For Fans of Kirby

The Kirby franchise is often filed under 'easy Nintendo game,' and that reputation makes Planet Robobot one of gaming's best-kept secrets. The 2016 3DS entry gives Kirby a mech suit that can scan enemy robots and inherit their abilities, layering a second copy-ability system on top of the first. The level design uses both systems constantly and inventively, and the story, told almost entirely through environmental detail and item descriptions, ends up being one of the darker things Nintendo has quietly shipped under a children's banner.

Kirby and Hollow Knight seem like opposites: one is pastel and forgiving, the other is gothic and punishing. But both games are built on the same premise: a small, mostly silent hero who absorbs abilities from enemies, navigating a world that is far larger and stranger than it first appears. Fans who finish Kirby and the Forgotten Land and want something that takes the exploration-and-absorption formula into much darker territory will find Hollow Knight is the natural next step, not another Nintendo platformer.

The comparison gets made often because it is accurate. Both Kirby games and Studio Ghibli films build worlds where small creatures exist in enormous, indifferent environments and are nonetheless treated as capable of great things. The color design is strikingly similar: pastels that deepen at dusk, whites that feel physically soft. My Neighbor Totoro is the obvious pairing, but Kiki's Delivery Service and The Secret World of Arrietty both carry the specific Kirby quality of a tiny protagonist finding their footing in a world built at someone else's scale.

Norton Juster's 1961 novel and Kirby share a structural philosophy: both use an apparently simple premise (a bored child drives through a magic tollbooth; a pink blob inhales things) to build elaborate systems of puns, transformations, and concealed depth. Milo travels through a world organized by concepts and finds that paying attention changes everything. Kirby inhales enemies and discovers what they were made of. Both are books or games about curiosity as a survival skill, written or designed for children but built to outlast that demographic.