Announced during the September 2021 Nintendo Direct, Kirby and the Forgotten Land is the pink puffball’s first fully 3D platformer with open, explorable environments. The 2018 title Kirby Star Allies was nice, albeit safe and underwhelming; largely focused on fan service. It acts like a “best of” retrospective, including DLC characters hailing from various prior games. Forgotten Land looks like a radical new turn, and developer HAL Laboratory should ensure it takes a closer look at recurring characters like Whispy Woods too.
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Whispy Woods’ History in Kirby Games
Whispy Woods was the first boss of the original Kirby’s Dream Land released on Game Boy in 1992. Found at the end of Green Greens, Whispy Woods is a giant tree with a face that takes up one whole side of the screen. Its attack patterns are simple, as Kirby either has to avoid puffs of air or suck up falling apples to use as projectiles. Though it is a boss that players can quickly dispatch, it left a huge mark on the series’ history.
Almost every single game to follow includes Whispy Woods, making it a mascot arguably as recognizable as Kirby. It’s also a boss in multiple spin-offs like Kirby’s Pinball Land, and it appears as a hazard in both the Dream Land and Green Greens stages across multiple Super Smash Bros. games. Encounters with Whispy Woods aren’t always identical though; sometimes there will be multiple on either side of the screen, or Whispy Woods may uproot itself and take up a spot in the center of the battlefield instead.
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How Forgotten Land can Shake Up Whispy Woods
Even if Kirby and the Forgotten Land takes place in a faraway world completely independent of Planet Popstar, Whispy Woods is likely to be an antagonist. When Kirby visits new locales there are still different takes on Whispy Woods to fit that games’ unique mechanics and setting. For example, Kirby and the Amazing Mirror has King Golem built into Moonlight Mansion; Kirby: Triple Deluxe has the colorful Flowery Woods in Floralia; and Kirby: Planet Robobot sees Whispy Woods mechanized into Clanky Woods.
The overgrown, post-apocalyptic setting of Kirby and the Forgotten Land opens up plenty of opportunities to see a new version of Whispy Woods. One idea is giving the woodland boss (or some variant of it) the place of honor in the middle of a courtyard for what used to be a school or shopping mall - the later being seen in Forgotten Land’s debut trailer. Rather than relying only on apples and puffs of air, this Woods archetype could instead play on the idea of nature reclaiming civilization by having roots bust through cracks in the concrete or turning the moss that covers nearby skyscrapers against Kirby.
A more important consideration is how to evolve the gameplay of Whispy Woods in this uniquely 3D environment. Previous Whispy Woods have launched attacks into the foreground, offering a basic idea for moves that cover distance, but it will be important for HAL to nail maneuvering Kirby in 3D so it’s more feasible to do something like drop apples anywhere on the battlefield. It’s almost guaranteed that Whispy Woods will make an appearance, and how the boss is executed will be a good benchmark for Kirby’s successful transition into this new style.
Kirby and the Forgotten Land will release in spring 2022 for Nintendo Switch.
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