Kirby finally went 3D with Kirby and the Forgotten Land last year, and according to director Tatsuya Kamiyama, a big reason it took so long was due to the character’s pink sphere shape. Kamiyama explained why this was such a big hurdle during a session at GDC 2023 this week.

Kamiyama noted:

“When you rotate a sphere, you can’t really tell it’s spinning. Kirby has a simple, spherical design, so it’s hard to tell which direction Kirby is facing when viewed from behind For Kirby’s ranged attacks, it’s a major problem if the player misjudges the direction the character is facing.Kirby attacks by inhaling enemies and spitting them out.For this reason, if you miss, you must find another enemy to inhale, which is very frustrating.

HAL Laboratory wanted to make sure everyone could have a good time with Kirby and the Forgotten Earth. To that end, the team has implemented a feature that most of you are probably unaware of. Interestingly, Kirby’s ranged attacks automatically target enemies if they meet certain criteria based on a point system.

As reported by IGNThat’s how it works :

Enemies receive points if they’re already roughly in the direction Kirby is facing (so obviously Kirby can’t hit enemies directly behind him, for example), and receive more points if the enemy is dangerously close to Kirby or is important in some way (like a boss). Additionally, attacks while Kirby is on the ground will not target enemies in the air, but Air Search is stronger to account for the difficulty of aiming in the air.

We have to mention that Kirby and the Forgotten Land has nothing like auto-aim. HAL Laboratory wanted to include this as a way to help players, but wanted to make sure they still had a real reason to aim. Most searches occur during the first frame of the attack and, according to IGN, “then decrease significantly as the attack continues.” There are also depth fixes, such as when Kirby tries to hit an enemy who appears to be next to him, but is actually slightly behind or ahead.

Another thing that was mentioned during the GDC session is that Kirby and the Forgotten Land uses a fixed camera system to help new players. This allowed the development team to implement different ideas, such as stopping its movement to let players know which areas are out of bounds, and decentering it to focus on important game objects or obstacles in levels.

Kirby and the Forgotten Land is now available on Switch.

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