Kirby’s Epic Yarn dispenses with some of the common elements of every Kirby game—most notably, the ability to suck up enemies and steal their powers—in exchange for some other creative ideas. The main concept is that the entire world is made up of yarn and fabric, including the creatures and Kirby himself. As such, it’s possible to interact with the world around you in unique ways. For instance, you might find a spot where you can’t cross a gap because it’s too wide. No problem: simply pull the thread above you and the background wrinkles, yanking the far side of the platform in your direction.
There are also plenty of patches around the levels which can be yanked from the background via Kirby’s basic attack (where he throws out a string of yarn, lasso-style, to rope in any nearby enemies or influence the environment), revealing gems and other goodies. You can unzip zippers to separate fabric and drop platforms and even open holes in the backdrop to allow you to pass to the other side of the fabric.
If your yarn lasso happens to come into contact with an enemy, it’ll rope them in and Kirby will hold them over his head in the form of a little ball, which he can then predictably throw. The yarn/fabric mechanic is heavily and logically utilized, and it truly serves as yet more evidence that the 2D platformer can still be twisted and improved.
As yarn Kirby progresses, he’ll enjoy the company of a helper (namely, Prince Fluff) should you happen to have a friend handy. This helper plays in essentially the same way as our pink hero, although in certain situations, the second player splits the responsibilities with Kirby. In one particular portion of the demo, for instance, Kirby transforms into an enormous tank—and the second player can rotate the tank’s arm by tilting the Wii remote to fire it at enemies (and even hold it down to send the fist rocketing away, controlling its path concurrently).
The cooperative experience as a whole feels a lot less New Super Mario Bros. and a lot more, well, Kirby, primarily thanks to the fact that, while you can indeed pick up the other player and throw them, there’s not much else you can do to really piss them off. In fact, the demo didn’t even display any signs of a life meter or even a number of lives. It remains to be seen whether this will be the case in the final version, but currently, when you take damage, you simply lose gems which contribute eventually to your completion ranking for the level. That’s it!
Also, I didn’t know how to integrate this into my write-up, so I’ll just say that I also noticed three different collectible extras per level, one of which is the requisite music CD made of yarn.
Anyway, there were three areas in total shown during the roughly fifteen-minute long E3 demo: a tutorial, an actual level, and a boss. The boss was easy but relatively entertaining: a dragon made of yarn he was, vulnerable to having his tongue yanked by Kirby and Fluff. You can also lasso his little fireballs and toss them back at him if you so choose.
Kirby’s Epic Yarn shows a lot of promise as a console platformer, and it’s quite clearly one of the most visually attractive Wii games to date as well. It was a favorite amongst our editors, and we’ll be sure to bring you more about it as soon as we’ve got it, starting with a great deal more footage later this weekend.
