PREVIEW
Kirby Mass Attack's Director Discusses Designing Kirby For Children
(NintendoDS)
Nintendo personnel talk about developing the multi-Kirby gameplay and how it appeals to both children and adult fans.
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We had a chance to ask the normally elusive developers at Nintendo and HAL Laboratory some quick questions via email, and took this opportunity to ask things such as why Kirby works in multiple genres. Answering questions are HAL Laboratory producer Masanobu Yamamoto (Kirby's Epic Yarn), and Mass Attack director Mari Shirakawa (her credits include Kirby Super Star Ultra, Kirby & the Amazing Mirror, Kirby: Canvas Curse, and Picross 3D).
1UP: What were the original design goals for Kirby Mass Attack and can you talk about some of the things you learned in the early prototype stages?
Masanobu Yamamoto: When we came up with the idea for Kirby Mass Attack, our goal was to create a world in which the player could experience the feeling of controlling a group and going on an adventure while walking with the characters in that group. However, we went through a trial-and-error phase in which we determined whether to make the game a more atmosphere-based game that focused on the enjoyment of the feeling of controlling a group; or to focus more on gameplay; and ended up steering toward the action-game direction.
1UP: The character of Kirby seems to very flexible compared to other Nintendo characters -- Kirby has appeared in many different games with very different mechanics. What is it about Kirby that makes him fit into lots of types of games as opposed to other platformer characters?
MY: Up until now, the Kirby series has incorporated fun gameplay into its world without regard for genre. Also, the thoughts of successive generations of Kirby creators from various genres have given sunlight to the tree that is Kirby -- given that tree fresh water, and gently supported its growth. I think this diversity has led to the unparalleled flexibility that is a unique quality of the Kirby world. Without even being restrained by the genre, we have strategically worked to break free from past images so that we never stop at a fixed image of what Kirby is.
1UP: Can you talk about the overall development process for Mass Attack?
Mari Shirakawa: The truth is that I wasn't part of this project from the beginning. I joined in March 2010. From that time onward, I'll tell you what kind of process we followed and what our thoughts were in the development of this game.
When I first joined the project and tried playing the game, the stages were created in the style of a typical single-character action game. If the stages were left unchanged, larger groups would lead to more and more stress, and degrade the tempo of the action. So I had the team redesign the stages to have more space and be more conducive to group control. In a single-character action game, you can create intricate stage designs because you can control a single character freely, so all you have to do is raise the athletic element of the game and focus on that single character. However, in group control, the number of characters ranges from one-to-ten, and it's absolutely necessary that the gameplay be comfortable even when there are 10 characters. This meant that we had to redesign the stages while again and again examining the lengths of footings, jump distances, camera settings, and other factors for different numbers of characters and different approaches.
Also, because of the reasons given above, we weren't able to add as much of an athletic element to the stages, so we decided to concentrate the challenge of this game in its enemies. We created new enemies that were suited for group action. Because when you control a group, a variety of objects are moving around independently on a single screen, we decided to make the enemy designs and attack timings simple. We also worked to ensure that you could figure out an enemy's behavior upon first glance.
Also, to make players aware of the numbers in their group, we made attacks with more characters much more powerful than attacks with fewer characters, and prepared mechanisms whose movement is dependent on the number of characters in the group. The stage selection map, which consists of a series of concentric circles, is not one of those mechanisms, but it is an idea that that we used to make players aware of the number of Kirbys. I think this map makes the game's focus on increasing and maintaining the number of Kirbys clear.
Next, I will talk about what my thoughts and priorities were when developing this game.
I believe that because the Kirby series has a long history, when you create a Kirby title, you have to satisfy both longtime fans of the series and new (younger) fans. Also, because it's a series, I have a duty to create something that will satisfy players and lead to the next game.
We ended up spending a good deal of time trying to bridge the gap between longtime Kirby fans and new Kirby fans. We probably spent the most time making the game enjoyable for younger players by working on constructing an easy-to-understand system with intuitive controls. On top of that system, we added challenging elements to give the game more depth. We adjusted the game over and over again to ensure that we wouldn't betray the hopes of people who have enjoyed Kirby up until now and so that people who are playing Kirby for the first time will like it.
This time, the fact that the player has to control multiple Kirbys can inevitably make the game more difficult than normal Kirby games. We worried about whether small children would enjoy this game all the way to the very end.
However, when I saw my niece, a first grader in elementary school who has hardly ever played any video games, enjoying the game and heard her say that she had finally found a game that she could have fun playing, and when I saw people commenting on the Internet that the game is fun, I was finally able to feel at ease.
Of course there are many points that I think could be improved. As people around the world enjoy this game, I want to apply what I've learned to the next Kirby game.
See all Kirby: Mass Attack Previews >
Comments (2)
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Don't get me started
Posted: userComment.createdDate by GodHandCooper
on OTHER kirbys, there are SO MANY that have been amazing games in their own right.
I'll just start for us SNES fans by mentioning Kirby's Dream Course, an isometric golf/minigolf game complete with spin-curve, back and front-spin and Copy-Powers. Aside from that AMAZING spinoff, there's Tilt-N-Tumble, Pinball Land, Star Stacker, Block Ball, and if you want to count America's 2nd taste of Puyo Puyo(after Sega's bizarre Sonic TV show-flavored Mean Bean Machine) there's Kirby's Avalanche.
I rented the crap out of Dream Course back in the day, that game is freaking hard, especially trying to learn which powers to go for and in which order on a given course in order to take the fewest amount of strokes possible...
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Kirby
Posted: userComment.createdDate by ngamer-90
Is so flexible in games that you can put him into any genre and it'll benefit the gameplay while trying to stay true to it's core elements. A Kirby RPG would be neat, seems weird but would love to see what HAL Labs and Sakurai come up with. We already had that Kirby RPG mini game in Super Star and the Kirby Quest in Mass Attack so why not? And Kirby is just that awesome.
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Vitals
- Game:
- Kirby: Mass Attack
- Platforms:
- Nintendo DS
- Genre:
- Action
- Publisher:
- Nintendo
- Developer:
- Hal Laboratory
- ESRB Rating:
- Rating Pending
- Release Date:
- 09/20/2011
- Also Known As:
- N/A
1UP Editor Score: A-
Average Community Score: NA
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