Kirby is arguably one of Nintendo’s most beloved mascots and Nintendo just recently released a game centered around Kirby’s favorite thing: food.
“Kirby’s Dream Buffet” was released on Aug. 17 to the Nintendo eShop and retails for $14.99. Coming from one of Nintendo’s best-selling characters, $14.99 is a complete bargain.
Each level is a food lover’s dream, styled around various menu items. Players must roll around and try to eat as many strawberries as they can to make Kirby as big as possible.
“Kirby’s Dream Buffet” also introduces new copy abilities, where Kirby will take on powers reminiscent of the food they were based on. These copy abilities likely won’t see a return in a main-series Kirby game, however it is the cherry on top of “Dream Buffet.”
While it isn’t the most revolutionary gameplay, “Kirby’s Dream Buffet” is still fun to play with friends or family. You can play with one person on the same system or up to three others with an online or local connection.
This can be a bit frustrating for families with only one Nintendo Switch system and the game would benefit from allowing all four players to be on the same console. When playing with another person on the same console, the other two slots are filled by CPU characters.
“Kirby’s Dream Buffet” would have been a perfect game for a four-player local mode and it feels like a huge missed opportunity.
The main gameplay of “Dream Buffet” is the Gourmet Grand Prix. It is broken into four stages – two race-like levels, a minigame, and the Main Course, an all-out battle royale to try and collect the most strawberries while also ensuring your opponents don’t knock you off the stage to steal your strawberries.
Each stage is a perfect concoction of chaos and during the final level, players can go from first place to last if they aren’t careful.
Even though the different levels can get repetitive if you play for too long, “Kirby’s Dream Buffet” is a great game to put on during short amounts of downtime. The Gourmet Grand Prix is fast-paced and each round only takes a few minutes, so it is a low time commitment.
If Nintendo chooses to continue updating “Kirby’s Dream Buffet” with new levels and tweaks the local multiplayer to allow four players on one system, it has the potential to go from a nice snack to a full-course meal.
