Nintendo Direct Just Proved Fans Will Be Eating Good in 2027
Because we all deserve a tasty little treat
Hot on the heels of an event marking the 40th anniversary of The Legend of Zelda series, Nintendo treated fans to a second consecutive day of announcements. The Sept. 9 Nintendo Direct was more heavy on ports, updates, and previously announced titles than some people would have preferred. (It's me, I'm "some people.") Even so, there were a couple of big surprises in the mix, like a 2D Metroid game, Metroid Ravenous, and a new Kirby adventure, Kirby and the World Beyond. Nintendo's lineup also hints toward a surprising trend emerging for 2027 — games about eating.
No, I don't mean cooking and crafting minigames. I mean literally ingesting creatures and items as food.
Nintendo fans are (literally) eating good in 2027
Kirby's brand of gluttony needs no introduction. He's a pink puffball who eats other creatures to obtain their powers. No, he does not kill the creatures he ingests, because he's friendly. Back in 2023, HAL Laboratory executive director Shinya Kumazaki told Polygon, "Because the base world is a fantasy world, it’s not like they get swallowed and digested inside of Kirby. Because that might be jarring, and because we made the game to be approachable, having that kind of extreme or violent expression might negate making the game so approachable. Instead, we have this comical, funny depiction where the enemies poof. When an enemy or creature gets swallowed by Kirby, they may disappear but they do resurface somewhere else in the world." Though there's some major Truman Show vibes coming from the Kirby and the World Beyond trailer, we'd expect that our rotund hero will still find plenty of time for snacks amid all that existential angst.
Meanwhile, Metroid Ravenous finds Samus stranded on an unfamiliar moon, where it's kill or be killed. The game looks to integrate crunchy 2D platforming with splashy 3D cutscenes, and our intrepid bounty hunter must ingest her grody, tentacular opponents in order to escape. According to the game's official site, "To survive this hostile environment, Samus must use her latent Metroid powers to regain energy by feeding on her prey. Stun enemies by countering their attacks, then act fast to drain their energy." She is, quite literally, ravenous. Hope she kept a bottle of ranch dressing or sriracha in her ship for these kinds of emergencies!
The third feeding frenzy of the Sept. 9 Nintendo Direct came in the form of Bandai Namco's Ondeh Ondeh: Kaya's Tasty Tale. Inspired by the cultures of Southeast Asia, this colorful puzzle-adventure game follows a girl who wields a magical spoon. At a glance, it's a little bit Katamari Damacy, a little bit Dosa Divas. At various points in the trailer, we see a cheerful chef dancing and another character holding a "report card" listing flavor categories like spicy, sweet, and bitter. We don't actually see Kaya eat anything — or anyone — in this trailer. But ondeh ondeh are a type of Malaysian sweet treat, similar to Japanese mochi. I think it's safe to assume you will be eating quite often in this game.
It's pretty fascinating to see what kinds of mechanics and themes become little microtrends in games. I'm not talking about the big, exhausting ones, like live-service initiatives, AI slop, and never-ending layoffs. Remember all those sad narrative games set in the Pacific Northwest in the mid 2010s? When everything had a fishing minigame in the late 2010s? Or the resurgence of space horror in the early 2020s? Heck, 2025 was a big year for hole, as well as soccer games where you don't have to play that much soccer. Is 2027 the year of the tasty little treat? My body is ready.
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