💥 TRENDING: Id/clayton games - Complete Album!

I picked this game up because I like the SNES Donkey Kong Country trilogy. This is like that in the sense that you have a roll/spin attack that can be used to extend your jump. Each level has two bonus challenge rooms to find and 4 KAZE letters to collect. Kaze herself plays like Dixie, being able to twirl her ears to slow her descent and cross large gaps. There are arrow shaped launchers that act like barrel cannons. You'll see a lot of DKC like obstacles and level gimmicks. With Kaze being a rabbit, all the enemies are based on vegetables.

The "Masks" in the title are found in certain levels and act like animal buddy transformations in the DKC series. Kaze will gain new abilities like the bird mask transformation that acts like Squawks, flying and shooting projectiles. There is a dragon mask that acts like a mine cart level: constantly running forward, but you get an air jump. The shark mask lets you move in any direction underwater (without it, Kaze can only dive underwater temporarily). The tiger mask gives Kaze an air dash and can climb up walls Megaman X style.

Collecting all the green bonus room jewels will unlock an extra level per world. "Lost Levels" so to speak. These levels are just meant to be hard and short. There are no collectibles found within.

Collecting all the yellow KAZE letters will unlock images that tell the story of the game. Without them, there is very little to understand about what happened and even after collecting all of them, I feel like there isn't much story to "get" anyway.

Collecting the pink small gems (bananas) also counts toward 100% in this way: collecting 100 in a level is another "checkbox". I didn't really notice if it unlocked anything specific. Maybe I'm just clueless on this one. Collecting 100 does not give an extra life because there are no lives in Kaze. If you die, you simply go back to the last checkpoint or start of the level

Beating any level will unlock the time trial mode for that level. Time trial mode is started by going into the level like normal, then grabbing the stopwatch item placed at the start (the stopwatch does not appear until after the level has been beaten once). Grabbing the stopwatch will also remove the other collectibles, making it harder to know where to go (no banana trails).

This game has only four worlds compared to the original DKC trilogy of 6 to 8 worlds.
There are a total of 31 levels (including the unlockable ones).
The level select screen is presented very simply, moving left to right to each level. There isn't a map like in DKC to move around on. I like that the level themes in Kaze are mixed around as you go through the game, but with the simple level select presentation, there is no convincing reason why the next level theme is what it is. If there was a fleshed out map screen, there would be a visual connection between the levels.

If you want more DKC, this may feel a little light, but it does have some challenging levels, secrets to find, and some new spins on the DKC formula that make it enjoyable.