What a lovely blue skies game this was. It wasn’t the open-world, post apocalyptic Kirby the trailers and pre-release media made out though, as it sticks to the same level structure as most of the classic Kirby titles, but it looks amazing and is a lot of fun.

And is so, so easy! I completed the entire game, including the post-ending extra hard content, without dying at all. Or even coming close to dying. Or, a handful of bosses aside, even paying attention to my energy bar. But then, Kirby games have never been anything even approaching difficult so that’s not really the point.

The point, is that they’re so joyful and quirky and have unusual (to other games) mechanics. Here, you have the standard “suck up enemies to steal their powers” of previous games, but they’ve added Mouthful Mode where you try to suck up large objects like vending machines and cars but they get a bit stuck, although do provide you with some extra temporary skills. The car can smash through things, the big fan can be used to propel a boat, the cone can break through cracked floors, etc.

Your normal powers can be upgraded too. There are short challenge levels that task you with completing them in a certain time, or with a certain power, and these give you special stars which you can spend on the upgrades. It makes the powers deal more damage and so on, but also changes how they look. You don’t actually need any of these upgrades, but they’re nice to have.

In short (and the game is pretty short) it’s a bright and happy Nintendo platformer with charm and cute things and – most importantly – it’s really fun.