Kirby’s Dream Buffet is an entrée that fills you up but isn’t worth staying for dessert – Hands-on impressions

Kirby’s Dream Buffet is just another example of how HAL Laboratory is willing to experiment with Kirby in just about every way that it possibly can. In just about every year for the last decade, at least one Kirby game has been released, and with 2022 being the 30th anniversary of the pink puffball, HAL decided to follow up the great Kirby and the Forgotten Land with a much smaller Fall Guys-like game.

Kirby’s Dream Buffet has four players compete in four rounds to see who can eat the most strawberries. Whoever is the biggest Kirby at the end wins — the game never gets more complicated than that. A full round of matches typically will have you in and out of the lobby within five minutes. The first round is always an obstacle course race, followed by a minigame, then one more race, and finally ends in a battle round. Dream Buffet is undoubtedly fun, but it’s not nearly something I think would keep your attention beyond a day.

Fall Guys-lite

Since Kirby’s Dream Buffet was announced, Fall Guys became an instant comparison point for many. While I see the resemblance, Kirby’s Dream Buffet is so microscopically smaller than Fall Guys that it’s hard to juxtapose the two. Matches in Fall Guys start with up to 60 other players and go until one person is standing. Kirby’s Dream Buffet starts with only four, and there are no knockout rounds. The first racing round starts with some Waddle Dees racing against you, but I’ve never seen them past the starting line, so I wonder why they even exist.

The nice thing about how much smaller Dream Buffet is is that it moves much quicker than Fall Guys. Loading is almost instantaneous, and while Nintendo is infamous for providing less than stellar online experiences, this game works well for the most part. I had a few moments where the game would completely freeze in the middle of the round, but that was far and in between.

Bite-size rounds

I greatly enjoyed the racing rounds much more than the minigame and battle finales, as they are much longer and designed a lot more interestingly. You can grab power-ups along the way to try and get the edge over your opponents, and I think that is unquestionably the best aspect of this game. As you are collecting strawberries, you also want to try and get to the end first because there are three plates of strawberries that can easily decide who wins and loses each match.

The minigames are over within 20 seconds, which is for the best, as none of the four minigames here are particularly engaging. It comes down to just grabbing strawberries in a small arena before the opponents can, and they don’t get any more elaborate.

While I like the races the most, the finale battles can be chaotic and fun too. Strawberries fall in while you all fight to keep them. While this round is going, you can attack each other with power-ups and steal strawberries from each other. The Server Hands will also try and grab you with tongs, taking away your hard-earned berries as well.

Overall, Kirby’s Dream Buffet is a fine game to buy for very cheap on the Nintendo Switch eShop. If you have some friends that play it, you might return to it in the future to try and build up your Gourmet Rank and unlock new costumes. But after that is said and done, I doubt this is a game that most people will play too much longer than over a weekend.