Kirby’s Epic Yarn

Posted 2 years ago By - Marko Djordjevic

Of all of Nintendo’s franchise characters, Kirby has to be the most adorable of the bunch. Regardless of its stature, the pink ball almost always manages to bring a smile to any gamer’s face, young or old. As well as being so kind to the eyes, games that feature Kirby have often gone against conventional platform mechanics; typically offering something not found in other games. His latest adventure, Kirby’s Epic Yarn goes in a very different direction than what you’d expect in a traditional platformer and thanks to that, we are given a game that is so fun to play, you may have a hard time stopping.

It would seem all is normal for our lovable Kirby when his hunger gets the better of him and instead of ingesting a regular tomato he grabs a “metamato”, which happens to belong to the evil Yin-Yarn. Upset at this, Yin-Yarn sucks up Kirby and teleports him to Patch Land, a world made entirely of yarn. The process also causes Kirby to be transformed into fibres and now he - along with Patch Land’s Prince Fluff - must find the magic yarn required to reattach all the part of Patch Land and get Kirby home. Unbeknownst to the pair, Yin-Yarn is hard at work taking over Kirby’s Dreamland and interacting with some familiar characters.

Since Kirby is made of yarn, his normal suck and transform mechanics from previous games do not apply. This time around, you are interacting with thread and quilt-like environments in order to proceed through the game.

Playing as Kirby is extremely simple. With the remote held sideways, your two main functions are attack and jump. Attacking allows you to grab objects, including buttons and zippers, or enemies - which are also made of yarn - and use them to break through boxes and defeat other foes. Kirby can also float, transform into something similar to a cinder block to drop on foes and swim underwater. In order to combat the lack of being able to transform like in past games, there are specific sections where Kirby does in fact, take the shape of something else.

His transformations include turning into a tank, dolphin, train and a fire-truck among other interesting objects. These sections then have you using each objects’ feature in order to proceed. For example, If you’re the fire-truck, you will need to use your water hose to douse the flames that are in your way. While playing as the train, you’ll use the Wii-mote pointer to create tracks in order to get collectibles and power-ups that will allow you to drive through various blocks.

While the levels themselves are fairly straight-forward, there are a lot of secrets and alternate paths available. During Kirby’s time in Patch Land, he will have to collect jewels and find treasures which are used in the various side-quests. Kirby can’t actually die but when you take a hit or fall off the map, you lose a hefty amount of jewels which can make the difference between finishing a level with a bronze medal or a gold one.

The environments that Kirby will traverse in Patch Land are absolutely incredible. There’s a number of different locales including levels with zero gravity, under water, and even those made entirely of patch-sweets. Although the levels are quite easy to get through, thanks to the content available to find and discover, you will definitely want to play them more than once to experience everything there is. This is also true since there are items that need to be found in order to unlock all some of the other goodies.

Each land has four primary stages which then lead to a boss stage. The boss stages are amongst the most creative and enjoyable sections I’ve ever encountered in a game. Despite the fact that Kirby can’t die, these battles still require the utmost effort in order to complete. As with the regular stages, the boss levels require you to collect the jewels they release when they are hit. While there are gold, silver and bronze statues, same as in the stages, there is an additional batch needs to be acquired to get a patch that unlocks more levels. Should that be accomplished, you’ll unlock two additional stages per land.

Depending on how you look at it, Kirby’s Epic Yarn is a relatively short adventure. Because of the easy difficulty and the lack of dying, most people will be able to finish the core stages in less than 7 hours. There is even a co-op option, which makes things twice as simple. While this may seem like a low number, it only applies if you rush through and don’t bother searching for any of the secrets or unlock the additional stages. There is a lot of extra content as well (in addition to the extra stages). The treasures collected throughout the adventure are required to dress up a number of apartments. Once a room is correctly spruced up, harder bonus stages will be unlocked. These include finding a certain number of hidden characters or collecting a specific number of jewels in a set amount of time. Although they start off easy, once you get to the second or third one, you really need to move quickly in order to complete them. The jewels also allow you to buy furniture for Kirby’s own apartment and there are a lot of creative ways to make his place shine.

Among the collectibles in each stage is the music track of that particular level. The in-game soundtrack is absolutely incredible with some really fantastic tunes that complement the wonderful graphics and fun level-designs. The only questionable use of sound in-game is the narrator during cut-scenes. He’s not awful by any means, but his ‘grandfather’ voice will definitely not appeal to most. He does deliver some funny lines, but hearing him repeat ‘you found the magic yarn’ does get a bit stale.

Conclusion

Even when I was frustrated, it was only because I wanted to collect as much as possible and unlock everything there is. Kirby’s Epic Yarn is an absolutely fantastic game that offers so much enjoyment thanks to the large number of unlockables, stunning graphics and incredible stages. Fans of Kirby and those who enjoy a good side-scrolling platformer should not hesitate to give this a try. Even with the cuteness factor at eleven, there is absolutely no shame in playing and enjoying yourself.