, Kirby star: Discovery Wrote "Don't want to embarrass players" on his face. The game will ask you whether you want to choose the "slightly more challenging" wild mode or the more relaxed spring wind mode. To be honest, this Wild Mode doesn't have any "Wild" where to go - the difficulty of the game in Wild Mode is basically the same as the previous "Star Kirby" works, and each level can get a little more Star Coin reward than Spring Wind Mode, but the health limit is only half that of Spring Wind Mode. If you don't want to suffer even a little bit in Kirby Star: Discovery from the start, then choose spring wind mode directly, and the subsequent process will be quite easy.
Kirby's health bar length in Spring Wind mode is very rich
Just doubling the length of the health bar to reduce the difficulty seems quite rough and straightforward, but it does work. Compared to the more difficult action games, one of the factors why Kirby star: Exploration and Discovery is particularly simple is that the damage penalty for mistakes is quite low. In the level, Kirby will be hit with various exaggerated skills, poisoning, burning, shooting down, and even smashing into a piece of paper, but the damage applied to health is not high. Even the bottom boss doesn't deal fatal damage, and in Wild Mode, a strong Kirby can eat at least seven or eight hits with blood. The low damage of enemies gives Kirby a very high error tolerance rate, giving players plenty of time to understand the mechanics of enemies and various traps and learn how to deal with them before they are knocked down.
Boss battles give players plenty of room for error
In addition to low damage, Kirby Of Stars: Discovery has also minimized the penalties for player errors in the level mechanics. Kirby uses flight and jumping as the main means of movement, the most common accident is accidentally falling off a cliff, a deep pit, in the past "Kirby of the Stars", this mistake is often fatal, the player will directly lose a life. Falling off cliffs and pits in Star Kirby: Discovery is less scary, and Kirby only loses a little health and then gets up from the nearest safe spot. Even if you make too many mistakes and your health is accidentally emptied, you can continue the level after consuming 100 star coins, instead of kicking the player who has used up all his life numbers directly out of the level like the former "Star Kirby". With "one-off" show-style levels that are stuffed with deformities often retried immediately, plus the food supplies that can be found everywhere on the map can be used to return blood, it can be said that in Kirby of stars: Exploration and Discovery, it is difficult to even be punished for too many mistakes and failures.
Stuffed with small levels of deformation, missing key items can often be retried
That doesn't mean, though, that there aren't any challenges in Kirby Star: Discovery. Like the "Kirby of the Stars" of the past, Kirby of the Stars: Discovery puts the real difficulty in the part of the main line process beyond the level. Additional tasks such as "Rescue All Wadou Rudi" have been added to each level, which do not affect the level at all, but in order to complete them all, you need to have enough observation of the various details hidden in the level. Challenge levels appear outside the main level, are designed for various copying abilities and mouth-filled morphing, and have a time limit, with additional rewards if the target timeline is reached.
Each level has a corresponding additional mission
To be honest, it's not easy to collect everything in every level, or to reach a goal in every challenge mission, and it's challenging to be familiar with the player's abilities and the acumen of level design. Not to mention the entire set of "Forgotten Worlds" extra levels and the Boss Rush Arena with 12 consecutive battles after the end of the week, if you think that even the main line flow in Wild Mode is still too simple, then these challenges and the final 100% completion are for you.
The arena of 12 consecutive battles requires players to be familiar enough with boss moves
As the times progress, players' needs and tolerance for difficulty and punishment are constantly changing. Even the "Kirby of stars" works that claim to be simple in the 2D era may have some unreasonable or difficult designs for today's players. From Kirby of the Stars: League of The New Stars to Kirby of the Stars: Discovery, you can feel that the HAL Institute is also trying to figure out how to set the difficulty of the game and make it more suitable for today's players. The difficulty of Kirby of Stars: Discovery seems to be just right, and players who want to relax and relax can get the most relaxation here, and those who are confident in their abilities can also move towards higher goals in various missions and challenges outside the main line.
The biggest challenge in the history of Kirby the Stars
Strictly speaking, Kirby of the Stars: Discovery is the first truly 3D "Kirby of the Stars". Unlike the two works on 3DS that can only switch between the two planes of the front and back scenes, in this new work, Kirby's range of activities is no longer limited to a certain plane, but can be fully active, and truly carry out adventures without dead ends.
The vast world awaits Kirby to explore
An action game series that shifts from 2D to 3D involves a lot of underlying design changes, such as the "Super Mario" series we are most familiar with, and the various performances of Mario have changed dramatically with the evolution of the series. To my amazement, despite the change from 2D to 3D, the various operational logics and level designs of the Star Kirby tradition have not changed. Jumping, flying, absorbing and using the ability to copy, these are the most basic and important operations in the series, almost perfectly maintain the feel of the past.
In the town's weapon shop, you can upgrade the abilities you have acquired
Kirby's various abilities are 3D, and the most likely problem is actually aiming: when the range of motion changes from flat to three-dimensional space, it is difficult to judge the position relationship between Kirby and the enemy, and it is still quite difficult to achieve accurate attacks every time. In addition to expanding the attack range of the replication ability, the production team also used a bit of "blindfolding" to ensure the player's experience: in "Star Kirby: Exploration and Discovery", as long as the player looks like it hits the enemy, the system will determine that it is hit, even if the flames or frost sprayed in the three-dimensional space do not touch the enemy, it will "help the player" hit. This small design fundamentally solves the problems of attack range and aiming that are common in 3D action games, making combat easier.
In Kirby of the Stars: Discovery, Kirby's jet-type ability easily hits enemies
In addition to Kirby himself, there are many monsters who came to the game world from Pop Star with Kirby. These familiar monsters have also retained their original mechanics, but have completed the evolution from 2D to 3D accordingly. For example, in the anemone on the surface of the water, the path of firing the shell this time became scattered in all directions; the black thorn ball that could not be swallowed or destroyed also had more combinations. The characters who have been active in the series in the past retain the characteristics of the 2D era, and at the same time, they have been properly designed in 3D.
Old characters and old mechanics are well preserved, and the new enemies and new mechanics that debuted in Kirby of Star: Discovery, the Stuffed Mouth Transformation, are also quite interesting. The stuffed mouth morphing is somewhat similar to the transformation hat in Super Mario: Odyssey, allowing Kirby to combine specific scenes with specific tools, using the qualities of these tools to solve the puzzle: swallow a light bulb in a dark cave, swallow a car in front of the racing track, swallow a step on a high wall that can't be climbed, swallow an arch to become a paraglider if you want to fly into the distance.
Light bulbs are of great use in the labyrinth of black lights and blinding fires
Some of these stuffed-mouth variants focus on mechanistic puzzle solving, while others are more performance and one-off reaction challenges, and both can only be used within a relatively short process area, functionally closer to the armor in the 3DS version of Star Kirby: Robot Planet, but the gameplay richness is several times larger than at the time. For the work of "Star Kirby: Exploration and Discovery", although the stuffed mouth deformation is not a universal design like the ability to copy, it is still an important part of the 3D scene design while adjusting the rhythm, and if there is no mouth deformation, this new work will hardly have the freshness of the current actual play. Of course, in terms of shape, the stuffed mouth deformation is a bit strange compared to the robot armor, and whether the player can accept it or not is a matter of opinion.
Some stuffed mouth deformations may indeed be a little strange
Kirby of the Stars, on the other hand, is simple, but it's not a game that requires only brainless consecutive keystrokes to pass the level like a blast. Although Kirby can save some of the trouble of fighting, whether it can correctly find the way to deal with each mechanism design, how to properly use various abilities in the face of various scenes, still requires players to think more.
In order to make the vast majority of players face a variety of mechanism designs will not be helpless, the production team gives players just the right guidance. In front of each chest or secret passage, there will be some gold coins or flowers to guide the player to the right route. The content on the "Star Kirby" screen in the 2D era is unobstructed, in fact, it is difficult to miss the collection elements, and more often it is the maze design that can be seen but not obtained. The 3D Star Kirby: Discovery is more like super Mario: Odyssey hiding stars, hiding various rewards and mission objectives in a place that the player can't see at a glance, and then using visual guidance such as signs to "direct" the player to find these hidden treasures.
Treasures are often hidden at the end of the path guided by those gold coins
This kind of guidance is often quite subtle, and if you don't deliberately observe, you won't realize that you are being led by the game, so that players can easily enjoy the fun of exploring and solving puzzles without getting bored by frequent checkpoints. The reason why many puzzle games are well designed but players feel "not fun" is often because of the lack of this guidance, players have to try to deal with the creator of the brainwave, not right, can only be stuck there. This silent "Nintendo"-style visual guidance design is vividly used in "Kirby of the Stars: Exploration and Discovery", and it is one of the main reasons why "Kirby of the Stars" is simple but fun.
Another commendable feature of Kirby of the Stars: Discoveries is the small town of Wadourudi, which is used as a base camp. In this game, Kirby and Pop Star's friends are sucked into a kingdom of wildlife that resembles the end of mankind, and in order to rescue all the Wadou Rudi, Kirby embarks on an adventurous journey. As the process progresses, the Vazurudis, who are freed by Kirby, rebuild the town and build facilities. Players can choose and upgrade abilities, buy supplies, challenge arenas, and play a variety of mini-games including fishing and marble mazes in the town. Even if you don't do anything, it's quite pleasant to say hello to the Wadouludis in the town. For Kirby star: Discovery, which splits the game flow in the form of levels, the design of Wadou rudi Town reflects the warm atmosphere of the game, but also greatly expands the repetitive playability of the game, and even provides some players with the motivation to collect a higher degree of completion - who wouldn't want to play in the town with more Wazurudi?
In Kirby of the Stars: Discovery, you can even go fishing
The previous game in the series, Kirby star: Nova Alliance, has few new content, and the difficulty caused by the introduction of partner AI is too low, so the evaluation is somewhat mixed, while the evolution of "Star Kirby: Exploration and Discovery" is even better. Kirby of the Stars: Discovery isn't hard, but the fun of finding hidden Wadourudi and treasure chests is real every time. The production team mentioned in the interview that they hope that players "don't feel that the HAL Institute is making 3D Kirby for the first time" when playing. I think they did. Kirby of the Stars: Discovery completes the successful transition of Kirby of the Stars from 2D to 3D.
Forever "Kirby of the Stars"
The debate about whether the game should be harder or simpler has been a constant topic of conversation in the player community. With the birth of Demon Souls and the revival of the "Suffered" game, as well as the craze for a variety of nostalgic games and antique games, players began to rekindle their interest in difficult games and enjoy the feeling of suffering while exploring in the game.
That's not bad, but sometimes we may need to have a lighthearted and enjoyable work like Kirby star: Discovery to change the mood. Don't think about the balance between the various replication capabilities, don't have to worry about missing a small side task and affect the process, even mistakes will not be punished too much, all you have to do is to go where you suck it, and then use the various abilities you have acquired to overcome all the difficulties in front of you.
Kirby of the Stars: Discovery perfectly preserves this simple and daring adventure experience of the "Kirby of the Stars", while upgrading the series with more new mechanics, new abilities, and an excellent 3D game experience. To be honest, I'm not worried about the next Kirby at all, because I know it's going to be like Kirby of the Stars: Discovery, and no, it's going to be as simple and fun as all the Kirbys of the Stars.
Join Kirby in a dance for your success!