Kirby and the Rainbow Curse is a pretty fun game. It boasts beautiful clay like graphics, great use of the GamePad, and some of the best music I’ve heard in quite a while but some things just don’t clay well with this game.
The story of Rainbow Curse is pretty standard Kirby fare. Kirby is rolling around in Dreamland chasing after apples and butterflies when suddenly some hand appear from the sky and take all the color away with them, freezing Kirby and his friend Waddle Dee. Following this, a magical paintbrush comes and re-paints Kirby and Waddle Dee to help her save the rest of the worlds. It’s a bit simple and none of the characters are explained in game unless you get a book at the end of a level. But this is very hard to do and, since the level are long, I never felt it was worth the effort.
GamePlay of Rainbow Curse is really quite unique. Everything takes place on the GamePad because you draw lines, called Rainbow Ropes, to guide Kirby where you want him to go. Depending on which way you draw the line, that will dictate where Kirby goes once he gets to it. So you basically never have complete control over Kirby. This makes the game really fun, but the game never rewards you for mastering it’s control. Other portions of the game transform Kirby in objects like a tank, submarine, or even a rocket. These change the game play a bit to actually be more fun than the normal game. I loved controlling the tank to have Kiry auto move while I guided him to higher or lower portions of the screen while tapping areas to tell him to shoot a ball in that spot. The submarine operates similarly expect you tap where you want Kirby to go; missiles fire automatically and you have to draw lines to lead them where you want them to go. But by far my favorite is the rocket. You get to fly and tap Kirby to make him act like a giant bomb. It’s really fun to play!
The game looks like it was made of clay. By examining the game on the TV, you can sometimes see what looks like people’s fingerprints from being implanted in the clay. It also has a smeared look to help reinforce the look. It’s a really great look that looks breathtaking on the TV, but since you won’t be playing on the TV, it’s a lost chance to truly appreciate the style. It looks ok on the GamePad, but nothing like the TV.
The real fun of Rainbow Curse can come from finding the five treasure chests and collecting the gold medal of each level. But I never felt a reason to actually do this. The chests give you figures to look at in a gallery but honestly, it’s super underwhelming. The other thing that can come out is music. The music is, in all honestly, fantastic! It features several remixes of classic Kirby music but also the new music found only in Rainbow Curse. But even this wasn’t enough to make me care about gold medals or treasure chests.
So while the game is playable mostly only on the GamePad, the other GamePad function is the use of amiibo. Taping the Kirby amiibo will let Kirby super star dash at will at any point in the level. Using the Meta Knight amiibo will give Kirby a special mask and the ability to tap dash more quickly and more powerfully. Finally, the King Dedede gives Kirby another special mask and two extra health bars. Overall, the feature isn’t awful but it doesn’t feel necessary either. In the end, it was a nice bonus to have in some of the boss levels.
All things considered, Kirby and the Rainbow Curse is not a bad game. It has some of the best graphics, music, and GamePad usage I could ask for. But the lack of a compelling story and the lack of a reason to collect the medals and chests in those levels made me not care about the game as much as I could have. For these reasons, I’m giving Kirby and the Rainbow Curse a 6.5 out of 10.
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