Kirby has a second game coming out in 2022 and it’s giving the internet major Fall Guys vibes. On Tuesday, Nintendo quietly announced Kirby’s Dream Buffet, a multiplayer game where you race friends around delicious hazards. The Switch eShop exclusive is due out in the next couple of months.
If the pink puff’s open world-style post-apocalyptic adventure Kirby and the Forgotten Land hit too close to home in the current climate, Kirby’s Dream Buffet appears to be a welcome return to the character’s simpler roots. Players roll along food-themed stages in four rounds of “frantic multiplayer fun.” The more food Kirby eats the bigger he gets, eventually bumping competitors off the stage. Players will also get access to “Copy Food Abilities” when they gobble up each new morsel, adding more sugar-coated powers to their arsenal.
Here’s the trailer:
While the whole “knock your opponents off a giant obstacle course suspended in mid-air” is pure Fall Guys, Kirby’s Dream Buffet takes a distinctively Nintendo approach to multiplayer. While the game has an online mode, stages are limited to four human players. The rest appear to be AI-controlled Waddle Dees. That’s a far cry from the 60-player frenzies that made Fall Guys a hit when it debuted back in 2020 (it recently came to Switch and is now also free-to-play).
The influence of Mediatonic’s jelly bean royale is hard to shake, but of course multiplayer is nothing new for Kirby. In addition to co-op modes in mainline entries, spin-offs Kirby’s Dream Course for the SNES and Kirby Air Ride for the GameCube were multiplayer-centric.
Interestingly, Nintendo hasn’t yet listed a price for Kirby’s Dream Buffet, so it’s hard to know just how full-fledged the experience is supposed to be. Time will tell if it will finally end up being Kirby’s big esports break, but what’s already clear is that 2022 is treating Kirby fans right.