It’s the Christmas that comes in June! In advance of the Monday E3 roundup, here’s a delectable trailer for your consumption:

Nintendo came out swinging this year, abandoning franchise conventions and mixing things up. Nowhere is this more immediately visible than Kirby Epic Yarn. The Wii installation in the hoary old series (18 years! I’m…really old. When did that happen?) trades out Kirby’s appetite for textiles: everything is made of yarn and fabric this time around. It’s so visually impressive that it doesn’t have to make sense, so check your WTF at the door.

Ignoring for a moment how awesome the aesthetic looks, Nintendo has really committed to the conceit. Pull on a level’s knit and you bunch up the fabric, shrinking gaps and squishing the terrain. Kirby can unzip the load-bearing zippers to crumple a house wall. You can even see occluded platforms by the stitching that holds them in place.

The trailer also showcases Kirby’s new swinging mechanic. The pink powerpuff now travels Bionic Commando-style, lassoing and swinging from the environment and enemies. Not everything is new, however, as Kirby retains his power to transform into different shapes as he advances through the game.

Cynical gamers will note that these mechanics are little more than a remix of platforming tropes. Zipping the wall off a house isn’t really any different than walking in the door, and occlusion is at least as old as the SNES. However, the sidelong approach to these old standards is a promise to revisit the lost sense of discovery in the Kirby franchise. Really, all Nintendo needs to make this fly is experience developing a solid platformer. I’m keeping my eye on this one.

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