While Nintendo hasn’t shared many details on how Waddle Dee Town works, from the looks of things, it’ll give Kirby access to a couple shops, minigames, and other unique utilities like the Wise Waddle Dee. While some games like Kirby’s Return to Dream Land have featured expansive hubs before, Kirby and the Forgotten Land has a unique opportunity to implement city building in a way that previous Kirby games haven’t. As players rescue Waddle Dees from the Beast Pack, they should get the opportunity to directly control the rebuilding of Waddle Dee Town.
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Adding City Building to Kirby
Players have known since Kirby and the Forgotten Land was first revealed that the Waddle Dees are in peril, but only now do fans have a clearer sense of what the Waddle Dees do once freed from captivity. It seems that the Waddle Dees have their own former town not far from Forgotten Land’s strange lost civilization, where they’ll set up again and do their best to support Kirby in his efforts to battle the Beast Pack. Gaining more shops by saving more Waddle Dees already sounds like a great progression system for Forgotten Land, but HAL Laboratory could still take it further.
Since there’s bound to be many dozens of Waddle Dees trapped in Kirby and the Forgotten Land’s mysterious wasteland, Kirby has tons of potential NPCs to coordinate in rebuilding Waddle Dee Town. HAL could take notes from games like Bravely Default by allowing Forgotten Land players to assign a certain number of rescued Waddle Dees to a task in Waddle Dee Town; whether it’s building a new shop, or assembling together an upgrade for the shop. Setting up tasks in Waddle Dee Town, completing one of Forgotten Land’s levels, and then returning to find new amenities sounds like a pretty satisfying, efficient system.
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HAL could delve even deeper into city building by giving Kirby and the Forgotten Land players control over Waddle Dee Town’s aesthetics too. Animal Crossing: New Horizons could inspire a construction system of the same kind in Forgotten Land, allowing fans to rearrange the buildings and redecorate them on the regular. A little customization would go a long way to encourage collecting all of Kirby and the Forgotten Land’s Waddle Dees, especially if specific Waddle Dees unlock certain cosmetics for Waddle Dee Town’s shops.
Getting Experimental with Kirby
Adding city building mechanics to Kirby and the Forgotten Land would certainly be a deviation from the franchise’s standard list of features, but then, Forgotten Land is already an experimental game with its 3D design. HAL Laboratory has said that Kirby is entering a new stage of life, meaning future Kirby games could feature other drastic deviations from franchise conventions.
If that’s what HAL wants to do, then it should start strong with major risks and experimentation in Kirby and the Forgotten Land, including by implementing a detailed city building system into Waddle Dee Town. Saving Waddle Dees is bound to be rewarding, but if players can arrange ways for the Waddle Dees to give back to Kirby, then there’ll be many more long-term rewards for both players and the Kirby series to reap.
Kirby and the Forgotten Land releases on March 25, 2022, for Nintendo Switch.
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