Kirby: Planet Robobot

Kirby: Planet Robobot is not just the best Kirby game on the 3DS, but one of the best entries in the whole series, telling a surprisingly thoughtful story about rampant capitalist greed, the dangers of technological progress, and imperialism. Its level design is also both complex and varied, never letting the new gimmick interrupt the flow of the action.

The opening cutscene shows Planet Popstar in peace – King Dedede is playing chess, Kirby is sleeping, Meta Knight is looking cool – when suddenly the shadow of a huge alien spacecraft is cast on them. The Access Ark, as it is called, arrives unannounced on Popstar and installs drills on the ground, dropping machines from the sky, mechanizing the whole planet. When Kirby wakes up and sees his land taken and transformed, he sets out to the Ark.

The first area in the game is aptly named Patched Plains, as the green hills of old are now merged with technology, patched with giant lamps that litter and light the background as if announcing the dawn of this new age of industry and electricity. This first world is designed to depict continuing progress in technology: it starts with the lamps in the background caging the trees, advances to a level with a railroad that shows a train moving through a brown and desolate background, and then – in a sudden jump – it ends with a level that boasts a huge a metal tower, bolted to the ground, full of digital panels and lasers.

This technological progress is not framed in a good light. The first major boss, the famous tree called Wispy Woods, is now part machine. It’s no wonder that the character is referred to as “the first victim” in the game: it had its form twisted into one of a grotesque robot, a monstrous blend of wood and metal. Technology in Planet Robobot perverts and twists nature and Kirby is fighting to revert the process.

Parts of the landscape have also been mechanized: by bolting a giant screw, Kirby can move platforms and hills back and forth from the background to the foreground of the screen, creating and destroying entire hills and platforms in the process. Technology has brought progress to Kirby’s world – there are now plenty of urban areas in Popstar, with cars and tall buildings – but the planet itself is paying the cost.

The villains in Planet Robobot are part of a large corporation, the Haltmann Works Company. Kirby’s main enemy here is a CEO. These villains share a capitalist mindset, for when they look at untapped natural resources, such as Planet Popstar, they see just wealth to be acquired. They have come to explore Kirby’s land dry and make a considerable sum: “Just look at this planet. Clean air, fresh water…There is a wealth of natural resources to be found here,” one of the villains says. They bring the promise of technology and progress with them but, as Whispy Woods can attest, it’s all a ruse, for in their hands, what technology actually does is warp and twist the body, the mind, and the land, all in the name of profit.

The first character Kirby meets is Haltamnn’s executive assistant, Susie, who sings the company’s motto – which is just an ode to its founder – and boasts about the value of hard work, just before revealing what “hard work” really means: she shows that her company took one of Kirby’s friends and transformed them into a mindless machine, a worker that doesn’t think, doesn’t complain, just obey, becoming a cog in their machine.

The narrative in Planet Robobot is not subtle about its themes. One of the bosses is a machine made of giant cogs, called C.O.G.S., for example. Meanwhile, Haltmann himself appears in a power suit made of gold and damages Kirby by throwing money at the screen. Susie talks about Planet Popstar with imperialist terms, framing its people as brute savages that can’t be reasoned with: “You natives need to be taught some manners,” she says, implying that invading a land, exploiting its people, and exploring its resources until there’s nothing left is… civilized. Haltmann, then, drives the point home: “Savages! Savages! You’re all wild savages!” he yells at Kirby.

But Planet Robobot argues that what is truly barbaric is Haltmann’s capitalist mentality, showing that after reaching a certain point, profit can only continue to grow through exploitation or destruction, through violence against the people or against the land. Haltmann employs an AI that reaches the same logical conclusion, that the only way to achieve eternal prosperity  is to “eradicate all life forms in existence.” The endgame of capitalism is the end of the world.

The story is further developed by boss entries that are, unfortunately, hidden away in the pause menu during their fights – a baffling tradition in the Kirby games. These small pieces of text are great, displaying even a bit of humor and irony in the company’s propaganda: the entry when fighting one of the versions of the mechanized Wispy Woods, for example, lauds the new model for being… environmentally friendly. So it’s just a pity that these lore entries were put in such an unintuitive and temporary place.

But Planet Robobot is also brimming with creativity when it comes to the general themes of its stages. In the water-themed world, for example, one level takes place in a harbor – where Kirby must use a wheel powerup to blast through obstacles at rapid speed –, but there’s also an ice cream factory – where we have to watch out for the giant ice cream cones being formed in the background before they fall in Kirby’s direction – and even a luminous underwater city: Kirby’s own Rapture can be seen in the background while the hero avoids mechanical sharks.

The second world is an urban one. Kirby goes into a casino, drives a plane between skyscrapers, and even visits a city of Waddle Dees, where they drive cars and buses, which Kirby can destroy while piloting a robobot – the silly name the game gives to its mechas. Since they don’t go after Kirby, damaging him only if we try to cross the street without paying attention to traffic lights, it’s funny to notice how Kirby is actually wreaking havoc in the poor Waddle Dee city completely unprovoked: they are just there, living their lives, trying to get to work in time, being a cog in the capitalist machine, when suddenly this pink ball comes out of nowhere driving an imposing mecha and punches their vehicles to smithereens.

The robobot is a mighty mecha that gives Kirby the power to destroy most obstacles and enemies in the game. At the Casino level, for example, there are giant snooker balls that can crush the protagonist, so we have to be careful when traversing the stage, minding their speed and position to avoid getting hit by them. The robobot changes this power dynamic, for after acquiring the suit, now it’s Kirby who is smashing the giant balls, utterly destroying the previously dangerous obstacles.

With the robobot, some enemies in the background are now within Kirby’s grasp, too, and some platforms he had to jump over can now be demolished with just one hit. This means that, instead of being used only in scripted parts of the level that were designed just for it – like the gimmick in Return to Dreamland –, the robobot suit changes how the player approaches the same old enemies and obstacles, folding the level design: sometimes, Kirby has to go back to where he came from, now powered up by the suit, which modifies how he can tackle the same challenges.

But the level design is careful to teach us early on that mindlessly breaking through everything in our path is unwise. Treasure chests, for example, can be lost in the havoc: in the very first stage where Kirby rides the robobot, he can destroy some wooden logs that he had to jump over before acquiring the suit, but one of these logs is supporting a treasure chest that will fall into the abyss if we break its platform. There are also many puzzles to solve with the mecha, as the robobot’s powers – it can copy abilities just like Kirby – allows the player to interact with new elements in the levels, pushing giant blocks, moving platforms, or activating remote switches using bombs that move on their own.

Puzzles that involve the robobot are much more complex than anything found in previous games, especially Return to Dreamland. The bomb Power up, for example, gives the suit the ability to create little walking bombs that move always forward and climb on walls. The puzzles, then, are about making sure that these bombs can hit the target – usually, a switch that opens the path forward to a collectible – by doing several different actions. Sometimes, we have to activate other switches at the right time to create platforms that prevent the bombs from falling into a hole before hitting their target. Sometimes, we have to hit switches to create walls for the bomb to climb over, building a path for it. Sometimes, we have to time their release correctly so that they can avoid hitting enemies or moving obstacles on the way.

Since Triple Deluxe, Kirby can move between layers of the screen using a teleporter, allowing the game to take advantage of the 3D effect of the 3DS, and Planet Robobot shows a lot of creativity when it comes to using this feature. In one level, these layers function with different rules: when Kirby moves to the background, the camera moves automatically to the right, but when he’s in the foreground the character can move freely without the danger of being stuck in a part of the level. In most stages, several enemies or hazards can be seen coming from the background, such as the buses and cars in Waddle Dee city: we can see them driving down the road in the background before they reach the foreground and hit Kirby, which allows us time to prepare. The game also presents small puzzles and platform challenges involving a small robot that Kirby controls with a remote: the robot copies Kirby’s movements and actions in the background, which means that we have to plan for obstacles in two different layers of the screen at the same time.

Planet Robobot’s main problem is that the main collectible in the game is quite useless: throughout the stages, we can collect stickers to customize the robobot suit, but we can only put two of them on the suit at the same time and they are a bit small. Since we are dealing with a 3DS screen with its 240p resolution, this means that we can barely notice the stickers during normal gameplay.

To make up for this, the post-game content is great. After beating the story mode, we can unlock two different types of arenas that function as a boss rush mode – the second one is particularly challenging – and a special time trial mode, where we play with another character with their own unique move set, alongside some revamped bosses and a couple of new ones at the end.

Kirby: Planet Robobot is one of the most challenging, complex, and engaging games in the series, offering a surprisingly fascinating story and an overall excellent level design.

October 19, 2022.