Kirby Canvas Curse is a new platformer for the Nintendo DS. In the game, a witch transforms all of Dream Land into a painting and when Kirby tries to stop her, she transforms him into a ball. However, the witch drops her magical paintbrush and Kirby enlists in your help to wield the paintbrush and guide him through the paintings to stop the witch.

Canvas Curse brings about a totally new type of gameplay experience that can only be found with a touch screen. No buttons are ever pressed during this game. That’s right, absolutely no buttons. Players control Kirby by using the stylus to draw rainbow paths for Kirby to follow. This design is extremely easy, intuitive, smooth, and fun.

Kirby is always moving across the ground at a slow rate in one direction. He will keep on moving in that direction until he hits a wall or another solid obstacle. If for some reason you want Kirby to turn around, simply draw a vertical line in front of Kirby and he’ll hit it and turn around. Now if you draw a line that isn’t vertical, Kirby will follow it in the direction you drew it. For example, if you draw from left to right, Kirby will follow it towards the right. Basically, he’ll always end up wherever your stylus stops touching the screen. Drawing lines in Canvas Curse is really simple, and anyone could learn the basics of it in about an hour. For example, if you see a high ledge and want Kirby to go up to it, draw a line to it and Kirby will follow it up. If you see a pit and want Kirby to cross over it, draw a line over it and Kirby will use it like a bridge. The design is very much like that found in Yoshi Touch & Go. In addition to drawing lines, players can tap Kirby to make him charge forward, and if a line is drawn like a ramp and then you tap Kirby, he will use it to boost off of it into the air. My personal favorite move is when you draw a line with a loop in it. If there is a loop in your line, Kirby will speed up and boost out of it much like Sonic does in Sonic the Hedgehog games. This skill is useful for getting up to high places or just moving fast. Players can’t get too paint happy, however, as there is only a limited ink supply. On the top screen is an ink gauge along with a map of the level, Kirby’s vitality and number of stars collected. When players draw, the ink gauge decreases and begins to beep when ink is getting low. Once the ink is all gone, players can’t paint until the ink regenerates. The ink will regenerate slowly if Kirby is in the air but will come back faster if Kirby is on the ground. The limited ink supply adds another degree of difficulty and will challenge all gamers when then find themselves falling into a pit or traveling through a tunnel of spikes with no ink left. Additionally, painted lines don’t last forever. They will dissolve after about 4 seconds and even less if there are more than two lines painted at the same time. If you thought Canvas Curse was going to be an easy game, then think again.

Gameplay in Canvas Curse follows a standard platform style. There are 7 levels which contain 3 stages each. Each stage is divided into three sections that are connected by doors, which are the player’s ultimate destination. Throughout the stages are tons of obstacles for Kirby to maneuver around. Baddies are abundant and can be defeated by either boosting into them or tapping them and simply rolling into them while they are stunned. Also found are various things such as lasers, cannons, spikes, and rocks that you will need to protect Kirby from by using the stylus to draw barriers. Virtually every object you find is touch sensitive and the game uses this aspect everywhere. There are touch switches, touch cannons, touch fans, and much more that players use to aid Kirby through each stage. It really brings the player “into” the game and is extremely fun and refreshing to see. After the first two stages in each level, players can play a fun mini-game where the object is to boost Kirby down a ledge and then draw a ramp with the stylus at the end to try and make Kirby go as far as possible. Depending on how far you get, you’ll earn a number of stars. 100 stars earn an extra life and stars can also be found in normal stages as well. It’s a fun little game that adds to the experience and isn’t something that the developers had to include. At the end of the third stage in each level, players will find themselves facing one of three bosses. The boss battle is actually just another mini-game, but they are more challenging and longer then the distance game. Fun as they are, it would have been nice to see more of a traditional boss type battle in Canvas Curse as is found in other platformers. Besides how the gameplay is structured, the variety of the stages themselves is amazing. While the stages sometimes use the same art style, each one has a totally different layout and feel to it. Each stage was made to challenge the players in new ways, both through puzzle elements and obstacle design. You really have to be skilled with the stylus to make it through some of them in one piece. I never found myself feeling like they were repetitive or boring. I was engaged throughout the whole game.

The graphics in Canvas Curse are “pretty as a picture”. Each stage looks like a painting and each painting has a different style. Some have a kind of oriental style, some have a cartoonish style, and still others have an abstract art style. Sometimes I would find myself looking at the background too much and not paying enough attention to where Kirby was heading. All the characters are excellently animated as well and the quality of all the graphics is A+ top notch quality. Canvas Curse has some of the best graphics I had ever seen for a 2D game.

Sound follows suite with the graphics. Canvas Curse brings back classic Kirby tunes along with some new ones that have all been remixed with an upbeat techno-pop style. These new tunes are very catchy and blew me away. I like to just sit and listen to them over and over in the sound test section. Every tune fits perfectly with the stage and the sound effects are great.

Canvas Curse is also packed chock full of unlockable extras and challenges that give it an almost infinite replay value. In each stage there are 3 hidden medals to be collected that you can use to unlock a plethora of content such as new songs, new courses, and new ink. Besides that, each level you complete becomes open in a section called Rainbow Run. In Rainbow Run, you pick a stage and then can try a time trial, which is self explanatory, or a line trial where you try to make it through the stage with as little ink as possible. If you do well enough, you’ll be rewarded with more medals for more unlockable content. All the boss-minigames also become available, each with different levels of difficulty. You’ll be playing for a while after you run through the game the first time.

In closing, Kirby Canvas Curse is well worth the money. The reason you bought (or should buy) a DS is for games like this. It shines among the other DS games and really shows that DS games can kick butt. The only thing that could have made this game better was multiplayer (which this game screams for).