During this week the Game Developers Conference (GDC) was held in San Francisco, where numerous video game studios presented themselves. One of them was Hal Laboratory, the team behind the classic Kirby, who attended the event to celebrate (one year late) the 30th anniversary of the video game, in addition to presenting behind-the-scenes images to the Kirby Dream Land Deluxe and Forgotten Land games.
Taking advantage of the instance, the Polygon medium took the opportunity to interview those in charge of the Kirby conference, the executive director Shinya Kumazaki and the expert director Tatsuya Kamiyama, where they took advantage of asking them curious questions regarding the pink character, the most striking being those that all fans of Kirby has ever been done and that the directors agreed to answer.
How is the interior of Kirby? What’s inside everyone’s favorite custard pie?
– Dreams. Full of dreams Of course, we want to keep a mysterious side to Kirby. So I’ll say we’ll keep it a mystery.
Then what if Kirby swallowed another Kirby?
– Kirby’s ability is to swallow and copy an object’s ability. In previous games, there would be times when a yellow Kirby was swallowed by a pink Kirby. The pink Kirby would spit it out. So nothing really would happen. In terms of game design, we haven’t created any special reactions associated with that.
– But since Kirby’s ability is copying, and he swallows another Kirby with the same ability, it wouldn’t change anything. Although I think it would be fun if two Kirbys appeared.
Most important of all, what happens to the enemies that Kirby swallows? Does Kirby swallow them mean their lives are over?
– Because the base world is a fantasy world, it’s not like they’re swallowed and digested inside Kirby. Because that could be disconcerting, and because we made the game to be accessible, having that kind of extreme or violent expression could deny the game that accessibility.
Instead, we get this hilarious, comedic representation where the enemies go poof!. When an enemy or creature is swallowed by Kirby, they may disappear, but reappear somewhere else in the world.
It’s interesting to know that Hal Laboratory has already considered these types of questions and given them answers that keep the logic of the world built for Kirby. Without a doubt, the little pink ball is already part of the hearts of all its players, and now they can sleep peacefully knowing that Kirby’s interior is full of dreams and his enemies are only sent to another side of the world.
