Kirby and the Forgotten Land employs a number of ingenious techniques to help players land hits and jumps even if you're technically off, similar to aim assist in a platformer. In its most recent Ask the Developer blog, Nintendo showed a few clips of these helping hands in action. One of HAL Laboratory's best workarounds is positional hit detection, which ensures that even if an attack doesn't truly connect, the game will give the player the hit if it appears to them to do so. 

Mouthful Mode is one major idea in a game that's bursting at the seams with smaller ones, many of which are ushered in by the fact that this is Kirby's first true 3D game - which is fairly astounding given how long the sequence has been running. Even if there's the comfort and fuzzy sensation of playing a 3D slasher that's as generous and innovative as anything from the genre's golden era, the result is a very different feeling Kirby game than what's gone before. The Forgotten Land is eerily similar to what would have happened if our combined hopes for a 3D Kirby had been granted back when the GameCube was first released.Of course, this is excellent praise - fact, if you're of a certain bent, there's no higher praise. Kirby and the Forgotten Land is a beautifully classic platformer, and it isn't open world, or even semi-open world, contrary to popular assumption. Instead, it's a collection of self-contained levels, all of which can be found on a slowly unfolding globe map, where they're grouped into themes.The extra dimension enables HAL Laboratory to stuff each of those levels with oodles of mysteries; indeed, the conundrum isn't so much about surviving each level - even on the hardest setting, this will be one of the easiest games you'll play this year - as it is about unearthing its secrets, poking around with new abilities to see what treasures await. 

Tatsuya Kamiyama of HAL explains, "The game caters for the competitive standpoint by tracking the locations of Kirby and the camera." "It then plots out a variety of possible attack locations. If an assault falls inside that range, it will be successful. Even folks who aren't very proficient at 3D action games can strike foes without being stressed this way."This is functionally similar to the aim assist found in a slew of shooters – both features give players some leeway in determining whether or not their attacks are successful – but the technology underlying it appears to be far more advanced. Kirby and the Forgotten Land's location sensing was designed specifically to make the pink protagonist's transition to 3D as seamless as possible.The invisible sticky platforms that are frequently employed to make the ledges in 2D platformers feel more forgiving are indeed a near match here, but the three-dimensional ramifications of this technology are fascinating. As some Kirby fans have pointed out, methods like this open the door for speedrunners to go crazy and use these systems to shave seconds off of game times.

Similarly, Kirby's jump is aided by a "fuzzy landing" mechanism that ensures a more consistent jump after landing. Early forgotten land playstars occasionally jump a little too rapidly as they land, instead of paddling in mid-air to make a new jump, since some high- or up-and-down camera angles can hide Kirby's distance from the ground. Rather than swimming. This landing method was added to offer jumps a bit more grace: if you hit jump while Kirby is close to the ground, the game will regard the jump as if he has already landed completely.

The invisible sticky platforms that are frequently employed to make the ledges in 2D platformers feel more forgiving are a near match here, but the three-dimensional ramifications of this technology are fascinating. As some Kirby fans have pointed out, methods like this open the door for speedrunners to go crazy and use these systems to shave seconds off of game times.