After a lifetime of Mario, Kirby is pleasantly weird

Kirby and I, it seems, have grown up alongside each other, while remaining largely separate. I have been living my life, Kirby has been living his. A lot of what I’ve been doing in my life, though, is playing games that are almost, but never quite, Kirby. Over the last few years I have played a few Kirby spin-offs, but the main adventures I have left quite alone. Instead, I’ve been hanging out with Mario, Wonder Boy, the running man from Impossible Mission. (I love that guy.)

Kirby’s Return to Dreamland DeluxePublisher: NintendoDeveloper: HAL LaboratoryPlatform: Played on SwitchAvailability: Out now on Switch

Now, though, I’ve met Kirby on his own territory, in the form of Kirby’s Return to Dreamland Deluxe, for the Switch. This is a fancy version of a Kirby game for the Wii, I gather. It comes to the Switch with a handful of new things – most excitingly new abilities based on sand and mechas. Reading around I gather that Return to Dreamland was not Kirby at his very best. A lot of reviewers thought it was boring. But to me, separated from Kirby for so long, it is all new, in a manner of speaking. As such, I’m finding it quite a weird game to play.

What I mean is that it’s similar enough in the basics to other platformers I have played to be constantly, jarringly different every few moments. And these sudden shockwaves of oddness are everywhere. Over the last few days they have become the things I have played for. Where is the next thing that will surprise me, that will feel wonderfully off?

Return to Dreamland is a 2D platformer, and for players coming from elsewhere in the Nintendo Kingdom, it’s full of semi-familiar stuff. There’s an invulnerability power-up straight out of Super Mario World, while the float move feels like an evolution of Yoshi’s strained hovering in Yoshi’s Island. When I reached the sand levels yesterday afternoon I found a boulder level that reminded me of the beautifully thrifty and choreographed platforming I once found in the New Super Mario Bros DS games. Even the rich suite of mini-challenges – of which, I gather, two are brand new – remind me of the stuff that came with Mario 64 when it landed on the DS.