Kirby and the Forgotten Land Developer Details Mouthful Mode's Origins

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Kirby and the Forgotten Land has been one of the breakout successes for the franchise in recent memory for Nintendo and HAL Laboratory. With this game being the franchise's leap into a full 3D adventure, a lot of changes have been made to the typical Kirby formula and exploration. While there have been some new abilities like Drill introduced, Forgotten Land also includes upgradable variants of Kirby's copy abilities.

The game also introduces a set of brand-new powers, unrelated to copy abilities known as Mouthful Mode transformations. This allows Kirby to inhale and wrap his mouth around certain objects, which allows for different types of gameplay. For example, when Kirby inhales a car, he'll be able to drive around, boost forward, and smash through walls. This mode caught on with fans due to some of the crazy objects that Kirby can inhale in-game, along with how Kirby is able to stretch his entire body over each object. The origins of this gameplay mechanic were detailed by the game's director, Shinya Kumazaki, in a recent interview with Nintendo Dream that was translated to English via Nintendo Everything.

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Despite Kirby's Mouthful Mode being a brand-new mechanic in Forgotten Land, Kumazaki notes that it was something that he and his team have been looking to implement for a while. He even shared a rough sketch about how it would work, mentioning that he «thought about having Kirby inhale mysterious triangles and squares and then transform.» More specifically Kumazaki and his team were looking at Kirby's shape-shifting nature, allowing him to do things that normal human characters couldn't do.

This resulted in the creation of mouthful mode, where Kirby could stretch his