So this is a pretty neat little game on the old original Game Boy from the guys who made Lolo. Lolo and Lala even show up in it as a boss fight which is pretty fun
You play as this little monochrome blob guy who I guess is named Kirby. There's a whole species of the little blobs who show up at times but this is your specific guy I guess, and you gotta get the food back from a funny penguin king. Just very low stakes pure cartoon stuff and it's very cute. There are a ton of different enemies and characters and they're all funny little guys. There's also some really impressive sprite work given that this is the regular gameboy, with a lot of bespoke animations for your little Kirby guy to go through in tiny cutscenes. It just oozes charm.
What really stands out though is that it controls pretty differently than most platformers, in that there isn't really "platforming" per se. Kirby can inflate like a balloon and fly infinitely so the level design focuses a bit more on dealing with how that makes you a bigger target, vertical navigation, etc. It works, though. You also can't really attack directly very well. You kind of have a projectile in the form of shooting air, and you get a few temporary powerups, but mostly Kirby has to vacuum up enemies with his big round body and spit them out at other enemies. Kind of a prototype for some of what Yoshi would do on the SNES I guess.
It's fun because it's kind of gross and makes the bosses an exercise in having to figure out the right way to grab a suck-up-able item without getting hit. It could have been really tedious or rote if you were just waiting for an opportunity, and there is a little of that, but they integrate the grabbing and dodging really well and you'll never be just waiting for a long time. The game only has five levels so it's very short and fast. Took me well under an hour.
So basically this is a really nice little game and I'd actually recommend trying it to those who like cute old oddities. I think there was actually some potential to expand this. Like if you press down with Kirby has something in his mouth he swallows it, but there's no real point to that other than being cute. You could have made some puzzles out of that or something. Maybe eating things gives you some special property or powerup like Wario getting hit by different enemies. I dunno. Interesting to think about
You play as this little monochrome blob guy who I guess is named Kirby. There's a whole species of the little blobs who show up at times but this is your specific guy I guess, and you gotta get the food back from a funny penguin king. Just very low stakes pure cartoon stuff and it's very cute. There are a ton of different enemies and characters and they're all funny little guys. There's also some really impressive sprite work given that this is the regular gameboy, with a lot of bespoke animations for your little Kirby guy to go through in tiny cutscenes. It just oozes charm.
What really stands out though is that it controls pretty differently than most platformers, in that there isn't really "platforming" per se. Kirby can inflate like a balloon and fly infinitely so the level design focuses a bit more on dealing with how that makes you a bigger target, vertical navigation, etc. It works, though. You also can't really attack directly very well. You kind of have a projectile in the form of shooting air, and you get a few temporary powerups, but mostly Kirby has to vacuum up enemies with his big round body and spit them out at other enemies. Kind of a prototype for some of what Yoshi would do on the SNES I guess.
It's fun because it's kind of gross and makes the bosses an exercise in having to figure out the right way to grab a suck-up-able item without getting hit. It could have been really tedious or rote if you were just waiting for an opportunity, and there is a little of that, but they integrate the grabbing and dodging really well and you'll never be just waiting for a long time. The game only has five levels so it's very short and fast. Took me well under an hour.
So basically this is a really nice little game and I'd actually recommend trying it to those who like cute old oddities. I think there was actually some potential to expand this. Like if you press down with Kirby has something in his mouth he swallows it, but there's no real point to that other than being cute. You could have made some puzzles out of that or something. Maybe eating things gives you some special property or powerup like Wario getting hit by different enemies. I dunno. Interesting to think about