The Pink Puffball Has Gone Quiet
Kirby has appeared in some form almost every year since 1992, which makes 2025’s silence from HAL Laboratory all the more conspicuous. No Direct announcements, no teaser trailers, no cryptic social media posts – just a clean absence where a pink puffball announcement would normally sit on the Nintendo calendar.
For a franchise that released Kirby and the Forgotten Land in 2022 and followed it with Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe in 2023, then went quiet through most of 2024, another year without a meaningful reveal is starting to feel less like a scheduling gap and more like something deliberate is being prepared. The question the Nintendo community keeps circling back to is: what exactly is HAL building?
What HAL Laboratory Has – and Hasn’t – Said
HAL Laboratory operates with notably less public-facing communication than studios like Retro or Nintendo EPD. The Kyoto-based developer rarely teases projects in advance, and when it does, the window between announcement and release is usually short. This pattern makes the current silence harder to read – it could mean nothing is coming soon, or it could mean something is so far along that HAL is waiting for the right Nintendo Switch 2 launch window to drop it.
Nintendo itself hasn’t addressed the gap directly. The Nintendo Switch 2 launch lineup has absorbed most of the company’s promotional energy, and smaller franchise announcements tend to get folded into Nintendo Directs rather than headlining them. That said, Kirby titles have historically been reliable system sellers for younger audiences, and skipping the early Switch 2 period entirely would be an unusual move for a franchise that Nintendo has used to drive hardware adoption before.
The last substantial original Kirby content was Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe, a remaster rather than a new entry. Before that, Forgotten Land marked the franchise’s first full 3D adventure – a format change significant enough that fans have been speculating ever since whether HAL would continue down that path or return to the more traditional side-scrolling format that defined most of the series.
Why the Speculation Is Getting Louder
A pattern is emerging across Nintendo’s older franchises that makes the Kirby situation feel less isolated. Fire Emblem’s prolonged absence has been generating similar frustration among its fanbase, and the broader trend of Nintendo holding announcements for Switch 2 rollout windows has given fans a framework – probably accurate – for why beloved series are going dark simultaneously.
The Switch 2 theory carries weight. Nintendo’s strategy around console transitions has consistently involved releasing familiar franchise entries to smooth the hardware switch for existing fans. Kirby, with its broad age appeal and accessible gameplay, fits that playbook cleanly. A new title releasing in late 2025 or early 2026 would align with the timeline HAL would need if development started shortly after Return to Dream Land Deluxe shipped.
There’s also the 3D question that won’t go away. Forgotten Land performed well both critically and commercially, and HAL would have immediate data on how players responded to that format. The game’s success makes a sequel or a new 3D-native Kirby title the obvious next step, but HAL has surprised fans before – the studio has been known to pivot formats mid-franchise without much warning. A return to a side-scroller with upgraded visuals for Switch 2 hardware is equally plausible.
Fan communities have been picking apart every HAL Laboratory job listing and patent filing for clues, and while that kind of analysis rarely yields clean answers, the volume of discussion itself signals something. When a franchise this consistent goes quiet, the silence becomes its own kind of noise.
What makes this particular gap feel charged is the timing around the Switch 2. HAL’s development cycles for major Kirby titles run roughly two to three years from concept to release. If Forgotten Land was the full-scale effort that defines a console generation’s Kirby identity, then whatever HAL is working on now would be its Switch 2 equivalent – and that title would need the development time that the current silence actually suggests is happening. The absence isn’t necessarily a drought. It might be a runway.
