SALTY ABOUT THE LACK OF PLAYER BASE IN THIS SWEET GAME

Kirby’s Dream Buffet is a racing party game where the winner is not decided by who is first, but by who is the biggest. This is done by collecting strawberries and other fruits, which incrementally increases Kirby’s size which allows him to more easily push other players around and makes him faster, although it becomes harder to recover from being knocked around himself. There are power ups that look like desserts that offer various aids to players with certain power ups being available to the player in last place.

PLATFORMS: SWITCH
MSRP: $14.99
PRICE I’D PAY: *shrug emoji*

Each race has four segments: a sprint race, a mini game, another sprint race, and a final battle royale. Each sprint race segment rewards the first three players to reach the end with bowls of strawberries with 10, 20, and 50 strawberry bowls. It’s first come first serve meaning that the player in first place has dibs on which bowl they are going to grab. The mini game sections are essentially just areas to collect strawberries that fall from the sky or are inside boxes. It’s essentially a break between the two races because honestly rarely do the placements change here. After another race comes the battle royale where players bump into each other and use power ups to attempt to eat the most strawberries and hopefully decrease other player’s strawberries by knocking them off the stage. After the round is over the results are tallied and extra bonuses are given out akin to the end of Mario Party where players who maybe ate the most cherries or used the most power ups get a bonus and these can drastically alter the results. Then everyone gets experience points to their level for playing (more if you win) and at certain point amounts players unlock cosmetics and music and decorations (which there are a ton of).

There’s local two player multiplayer, as well as four player local multiplayer with multiple switches, as well as a decent single player mode. However, my issue comes with that this is clearly meant to be an online game and the player base just isn’t there. Right before I wrote this review (almost two months after release) I was lucky enough to connect with two other players but before that I could maybe get one other player and then the game would crash me back to the menu lobby. Even when I did connect with three other players in the early days of this game not a single game went by without a stutter or a hitch at some point. With the amount of collectibles and the bonuses experience players get for playing online it seems that it would take far too long and would be fairly monotonous to get all the rewards by grinding out single player.

There’s supposed to be four Kirbys racing at all times and the lack of an online player base and the lack of four player split-screen multiplayer just makes it hard to recommend this game at all. It’s a good game marred by the fact that like a lot of great multiplayer focused games, the player base is lacking and the game suffers for it. I would give this game an 8 had it not been for the fact that the online player base isn’t very strong and I do not want to recommend a dead game to people. At least it has an offline single player mode I guess.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.