The focus is on multiplayer, though the game can be fully experienced by yourself offline if you so choose. It’s a novel idea that starts to crumble along the way as this game aims to satisfy many types of players but doesn’t seem to hold their attention along the way. While past spinoffs have touched on rhythm games and even Monster Hunter, Dream Buffet sets its sights on a Fall Guys-esque structure that pits rounded rolling Kirbys against each other in cake races and food-centric mini-game battles.

Forgotten Land is up there with the best Kirby adventures ever, whereas Dream Buffet is the latest in a line of adorable download-only Kirby spinoffs that riffs on a familiar concept through the lens of a pink puffball. Chilli peppers, for example, allow you to trigger a burning pepper attack that can be used to knock rivals off course or bash through obstacles.Following up on the excellent Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Kirby’s Dream Buffet might be a bit of a sugar crash. You also sometimes come across different types of food whose properties you can adopt in order to unleash attacks on your rivals. If you fall off a stage, you have a limited amount of time to hover him back onto it, via manic button-bashing, although while you’re doing that, your rivals will be making good progress towards the finishing line. As you run over the cholesterol-packed treats and fruit that stud each stage, your Kirby grows in size and as he does so, his speed increases.

You have to race to the end of each stage, propelling Kirby like a ball, in the style of Marble Madness or Super Monkey Ball. It features a number of courses constructed from the most sugary of desserts, studded with fruit, but mainly composed of whipped cream, biscuits, and cake icing. The universe in which the game takes place is beautifully rendered, in typical Nintendo fashion, but merely witnessing it could lead to a hardening of the arteries.

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