Kirby Battle Royale


Kirby Battle Royale is a brawler video game in the Kirby series. Developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo, the game was released on the Nintendo 3DS handheld game console in Europe and Japan in November 2017, and in North America in January 2018.

Gameplay

Kirby Battle Royale is a brawler video game played primarily from a top-down perspective. Players control the series' titular protagonist Kirby and must battle against other versions of himself in an arena. The game features a single-player story campaign along with cooperative play and multiplayer battle modes that are available to play locally and online.

Game modes

There are a total of 10 game modes plus "The Cake Royale" story mode.
The abilities featured in game, in order of listing, are Sword, Bomb, Beetle, Spear, Cutter, Fighter, Ninja, Whip, Parasol, Hammer, Doctor, Tornado, and Ice, as well as Mirror and Sleep, which were introduced in a free update for the game. Alongside the 15 base abilities, 3 other playable characters are in the game: Waddle Dee, Meta Knight, and King Dedede. The 3 characters function similarly to the Parasol, Sword, and Hammer abilities respectively.
Prior to the game's release, a copy ability poll was held. People could vote for their favorite ability, and the winner was the Mirror ability. A second poll was held in December. 13 of the abilities were available upon initial launch, with Mirror being made available via free software update in Europe and Japan, and Sleep was made available via another software update; both poll winners have been made available in North America via a free software update as well.

Development and release

Kirby Battle Royale was developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo. The game was announced in September 2017 during a Nintendo Direct and is part of Kirbys 25th anniversary celebration.
On 19 October 2017, a demo was released in Europe on the Nintendo eShop. The demo included three playable game modes and unlocks access to the character Meta Knight in the full game via a save transfer. The demo was later released on 4 January 2018 in North America.
The game was released for the Nintendo 3DS handheld game console on 3 November 2017 in Europe, on 30 November in Japan, and was released on 19 January 2018 in North America. It sold 28,023 copies within its first week on sales in Japan.

Reception

Kirby Battle Royale received "mixed or average" reviews from professional critics according to review aggregator website Metacritic. Famitsu gave it a positive score of 30 out of 40.