Kirby And The Forgotten Land Started As A "Connected Project" With Star Allies

thegamer.com:

Kirby and The Forgotten Land was something of a hit for the series when it launched on Nintendo Switch earlier this year. 2018's Star Allies, on the other hand, maybe not so much. However, the creators of those games have revealed despite the four year gap between their arrivals, The Forgotten Land and Star Allies are internally considered to be one big connected project.

That's according to a new interview with one of the games' creators in Nintendo Dream and translated by Nintendo Everything (thanks, Nintendo Life). “The Kirby team and particularly HAL Laboratory considered Star Allies and Forgotten Land to be a single large connected project,” Kirby director Shinya Kumazaki explained. HAL Laboratory is the studio behind the development of every Kirby game to date.

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That comment alone is likely pretty confusing to those who have played both of Kirby's latest outings. Even though they're both on Switch, they're pretty different. However, despite calling the same hardware home, Kumazaki goes on to explain there were elements the HAL team wanted to include in Star Allies, but couldn't incorporate into Kirby's world until they began development on The Forgotten Land.

“There were still things we were not able to achieve in Star Allies, and deriving from that we wanted to make a ‘deep and accessible fully 3D Kirby game’,” he explained. However, the team also wanted to keep the “strange and surreal thing” that makes Kirby special. That's why The Forgotten Land isn't viewed as an entirely separate game from Star Allies by those who created the games, and the newest Kirby game, at least until later this week, is very much rooted in the less popular Star Allies.

Yes, you read that right.