Kirby’s Return to Dream Land is a Kirby video game and the twelveth platform installment of the series, in development by HAL Laboratory, and published by Nintendo. While Kirby’s Epic Yarn was released in 2010, Kirby’s Return to Dream Land is the first traditional Kirby platforming home console game since Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards, which was released in 2000 for the Nintendo 64. The title was first released in North America on October 24, 2011, and later in Europe on November 25, 2011.
Kirby’s Return to Dream Land features the staple gameplay of traditional Kirby platform games, in which the titular character Kirby possesses the ability to inhale and copy enemies in order to attain forms which give him a variety of attacks such as breathing fire or swinging a sword. The game supports cooperative multiplayer gameplay, allowing up to four players to control various Kirby characters, including Waddle Dee, King Dedede, and Meta Knight. Kirby’s plot focuses on the characters retrieving the scattered pieces of a crashed alien spaceship.
Kirby, the main protagonist, retains his signature ability to inhale indefinitely, allowing him to suck in nearby objects and enemies. The inhaled objects can either be propelled back out as projectiles or swallowed. Certain enemies, when swallowed, allow Kirby to extract their special qualities, giving Kirby access to a wide variety of different powers, called “copy abilities.” Copy abilities are used to defeat stronger enemies and clear special environmental obstacles, though Kirby can only possess one copy ability at a time. Similar to Kirby Super Star, each copy ability has multiple forms of attack that are summoned depending on the player’s button-presses. The game introduces more powerful, though temporary copy abilities called “Super Abilities,” which are able to destroy multiple enemies at once as well as parts of the environment. Whip, water, and leaf abilities are also obtainable. In Return to Dream Land, Kirby also retains the ability to inhale multiple objects and enemies simultaneously to create a massive energy star to expel.
