Collection essentials #614: Kirby: Canvas Curse (DS)

In the DS’s first year, it really needed games that really took advantage of the touch screen in creative ways in order to convince customers that the extra screen wasn’t just a silly gimmick. Kirby: Canvas Curse (or Power Paintbrush for the non-Americans in the audience) was one of those games.

Kirby had already established a solid formula up to this point, 2D platformers with recurring gameplay elements such as flying like a balloon and eating enemies to temporarily gain their powers. You can see some of that DNA in this game…but it’s changed on a fundamental level.

The story of the game involves a witch who comes from another dimension to place a curse on Kirby’s world. When Kirby pursues her back to the “paint dimension” from whence she came, Kirby is cursed and turned into a ball. However, he quickly finds aid from the Magical Paintbrush, which is wielded by the player to magically guide Kirby to victory to reverse the curses and set things straight.

The objective of the game is still to navigate levels with platforms, obstacles and enemies. However, this time players do not control Kirby directly. Rather, they must use the Nintendo DS stylus to guide him and manipulate the environment. Being a ball, Kirby naturally rolls forward and has a little bit of momentum by default. You can touch him to make him roll forward faster, and he can even defeat enemies when charging in this way. Touching an enemy directly (typically) will stun them. But the biggest power at the player’s fingertips is magic ink. Players can draw magic lines of ink wherever they please. This serves to guide Kirby, as he can ride it to a completely different direction. Or the ink can simply be used as a wall to make him reverse direction. Ink automatically refills over time, but you'll temporarily run out if you try to use too much all at once. Kirby’s “copy ability” from previous games does return in a smaller form, and when Kirby gains a power from defeating certain enemies he will automatically use it while charging when the player touches him. The controls are easy to learn, and allow for a good amount of precision for a satisfying experience.

Like most Kirby games, this is one that encourages players to go for “100% completion.” Each stage has hidden “medals” for players to find which will unlock various bonuses. As you progress further in the game, they get quite a bit more difficult to uncover, and you’ll likely need to revisit levels quite a few times in order to get them all, especially if you’re not using a guide. 

As an early DS adopter, Canvas Curse was a game that I was excited for when it first came out. The copy in the photo is the very same one that I bought at that time over 20 years ago now. I never truly made an effort to complete the game 100%, though, and perhaps I should do that at some point.

There would be three more Kirby games on the Nintendo DS. All three were more like the standard Kirby platformers you’d expect (with their own quirks of course), and none followed in the footsteps of Canvas Curse. Although we would get a direct successor to Canvas Curse eventually, on a future console.

Since it uses the two-screen setup and the touch screen so heavily, this is the type of game that you really need a Nintendo DS to properly experience. A port of this game to modern platformers is just not really feasible without seriously compromising the experience. All the more reason to go find one!

Canvas Curse wasn’t ond of my top most-played DS games back in the day, but it was one of the games that made me happy to own one early in its lifecycle and show off the legitimacy of what it could do. For being a neat experience that can’t easily be replicated on most other consoles, it’s an easy choice for a DS essential in my book!