Kirby and the Forgotten Land is something bold and new for the famous pink puffball.
A full 3D title with a strong focus on exploration, it’s decidedly different to the years of
sidescrollers that have come before.
After a period of stagnation, HAL Laboratory and Nintendo have finally given Kirby something
new and fresh.
There is a good reason, though, why it took so long for Kirby to go fully 3D in a platformer.
According to the developers, getting Kirby to work in 3D was actually incredibly difficult.
Before we can talk about these challenges, though, we first need to talk about the so-called
“Lost Kirby Games.”
3D gameplay isn’t the only major challenge that Kirby developers have faced.
According to HAL Laboratory general director Shinya Kumazaki:
“Looking back on the history of the Kirby series, there was a period of time where certain
game concepts simply refused to come together.
As a result, we weren't able to release a mainline Kirby game on a home console for
a little over a decade.
We kept hitting walls we couldn't climb over.”
During this period, HAL started work on multiple Kirby games before ultimately scrapping them.
There was a four-player co-op game that was in development at around the time of Kirby’s
Air Ride, but the multiplayer aspects proved too challenging.
There was also a game described as: “an animated Kirby, sort of like a pop-up book”,
with an art style that looked fundamentally different to anything the series had seen
before.
Most relevant to The Forgotten Land was a scrapped game which was described by Shigefumi
Kawase: “[It] was an experiment with extremely challenging
gameplay that placed Kirby in 3D space and allowed players to move around freely.
But unfortunately, we weren’t able to achieve the quality we hoped for and it never reached
completion.”
It seems that, during this period, the developers at HAL really weren’t sure what they even
wanted the Kirby series to be moving forward.
The ultimate decision was to abandon 3D all together for the moment, but the team did
slowly iterate and experiment in subsequent games.
Said Kumazaki: “From that point on, our game prototypes
shifted to a ‘trial-and-error’ approach.
We played with unconventional gameplay angles through comparatively smaller games in the
series as a way to further explore the concept of a Kirby-based 3D platformer.
“We still had plenty of unique challenges to overcome, though.
Some in HAL Laboratory even felt that only 2D games should count as "real" Kirby games,
so to speak, so we weren't able to reach a point where we could deliver a complete 3D-platforming
mainline Kirby title.”
The problem, according to the developers, is that for several reasons, Kirby just doesn’t
work well in 3D.
The most obvious issue is his character design – because he’s a large round blob, no
matter which angle he’s viewed from, he looks the same.
This doesn’t make a difference in 2D, but in 3D, it becomes very difficult to tell which
direction Kirby is facing.
The other challenge, somewhat connected, is that the developers wanted to keep any new
Kirby game as simple and easy to play as possible.
Said Kumazaki: “When I began planning this game's difficulty
level, I pictured a 3D platformer easy enough that even a three-year-old child could play.”
The main complication in modern gaming that would trip up a three-year-old is the camera.
To make the game as simple and easy as possible, the team needed an intuitive, coordinated,
computer-controlled camera that prevented the player from getting stuck.
This camera also had to mitigate the fact that Kirby’s direction is difficult to read
in a 3D space – especially when confronting enemies.
This 3D environment also meant that it was difficult to tell when Kirby completed his
jumps.
When jumping immediately after landing on the ground, players would often tap the jump
button a second too soon, and Kirby would float rather than launch himself into the
air.
This is a common problem with 3D platformers, and it feels awful when the character doesn’t
seem to be responding to the player, simply because the player can’t tell where the
ground is.
The solution to both this and the challenge of direction was to simply build the game’s
mechanics around what the player thinks they see, rather than what is actually happening.
For example, if the camera angle suggests that Kirby has successfully hit an enemy,
then it counts as a hit – even if, when viewed from a different angle, the attack
was aimed in the wrong direction.
Similarly, the team implemented what they call “Fuzzy Landing”.
If the player hits jump before Kirby has quite made it to the ground, it still counts as
a jump, rather than an attempt at hovering.
This meant for a much easier and less frustrating gameplay experience.
The problem?
Now the game was too easy!
When staff at Nintendo played early versions of The Forgotten Land, the games felt sparse.
There weren’t enough enemies to actually make the game feel interesting.
At one point, Nintendo producer Kei Ninomiya asked plainly: “Why aren't the stages more
densely populated?”
According to Kumazaki: “Everyone on our development staff really
loves Kirby, so no one wanted to torment him with an unfair situation.”
Ninomiya responded: “The 3D gameplay didn't have as much ‘bite’
at first, but I never would have guessed that could be sourced back to the development team
wanting to protect poor Kirby!”
Of course, the other issue was that the team didn’t want to overwhelm inexperienced players
with too many challenges.
The game shouldn’t feel too stressful.
With a 3D space, though, it was simple for players to negotiate their way past a lot
of enemies in a way that wouldn’t be possible in 2D.
Reluctantly, the team at HAL increased the number of obstacles in their levels to better
suit the 3D space.
While 3D may have been a headache for Kirby developers, it also provided an opportunity.
Said Kumazaki: “Near the beginning of development, we spent
a lot of time discussing the kinds of movement and visuals we could add that might feel unique
to Kirby – ones that you wouldn't find in other 3D platformers.
“Then we thought about Kirby's unique characteristics and realised that, to make a truly great 3D
platformer, we should embrace his innate humour.
He's this funny little puffball, always changing shape, squashing and stretching as he gobbles
up everything around him.”
This then informed Kirby’s new Mouthful Mode, making use of the 3D space to transform
Kirby into a variety of different 3D shapes that would never have worked in a sidescrolling
game.
The result is a Kirby game unlike anything that has come before: a big leap into a new
direction for the series.
The moral of the story is that just because a challenge is hard, it doesn’t mean that
it’s impossible.
Faced with the challenge of rethinking Kirby gameplay for three dimensions, some at HAL
Laboratory simply felt that it couldn’t be done.
It didn’t fit the character.
However, after a lot of trial and error, the team was able to solve the big challenges
that made a 3D Kirby seem impossible.
Similarly, you will meet challenges in life that seem insurmountable.
You may get discouraged, thinking you’ll never be able to learn a new skill or achieve
a goal.
If you keep trying, though, experimenting and exploring your own abilities, and if you’re
not afraid of failing multiple times along the way, you can transform an impossible task
into a fantastic achievement.