"A Melting Pot Of Carnage": Hands-On Preview Of Kirby Air Riders At Gamescom 2025

I was a massive GameCube kid growing up. It stemmed from my love of the N64, and when given the option between the Cube and the PlayStation 2 as a youngster, in my mind, the choice was simple.

I had a fairly extensive collection of games for someone in their early teens, and spent dozens, if not hundreds, of hours playing The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Super Smash Bros. Melee, and Super Mario Sunshine. There were two major franchises that slipped through my grasp, though.

The first was Metroid Prime. Somehow, in some way, I missed the console’s best-reviewed game. The other was a little more understandable. I have, until this day, never played Kirby Air Ride. For this reason, and maybe the fact that the Switch 2 has launched with a bit of a lacklustre line-up, I was excited by the announcement of Kirby Air Riders.

After getting to play 20 minutes of the game at Gamescom, my excitement remains, but I’m not entirely sure it’s the game I thought it was.

Kirby Air Riders City Tour Is A Romp, But It's A Little Unbalanced

Admittedly, I missed the Kirby Air Riders Direct that aired last week. It happened in the middle of the first press day at Gamescom, and I simply had no time to check it out. How much could I have missed, though? It’s just Mario Kart but with Kirby characters, right? Not exactly.

My demo started with the usual tutorial, and again, there was nothing here to tell me that the main focus of the game wasn’t racing. I learned to drift, how to attack enemies invading the course, and how to fly. All vital techniques for a racing game. Then I entered the City Trial mode with four other members of the press, and chaos broke loose.

The core concept is simple: you’re dropped on the island of Skyah, a vast, multi-biome land, and you have five minutes to collect as many different stat boosts as possible, while looking for the best vehicle, hindering your opponents, and dodging natural disasters as you go. But, while in principle, it’s simple, in practice, it’s not so much.

While in principle, it’s simple, in practice, it’s not so much.

The vehicles automatically accelerate, and many of them are rapid, like 200cc Mario Kart rapid, so controlling your movements is tricky. Add 15 other racers into the mix, and you get a melting pot of carnage. You’re trying to do everything listed above, except at breakneck speeds. It’s a lot of fun and feels like it makes for perfect party fodder. However, it then becomes a little anticlimactic.

After you’ve spent five minutes chaotically rushing around, collecting power-ups, weapons, and stat boosts, you’re thrown into a mini-game. You have one of four to choose from, each suited to the different stats you’ve collected.

If you’re playing with eight players, and three select one mini-game, three another, and two a third, you’ll all be split up into the game you selected, weirdly.

The first game I played required me to glide for a longer distance than my opponents. It was perfect, as the boosts I’d collected suited this game, and I glided into first place. The second saw me and my fellow players rush around a map, collecting as many food items as possible. I had the wrong stats for this and finished last.

The mini-games were fun, but they have the potential to be really, really short. While the food collection game had a countdown timer, the gliding one didn’t, and it was over in less than 30 seconds. That meant I was rushing around for five minutes, for around 20 seconds of gameplay.

Conceptually, City Trial is great, but I wish my five minutes of collecting counted for more. Make it a stretch of three mini-games, and the time would have felt better spent. But five minutes of carnage for a 30-second payoff is a strange choice.

Weird decisions aside, I still had a lot of fun, and Kirby Air Riders is a game that’s remained firmly on my radar, but, at least from what I played, it seems there’s less focus on the racing and more on the City Trial mode.

Kirby Air Riders