Dream Land is looking more nightmarish than the puffball remembers... note
"A shady presence takes over Dream Land... the entire land of Dream Land is being transformed into.... a spooky paradise?!"
— The romhack's official blurb on its page at Sonic Fan Games HQ
Kirby's Halloween Adventure is a romhack of Kirby's Adventure pitting Kirby to traverse far more nightmarish locales of his homeland and deal with facing several familiar enemies with far more grim designs... all while keeping a lighthearted Halloween aesthetic fitting of the series.
Created by Kirb-Star, it originally came out in Fall of 2018 as not much beyond just a Holiday Mode patch for Kirby's Adventure, with a minor patch in 2019 to fix a couple of errors. However, development on a new patch would take place on mid-2020, greatly expanding the romhack's scope, changing the level designs from just palette swaps into full-blown new levels, right down to introducing new tilesets to coexist alongside the original. It was released at SAGE 2020 as version 1.2, with 1.3 releasing a month after to feature more changes. The final update would release mid-october of 2021 as 1.4.
A full playthrough by the author can be seen here
, while you can download the game here (only the 1.3 and 1.4 patches).
Tropes used in Kirby's Halloween Adventure:
- Abandoned Laboratory: The end of Mount Mist features a couple levels taking place on an abandoned base, littered with broken containers (and some others containing preserved aliens).
- Abandoned Mine: The train of Stage 4 of Mount Mist ends with a brief trek into a mine with many hostile enemies going around, mainly Devil Cars granting Wheel to let kirby dash through its tracks. Meta Knight's army ambushes you here too.
- Adaptational Skill: With the game using many enemies from the franchise outside of this game's engine, many veteran enemies get new skills to accommodate to enemy AI from Kirby's Adventure.
- Tacs and Bio Sparks can now climb walls and throw stars.
- Galbos can now shoot a single long ranged fire blast sometimes.
- Nesps can shoot lasers now.
- Whiskers now spin and jump around instead of endlessly hovering in the air. They can also teleport and explode.
- Nidoos become a lot more mobile (being able to spin around and dash while spinning) instead of just disappearing.
- Spikeys can now roll into a ball like a certain hedgehog...
- Moto Shotzos are now invincible (at the cost of being able to move).
- Chuckies can now chase players and explode on their faces.
- Magoos can now hover and chase players.
- Clown Acrobots can now grant Cutter.
- Gabons can now use their bones as boomerangs, while granting the Cutter ability now.
- Gaw Gaws can now grant Sword with their claw slashes, as well as destroy projectiles if timed right.
- Propellers can now home into players while remaining invincible, granting Tornado now.
- Kekes can now fly sky-high with their brooms, and grant Hi-Jump now.
- Waiu can now roll into Kirby and slam dunk him, as well as tossing ninja logs. He gives Throw here.
- Adeleine can wall-jump now.
- All There in the Manual: The romhack itself doesn't modify the game's story, with the game's story blurb only present in its hosting sites.
- The enemy sprite sheets in Spriters Resource are the only place where each exclusive enemy of this game has been given a name.
- Ambushing Enemy: The street and city levels are usually littered with trashcans, and some of them have Trashops hopping nearby, that'll reveal themselves as enemies once inhaled.
- The test tubes in the lab stages of Mount Mist can break and free an alien enemy to ambush the player.
- Art Course: The last level of Spooky Seaside features a level taking place in an Underground Gallery covered wall-to-wall with framed paintings of levels, leading to a museum section into an art studio, and transition into battling Adeleine.
- Auto-Scrolling Level: Downplayed, as the train levels all sport wind to emulate this feeling, but the player can scroll back with some effort.
- Bad Moon Rising: Tuxedo Knight's battle shows a particularly detailed moon with reddish craters looming over the background.
- Beware the Skull Base: The Hub screen of Hades Harbor is littered with pirate skulls, and serves as the penultimate world of the game.
- Big Bad: Nightmare Reaper is the one who turned Dream Land into a nightmare realm.
- Big Boo's Haunt: ...Arguably the whole game, but Terror Tower's mansion levels and the numerous graveyard levels (Ghostly Graves) feature the most classic of this trope.
- Blackout Basement: Level 6 of Skull Street has a warehouse in total darkness, used to hide one of the game's switches with the use of the Light ability.
- Level 1 of Ghostly Graves features an outdoor variant in a graveyard obscured at night, also requiring the Light ability.
- Boss Rush: Stage 2 of Ghostly Graves used to host one for the mid-bosses like the original game in the earlier versions, but this got
Dummied Out in 1.4. The level lives in spirit in that world's levels, as the mid-boss rush has been spread for all of the stages, minus Waiu remaining absent (as Hades Harbor 6 hosts him as the mid-boss nearby). - Bubblegloop Swamp: Minor example, but the end of Stage 3 of Pumpkin Prairie has a brief lake filled with all sorts of tree trunks serving as platforms. The starting levels of Spooky Seaside also features a brief detour to a more familiar looking swamp location, albeit near the coast.
- Build Like an Egyptian: Stage 3 of Terror Tower takes place within a pyramid-esque tower, covered head to toe with pyramid-esque blocks, with swimmable sand and plenty of Mumbies pursuing the player in every room they go through. Even pictures plenty of Whiskers and a Fire Liger to serve as the stage's boss.
- Stage 5 of Spooky Seaside has a smaller pyramid at the start of the level, meant to transition the previous desert stage back to the beach of the world.
- Circus of Fear: Stage 3 of Skull Street features a flying circus variant on this trope, touring the player through tight corridors inside of a blimp, filled with Perots, Chuckies hovering over surprise boxes, and even a swimmable ballpit! The level's Mind Screw corridors as well as disappearing doors, mirror doppelgangers, invisible floor and having to fight Twin Perot Brothers Senior makes this circus show its true colors real quick.
- Container Maze: Stage 6 of Skull Street and Stages 5 and 6 of Mount Mist has Kirby navigating through a lot of metallic crates of warehouses. The boss fight in Mount Mist even has Heavy Mole fought here!
- Continuity Nod: A lof of the game's content boils down to this, mainly on enemies chosen. Has a page here.
- Death Mountain: Mount Mist starts up with this, but quickly deviates into a volcanic area that slides down into a desertic area.
- Derelict Graveyard: An abandoned ship can be spelunked in Stage 3 of Hades Harbor, to the point the player can see the cave from the inside, and fight any creatures living in its flooding waters, like the Squeaker mice or Como spiders.
- Disconnected Side Area: This romhack exploits this with linear levels, as different stages between the same world will share rooms that the player will have to travel through one room's multiple corridors in different instances.
- Levels 3 of Terror Tower and Skull Street take place in a pyramid and a flying circus respectively, where a majority of the level design lets the player see the rest of the levels as side areas in their corridors.
- Disney Acid Sequence: Stage 2 of Ghostly Graves has the player venture into an underground passage from a graveyard, only to wind up on a bizarre toy-esque maze with seemingly corrupted colors and faces taunting from the walls. The stage ends here and the following one has Kirby on the outside of the graveyard.
- Down the Drain: Skull Street tours you through a short sewer passage filled with Squeakers and other creatures before letting you set foot on the city.
- The last level of Mount Mist ends with one of these inside of the Abandoned Laboratory, where Fishbones swim around in (somehow) not lethal toxic waters.
- Eternal Engine: The end of Mount Mist features a mostly metallic abandoned base, right down to using conveyor belts to transport the player around. Pluggs, Funkensteins and Bonkerstein lurk around this place, with the robotic Heavy Mole serving as this world's boss.
- Excuse Plot: In the context of the romhack, the game's story wasn't modified with Kirby's quest to recover the Star Rod kept mostly unchanged down to the story text, as the game works itself more as an excuse to host custom levels.
- Forest of Perpetual Autumn: The entirety of Pumpkin Prairie falls into this, to the point it can be interpreted as just Vegetable Valley taking place during the Halloween season.
- Four Is Death: The Ghost Train level has 4 train sections total, with the last one and most broken down one being labeled as 04.
- Gangplank Galleon: Hades Harbor is this combined with greco-roman architecture, with its numerous levels containing Waddle Dees and Doos wearing pirate bandanas, multiple Joes swimming on most of this world's waters or pirate Squishies. It features two different port levels, a sunken ship inside of a cave, and capping off with a Ghost Ship looming at the peak of a volcanic temple.
- Ghost Ship: Hades Harbor ends with one of these, as it's floating airborne in the skies (and is plagued with plenty of ghostly enemies per usual of this game). Used to be the starting level of Ghostly Graves in versions 1.2 and 1.3, but it was moved to be the final level of Hades Harbor.
- Ghost Train: Stage 5 of Ghostly Graves has Kirby boarding one of these, combined with Circus of Fear, as it's breaking down and plagued with ghosts in every corner.
- Green Hill Zone: Pumpkin Prairie, the first world as per usual with Kirby games. Despite the mostly orange aesthetic it still starts you off in a calm grassland area outside of Kirby's house ...with a few more exploding pumpkins involved.
- Gusty Glade: The train levels all sport wind that pushes the players forward, with the ghost train on Ghostly Graves taking the cake for featuring many broken down sections serving as bottomless pits to trek through.
- Hailfire Peaks: This game has a fondness for combining many tropes into one world:
- Spooky Seaside makes a sharp combination of both coast and desert stages, transitioning them with a large sandy beach connecting the two zones.
- Terror Tower starts off with an occult mansion aesthetic, and swiftly turns into a maze-like pyramid tower for its starter levels. Later ones are a bit less themed.
- Mount Mist gives the game its most straight example, as it begins with a misty and cold mountain area with many ice enemies, and digs into a volcanic cave interior for its following level. For the whole world, the game combines both Death Mountain and Eternal Engine (using a desert to tie both together).
- Hades Harbor combines both Gangplank Galleon and Temple of Doom (particularly greco-roman ones, given the namesake), with the sea theming remaining consistent on all of these levels to tie the pirate and temple aesthetics together, capping off with a Ghost Ship floating over a temple on the peak of a volcano.
- Ghostly Graves mixes both graveyard theming with space areas, using haunted paintings to connect them together.
- Hall of Mirrors: Level 3 of Skull Street features one of these on its flying circus, right down to mirrors producing multiple Batamon in likeness of Kirby.
- Haunted Castle: Terror Tower combines this with Big Fancy Castle, as the place looks to be in mint condition but the background decorations and enemies suggest otherwise.
- Stage 3 of Ghostly Graves has Kirby tour through a very dark one filled with ghosts, and even having a coliseum hidden underground.
- The Hedge of Thorns: Not as part of the levels themselves, but the backgrounds for all of the graveyard levels sport brambles in the dark.
- Hit Points: Like the original game, but the HUD here will display it with candy! Going trick or treating has its benefits. Healing items get replaced with candy and pumpkin pails.
- Hub Level: Just like the original game did, although with the new levels tied to each area... the Hub levels also boast some custom graphics to reflect them a bit better. Earlier patches of the game usually kept them mostly unchanged besides the palette.
- It's All Upstairs From Here: Terror Tower uses this to spades as its main level theme, opting for mostly vertical level design, taken up a notch with its Old Tower homage level.
- Kracko's boss fight was replaced from taking place in the clouds to taking place atop a city, climbing up to the top of a skyscrapper to the duel.
- Lethal Lava Land: Both Mount Mist and Hades Harbor take brief detours with volcanic areas, with the latter having the volcano serve as a temple level.
- Levels Take Flight: Stage 3 of Skull Street has Kirby jumping over airships as the original game did, but quickly downplays this once the player enters inside of the main blimp, where a flying circus awaits him, without much trace of it being airborne beyond the Switch Room letting you see outside of the airship.
- The Ghost Ship at the end of Hades Harbor qualifies to this, as it's floating pretty high far atop a volcano, but doesn't play much into sky level tropes.
- Locomotive Level: The game utilizes three of these in different contexts, with the first one taking place on Spooky Seaside's desertic area, with Kirby going aboard of a passenger train (with plenty of Tac thieves over it. Mount Mist has another one at sunset that's carrying wooden planks and coal, heading into a mining mountain. The last one appears as ghost train in a portrait of Ghostly Graves' castle, featuring a more decrepit version (sometimes mixed with a circus aesthetic).
- The Lost Woods: Pumpkin Prairie 4 and Mount Mist 3 take place in forests, of the more harmless variety despite the game's premise, but the graveyard levels feature scarier trees on them to fit in.
- Malevolent Architecture: Terror Tower relies on this for its first levels, as it's intended to be a mansion interior filled with lethal Shotzos and possessed masks (Two-Faces). The pyramid level involves plenty of deadly tight interconnected corridors littered with fast chasing Mumbies and Fishbones.
- Skull Street sticks mostly with this, given its relatively down to earth city aesthetic is accompanied with plenty of spikes or bottomless pits easy to ram into. And even the trashcans try to kill you.
- Marathon Level: Level 3 of Skull Street is arguably the game's longest level, featuring the most doors in a single level the player can access to.
- Mascot Mook: Within this romhack, Flapper from Kirby's Dream Land has taken as the mascot for this game, being potentially the enemy with the most appearances within the levels.
- The Maze: Played With, as many of the game's levels are designed to take the player through confusing mazes of interconnecting rooms, but all the paths are linear and difficult to get lost in.
- Meaningful Name: Trashop, the trashcan enemies. They're disguised as trash and hop towards you.
- Funkenstein, the Frankenstein-esque Sparky enemies. Funke means spark in german.
- Starman SDX, the Starman enemy. Starman DX is the name of a Starman variant in EarthBound (1994). Super Deluxe is Kirby Super Star's name in japanese.
- Metropolis Level: Skull Street is a full-blown take on this, going through the suburbs into a neon colored night city filled with skyscrapers.
- Mind Screw: The flying circus in Skull Street is designed this way as a fun-house. From disorienting corridors guiding you through a labyrinth of circus tiles, Nidoos disguising as doors (and teleporting to explode near the player's face), Chuckies hovering over surprise boxes (and uninhalable now, as doing so will have it chasing after you), mirrors that create copies of Kirby and... swimmable ballpits!?
- Monster Arena: Like the normal game, each world from Spooky Seaside to Hades Harbor hosts one of these.
- Played With stage 3 of Ghostly Graves, as it features a mandatory underground arena in the castle's catacombs, where two Fire Ligers are fought.
- Mood Whiplash: With the moving songs of Rainbow Resort and Grape Garden playing in the last 3 levels, Stage 3 of Ghostly Graves opens with a silent area outside of an empty door in a graveyard. Enter with this much build-up and... the relatively funny sounding Forest Stage greets you as you're in a haunted castle now.
- Mook-Themed Level: Stage 3 of Mount Mist is mostly comprised of Ninja Dees and Doos, but most prominently: Bio Sparks roam through the level the most in here.
- The Moth Man: Or Moth Woman to be specific, as Mother Moth is inspired by this urban legend and is even seen fluttering on a dark alley of Skull Street.
- Moth Menace: Despite her relatively harmless look, Mother Moth is as lethal as Bugzzy can be in the original game. She can grapple Kirby with her proboscis and dash at tremendous speed, and normally lurks on darker or cold stages.
- Museum Level: The museums of Kirby's Adventure remain mostly the same here, with one restoring an unused Hammer enemy display from the original (Mace Knight). The game uses assets from the museums to make a couple of actual Museum Levels in Stage 5 of Skull Street.
- Nightmarish Factory: The abandoned factory at the end of Mount Mist, given it's filled with aliens coming from their test tubes, many Shotzos and Gordos ready to crush the puffball around, toxic sewage, a Bonkerstein looking to flatten you, and a fight with Heavy Mole with the player having to fight through crushing walls of metallic crates. And clowns.
- Nostalgia Level: Plenty.
- Stage 5 of Terror Tower pays homage to the first two areas of Kirby & the Amazing Mirror, although taking a few liberties in how it portrays Moonlight Mansion.
- Stage 6 of Terror Tower has a full blown homage to Old Tower in Kirby Super Star, even replicating one of the area's puzzles for its switch location.
- Stages 5 & 6 of Mount Mist features an aesthetic one on Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards with the factory looking similar to Shiver Star's, with the first shaft of Stage 6 mimicking the starting area of that level.
- Stage 4 of Ghostly Graves has a combined one of both Halfmoon from Kirby Super Star and on Ripple Star's and Dark Star's levels from Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards. It even pays homage to one of Marx's Guest Star rooms from Kirby Star Allies.
- The very last stage of the game is once again a Nostalgia Level for a Game Boy game, as it takes one room from each world of Kirby's Dream Land 2!
- Ominous Visual Glitch: Accidental example, as World 6 had its opening sequence corrupted from the name change, showing an (albeit harmless) glitched opening sequence. Patch 1.2 would finally address this, and this glitch was the main reason of the world's renaming from Hallow Harbor to Hades Harbor.
- One of These Doors Is Not Like the Other: The Nidoo enemies from Kirby's Dream Land 3 and Triple Deluxe return here, serving their purpose to disguise as doors to ambush the player. They spawn nearby doors and teleport when the player gets close to them... only for them reappear and explode on them shortly afterwards.
- Palette Swap: Just like the original, enemies receive alternate palettes, but this has been greatly expanded to allow common enemies to get recolors as well.
- The first patch of the game mostly limited itself to this as far as level modifications were concerned, with following versions modifying the levels themselves much more.
- Palmtree Panic: Spooky Seaside zigzags from this and Shifting Sand Land, taking place across a coast area that branches off into sandy desert or palm tree beaches. Stage 3 of Hades Harbor briefly has one before entering the sunken ship.
- Planet Heck: Hades Harbor is implied to invoke this given the namesake can also refer to a location. The mostly reddish palettes and constant volcanoes follow this too.
- Port Town: Hades Harbor's first stage dwells on this with a haunted variant, using a port aesthetic without any ships in sight, beyond cobweb on any available spots.
- Red Sky, Take Warning: Every level in Hades Harbor is littered with reddish skies (purple) or red clouds, alluding to its namesake. Stage 4 takes place on an icy island with red glaciers and sea, where Zero Two's silhouette can be seen looming in the distance.
- Remixed Level: Levels between some worlds can vary between this or using completely custom assets.
- Respawning Enemies: Standard with the Kirby series, but it's used as a gameplay mechanic in a few levels to create hazards: As homing Mumbies in Stage 3 of Terror Tower are placed on specific spots on the level's corridors that'll respawn them whenever you pass close to their spot.
- Ruins for Ruins' Sake: The Hades part of Hades Harbor comes into play once the level introduces many temple ruins, some sunken and some standing around volcanoes.
- Sand Is Water: Taken literally in this game, as pyramid levels have swimmable sand, comprised of much slower, sand colored water. Unlike normal water areas though, the sand here has different physics that push the player upwards, making it difficult to dive down.
- Shifting Sand Land: Spooky Seaside features this for its middle section, with Kirby landing in a beach in Stage 2, traversing this sandy beach away from the sea in Stage 3 and end up in a wild west looking desert for Stage 4, complete with a train! Stage 5 has you trek through a small pyramid to get back to the coast from the desert.
- Ship Level: Stage 3 of Hades Harbor has the player spelunking a sunken ship, complete with pirates and mice roaming around. Stage 6 takes the player to another one, a floating Ghost Ship with even tighter corridors.
- Shout-Out: What the hack was best known for on version 1.0/1.1, mostly thanks to the ability icons. Has a full page here.
- Sinister Silhouettes: Stage 3 of Ghostly Graves involves one room in pure darkness, no light, and enemies camouflaging in the background to sneak into the player. Luring them into windows is the best method to reveal their location.
- Sinister Subway: Level 4 of Skull Street has Kirby walk down to a dark subway station, where enemies roam around and ghost graffiti walls can be seen. The game also uses a subway aesthetic for all of the game's Warp Star Rooms.
- Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Played With, as Mount Mist starts looking like a pretty cold place (even having a fight with a Mr. Frosty), but quickly detours from this as following levels part ways with this concept.
- Stage 4 of Hades Harbor takes a more straight approach, as Kirby takes a detour through an icy island before hopping back to the nearby volcanoes.
- Space Zone: Ghostly Graves combines this with its later levels, taking place on much starrier areas.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: A given, considering the game's engine makes use of more Halloween themed enemy variants for almost all enemies.
- Temple of Doom: Stage 3 of Terror Tower shows an active pyramid temple on the tower's upper floors, with respawning homing Mumbies ready to ambush any careless players.
- Stage 5 of Hades Harbor features one built into a volcano, with melting magma to boot.
- Toy Time: Stage 6 of Skull Street has Kirby tour on the insides of a brighly colored factory warehouse, with Chuckies working as Jack-in-the-boxes and Jammerslams bouncing across some areas.
- Stage 2 of Ghostly Graves takes a stab at a much darker take on this trope, with jigsaw patterns decorating the walls in a darkly lit area, with Chuckies and Shotzos acting as lethal toys here. The clock mid-boss Tokkon appears in both of these levels.
- Trailers Always Spoil: Invoked in a few of the trailers to show some of the new add-ons in each patch. The special appearance of Wiz as Quick Draw's final boss was spoiled in 1.4's trailer (given it's difficult enough to reach him, with said sprite remaining unseen to many).
- Tree Trunk Tour: Closely to the original game, Stage 4 of Pumpkin Prairie features a climb through a giant tree. Stage 3 of Mount Mist also takes place on a similar area, with a hollow tree serving as ninja group's hideout.
- Tropical Island Adventure: Downplayed with both Spooky Seaside and Hades Harbor. The former takes its middle levels mostly on sandy beaches and deserts, while the latter only has one small island with palmtrees and gives much more priority to the pirate, temple and volcano levels.
- Undead Counterpart: Expected given the game's premise and reusing all of the original game's enemies. While some like Waddle Dee are just the same character in costumes, a couple like Poison Mash or Frosty Bones are intended as zombie counterparts of Cappy and Mr. Frosty respectively.
- Underground Level: Played With, the game has a few sections on these kinds of places, but mostly avoids direct cave-only levels as it usually uses them as sections rather than setpieces. The underground gallery of Spooky Seaside, volcanic caves of Mount Mist or the underground ship of Hades Harbor qualify for this.
- Under the Sea: Mostly averted as most areas that feature water usually have more ground to walk in. The start of Hades Harbor 2 takes many quirks from sunken temples though.
- Underwater Ruins: Hades Harbor's second level has the player swim through some sunken temple ruins, to the point there's anemones growing on the rocky structures.
- The Wild West:
- Spooky Seaside's beach takes a sharp turn as it goes into a desert, hosting a wild west area, with a train included! Stages 4 and 5 of Mount Mist return to this aesthetic, with Kirby encountering a small town and boards on a cargo train, ending in a mining mountain and falling to a desolate night desert down below. The ghost train on Ghostly Graves has one taking place exclusively on a haunted train breaking apart.
- The Quick Draw sub-game in the original is still here, now hosting Wester and Wiz for two of its enemies to call-back to this aesthetic.
