‘Kirby Star Allies’ paved the way for ‘The Forgotten Land’ says dev

The developers behind Kirby And The Forgotten Land believe 2018’s Kirby Star Allies paved the way for this year’s 3D Kirby title.

Released earlier this year, Kirby And The Forgotten Land is the first fully 3D game in the franchise, but general director Shinya Kumazaki believes the mostly 2D Kirby Star Allies blazed a trail they followed.

Speaking to Nintendo Dream (and translated by Nintendo Everything) Kumazaki said “there were many challenges that needed to be overcome” to create the first 3D Kirby game but “one of those was overcome in our previous game Star Allies, which had been the culmination of a lot of hard work in 2D.”

The final battle in Star Allies featured elements of 3D which Kumazaki and the team saw as “laying the groundwork for future works [because] we were sure that the next game would be 3D.”

He went on to explain that “the Kirby team and particularly HAL Laboratory considered Star Allies and Forgotten Land to be a single large connected project.”

Kumazaki went on to explain how Star Allies was created “with a tempo and scope in mind that would allow both long-standing series fans, but also young children, to finish the main mode. In contrast, the theme of Forgotten Land was made with deeper, full 3D action in mind, since we had many fans asking for ‘meatier action’.”

However, “there were still things we were not able to achieve in Star Allies, and deriving from that we wanted to make a ‘deep and accessible fully 3D Kirby game’, while also continually rethinking the amazing traits of the ‘strange and surreal thing’ that is Kirby”.

Earlier this week, Nintendo confirmed the release date of the Fall Guys-inspired Kirby’s Dream Buffet, with the title set to launch August 17 on Nintendo Switch.

In other news, the first in-game footage for SpongeBob Squarepants: The Cosmic Shake was revealed during the THQ showcase last night (August 12) – check it out here.