The month of September brought a few additional retro games to the Switch Online emulators, and for the first time in a while, there are some really interesting additions. BACKGROUND:
This was a Japan-only release back in the day, and I literally only knew of its existence when it was announced for Switch Online. I underestimated just how many spinoffs the Kirby franchise has. SUMMARY: Kirby Star Stacker is one of those block puzzle games where you match icons (in this case, sprites of Kirby's animal buddies from the Dream Land series) to clear the board. Mechanically, it feels similar to Puyo Puyo, but what separates it from that are the star blocks that can only be cleared if you place two identical icons between them. That makes it tricky to perform the usual chain combos you often see in Puyo Puyo. Other than special bomb blocks and pink blocks that need to be cleared twice, the game is straightforward. Getting chain combos causes star blocks to drop into your board, which can keep the combo going if they happen to land in a way that leads to icons matching. In practice, I found it tricky to capitalize on this, but it's super satisfying when it works to your advantage. The game has a number of modes: your usual endless mode, a mode that's split into rounds (and progression is determined by the number of star blocks you clear), a time attack where you try to clear as many star blocks as possible before the timer expires, and a two-player versus mode where you try to get combos to fill up the opponent's board. In addition, there's actually a story mode where King Dedede causes trouble by shooting a sentient star out of the sky and Kirby must once again fix things. As the game is in Japanese, I couldn't glean much more than that, but the flow of this mode has Kirby beat the shit out of classic Kirby enemies on his way to King Dedede. This mode is the only way you can play the versus mode in a single player setting, and the latter stages are actually pretty tough. I was quite impressed by the visuals of the game. The sprites are pretty detailed (especially the character art and the stills for the story mode), and I liked the coloring book vibe of the art style. VERDICT: Kirby Star Stacker isn't that groundbreaking in terms of block puzzlers I've played, but the simple addition of the star blocks adds a layer of trickiness to the game that I enjoyed playing around. It has pretty much all the modes I generally want in games like this, so I'm satisfied. It's certainly more unique than Kirby's Avalanche, so I gotta give it points for that. Give this game a try if you're in the mood for a simple puzzle game that can either be chill or challenging depending on the difficulty you choose for any of the modes. - end -
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