Kirby And The Forgotten Land And Star Allies Were One Big "Connected Project" For HAL Laboratory

It's interesting how developers have such a different perspective like this. As far as consumers are concerned, Star Allies feels like a "been-there, done-that" retread of the 3DS games, while Forgotten Land is a fresh new beginning for the series.

@EarthboundBenjy Honestly, most people don't know what it takes to develop a game.

Hoping future games skew more toward 2D platformers than 3D. Got Star Allies in from Gamefly a few months back and thought it was okay but very little about it felt like it really needed to be a 3D platformer - if anything a lot of the time it kind of just felt like a lot of walking straight through wide open space with nothing really going on - and really in general I'm an advocate for franchises staying in their lane.

Though something I think would improve Kirby games in general is cutting down on weird whole game setpiece mechanics that are seemingly only there for trailers. Pretty much a thing they've been doing since Triple Deluxe and I think Robobot's really the only time it's felt like it's actually added much to the experience.

I assume that part of the reasoning has to do with HAL's game engine/framework that has been continuously in development since Return to Dream Land, but Kirby Star Allies played a huge role for several reasons: It's the first game where a very large majority of the game code is using their scripting system (more than any of their previous games), and also a lot of work in terms of HD game development. Forgotten Land is actually still using this engine/framework, but with huge updates.

HAL has went on record that they want their developers to focus on the game, and not fight with their engine's technical aspects, where they basically wanted their engine to be easy to use, robust, fast and secure (as in mistakes shouldn't impede development).
For example their reasoning to use the script engine to program the game has to do in making compilation faster but also allowing to hot reload it, to make more iterations even faster.

There's probably more to it, but I totally think this played a major role in the development of Forgotten Land.

Well, Kirby games on Switch are the only way I can start to get into Kirby games since I still struggle to find Kirby games on 3DS and Wii as they were nowhere to be founded (sold out) or tagged with inflated price from Ebay.
I didn't have any interest with Kirby games before until when I was curious to check the Kirby games stock from my local game stores, the old Kirby games (3DS) were sold out and they didn't restock Star Allies anymore. Luckily, I got the used Kirby Star Allies from my country.
My impression with Kirby Star Allies is so-so, a little bit more interesting than 2D Mario games.

@Anti-Matter Where are you based? In the UK, the 3DS games range from about £20 for Triple Deluxe to £45 for Robobot

Forgotten Land could have been good but felt rushed. Bad draw distance and the enemies ignored the second player completely. So much that I got the taking no hits bonus even though p2 got hit all the time.

@cmdrmarc
I live in Indonesia. 🇮🇩
Kirby 3DS games are nowhere to be founded in Indonesia, only the Battle Royale 3DS still available.

@Anti-Matter ah sorry, should have seen that from your profile! Sadly can one see them getting rarer when the eshop closes in march

@AstraeaV Rushed? Have you seen how many secrets this game is hiding? There are tons of hidden areas in levels, secret effects/animations in copy abilities, weird boss gimmicks and more. There's a lot more polish and replay-ability in this game compared to Star Allies, and it was truly a gem to 100%.

I think issues like the draw distance is more on the Switch hardware itself rather than Kirby since it happens frequently in other games too. This is quite frequent in games like BOTW, and you can even see it in the new Splatoon 3 game. On more powerful hardware, this would not be an issue and Kirby ATFL would probably even run at 60fps. As for 2 player mode, it's more so designed as an "assist" mode so all the enemy attack and aggro should be going to Player 1. At least it's a better 2 player mode than Mario Odyssey!

Star Allies was great, especially after the DLC, felt like a proper celebration of the entire Kirby series between the massive soundtrack and all the different cameo characters. My only real gripe with the game is the 30FPS.

Forgotten Land I personally just found to be really bland and slow, I couldn't even muster enough interest to complete it, which is quite rare for me.

I loved playing the Arena modes with all the unlocked characters in Star Allies. Star Allies is flawed but it's a good game to play with someone new to gaming. I played all of Star Allies with my mom and it was perfect for us both to enjoy. It's very focused on being a game you play with someone else getting into gaming. I'm glad that option is out there because I can't play a lot of games with her. Mario is a bit too hard because she can fall a lot and other then Kirby, she loves Mario Party.

Forgotten Land is definitely super fun with someone or solo and can stand on it's own a lot better in single player.

Anyway, I've been following Kirby games for YEARS and they all influence each other honestly. Games that came before are always all stepping stones for the next idea. The cancelled gamecube game became RTDL, the canceled Tilt n Tumble game idea looks like it got reworked into Dream Buffet. Battle Royale and Blow Out Blast were also stepping stones for 3D development.

HAL doesn't waste a thing. Development always seems to go towards something in the long run. Ideas cancelled get explored again. It's so a cool to see how their work and history is layered.

@Lizuka Yeah I don't think Kirby needs to "stay and their lane"

and the massive success of Forgotten Land and the positive reception is proof of that. Kirby can now do 3D and 2D with proven empirical and critical success lol

So I'm sure HAL is gonna keep doing what makes money and gets critical praise and keep working on 3D. I'm sure they will also keep making 2D options as well. Much like Mario has both, Kirby will have both. Buy what you like of the two but I don't think 3D is going anywhere or that Kirby needs to stay in any one lane anymore.

What I’m hearing is that Hal believes that the two games should come together in one package. I agree.

Forgotten Land is such a good game!

Forgotten Land is so good. I remember thinking Star Allies was ok but i never finished it. It’s a good game to play in co-op with my kids. I might start it from the beginning on my Switch Lite, it seems like a good game to play on the bus and in my break at work now that I finished Let’s Go Pikachu which was perfect in handheld. I hated using the joycon vertically in docked mode so i never bothered with it much until i finished Pokemon Legends Arceus and wanted another Pokemon game to play.

Same as everyone else, except for my 8 year old cousin, Star Allies was a big disappointment… didn’t really play much of the game as got bored so quick (it feels so easy). Forgotten land is a great and fun game. And I’ve almost completed the game. However because Star Allies was so lackluster I hesitated to buy FL.

@AstraeaV I dont think there is any other way to design this game. The game is about Kirby not Bandana. The focus has to be on him so if the boss is running away from Kirb then it ruins the hero's perspective.

Kirby is ultra-casual. No one but a goon really cares that you can easily kite with Kirby and stab away with Bandana. It great for kids. Mine naturally kite all day - they have trouble beating the trickier bosses otherwise. They never dont play co-op and they have close to 40 hours in the game (they pkay the same levels over and over again). They adore this game more than any other since Animal Crossing.

I finished Star Allies at around 95% completion recently and really enjoyed it. I know many people were "meh" on it but I thought it was a great game to play with my 7-year-old kids that didn't demand a lot of my time. I look forward to checking out Kirby and the Forgotten Land maybe later this year.

It could be the the devs have some magical perspective that makes these two totally different games seem like one big project. Or it could be that they're using flowery words and waxing poetic about two completely different games that had very different business objectives.

Star Allies has great fanservice, but when it comes to 2D Kirby, I believe Planet Robobot has been the best one yet.

While completely different, Forgotten Land is definitely the better game. So happy that Kirby finally made the transition to 3D, and successfully!

> Check out Nintendo Dream for the original full Forgotten Land interview

That's not the "original full interview", it's only a few excerpts they didn't include in the Nintendo Dream magazine (it does not include the translated segment here). The actual interview itself is only in the magazine itself (which is not free, so there are no links to it)

Star Allies is, at least to me, everything the old 2d platformers wanted to be without hardware limitations and then some, they succeeded at that, the game is excellent!!

Return to Dreamland remains my all time favorite Kirby 2D game.
Forgotten Land was awesome…loved it!

I think both Star Allies and Forgotten Land are amazing to me, especially the latter for being my new favorite Kirby game on Switch.

I really liked how Star Allies became the "greatest hits" of the modern 2D entries in terms of gameplay mechanics and the nostalgic callbacks, making it a 9/10 to me at least. Sure, the game didn't get "better" until the updates and the game was "too easy" (even though I'd argue that the other mainline games fall in the same hole, Forgotten Land included even with Wild Mode, but not a bad thing), but I had a blast with it regardless.

And while Forgotten Land is a phenomenal entry for the series and one that left me surprised in the end, FL also happened to be my favorite "3D Mario Switch" game for being closer to what I wanted in that regard (Super Mario Odyssey is amazing, but it felt "too open" in many areas and while Super Mario 3D World is a blast left and right, it's a Wii U port).

Either way, I feel like HAL Laboratory has been carrying my Switch the most for me in terms of quality, so...yeah, keep it up, guys

Edit: Adding to this, aside from Yoshi's Crafted World (yuck), I enjoyed all of Nintendo's platformers on Switch