Kirby's Epic Yarn preview

Stringfellow.

I won’t lie to you: I’ve never played a Kirby game before. Whilst platformers were the kind of games I cut my teeth on back in the MegaDrive and SNES days, Kirby just never quite stumbled into my path. Perhaps that’s due to the relative unpopularity of the series in the UK at the time, or perhaps it’s just down to personal ignorance. Whatever. But the point is, Kirby’s Epic Yarn is the first Kirby title I’ve ever played.

I’d seen the trailer, of course, so I knew what to expect from the fabric-themed Wii platformer, but it’s worth noting: Its even cuter than it looks. Kirby’s transition from a pink puffed ball to a loop of pink string certainly hasn’t cost him any charm, and the pastel shades of the fabric backgrounds bring to mind a brighter, kinder, flatter version of LittleBigPlanet. The effect is as though you’re looking down on a tabletop covered in bits of material and loose ends of thread, weaving your own little adventure as you go.

So its effortlessly charming. But that much you can tell from just looking at the screenshots. It’s how it plays that matters, and here’s where things could have gotten interesting. Epic Yarn is played with the Wii remote held sideways, which is usually one of my least favourite ways of playing games, but here, it works. The d-pad offers a welcome amount of precision for Kirby’s movements, which makes jumping between platforms and ledges feel sharp- unlike LBP’s slippery-slidey physics. Kirby can also attack, lashing at enemies with a piece of string to unfurl them; holding the attack button then wraps them into a ball that can be thrown at other objects or enemies. Kirby can also shift between different forms; a double tap of a direction transforms him into a car that can speed along ledges, double-tapping down mid-jump makes him a weight that can destroy enemies and blocks, and hitting jump again whilst in mid-air transforms him into a slow-falling parachute. Other transformations are handled automatically; Kirby becomes a string submarine when in water, or at one point during the demo, a rocket-firing tank. All of these forms are made up of the same pieces of string, stretched and shape in different ways, and the whole world has a wonderful wiggly quality to it that’s reminiscent of old stop-motion animations.

Some parts of the game allow Kirby to hop into the background plane, enabling him to explore houses and other objects. Rather than the cutaway view you might expect, in these sections Kirby is represented by a bump under the fabric, with ledges and other gameplay elements identifiable by stitching on the foreground. Nintendo has obviously put a lot of thought into how to use the fabric setting; treasure chests are patches on the scenery, and come with a peel-off tab that lets Kirby yank the patch away to reveal the contents. In a few sections, he can even pull stitches to cause the fabric to ruffle up and contract.

Since the levels I tested were from the beginning of the game, the challenge was pitched light, but it was still fun exploring the levels and trying to uncover their secrets. There are hundreds of gems to be collected in each level, as well as three special items that are more cunningly hidden. I didn’t have too much trouble finding them or fighting the enemies on these first levels, thought the boss- a giant yarn dragon- came close to unravelling little Kirby at one point before I worked out I had to yank its tongue to weaken it. The most fun, of course, was my brief stint as the rocket-launching tank, which fired automatically and could be aimed simply be tilting the remote to different angles. Best of all, the game is two-player, with the second player taking on an angrier, blue version of Kirby and the two able to work together to tackle obstacles- the rocket tank, for instance, changes to a bigger, armed tank that one player controls the movements of, and the other the weapons.

Written by :

James Hall