Game Systems

Kiko: Abilities and States

Systemssystemcharactertechnical

High-Level Overview: Kiko is the air character. Where Koopa is about mass, Kiko is about momentum and altitude: every ability either buys height, spends it, or converts it into a direction. His moveset is wider and more forgiving than Koopa's, and almost all of it is resource-limited: jumps, dashes and glide all reset only on landing.

Controls

ActionButtonOn groundIn air
JumpAJumpDouble jump (backflip)
PeckXMelee attack-
Air DashB-Air Dash
GlideB (hold)-Hold to float
TornadoRight TriggerFire tornado-
The Right Trigger mirror

Kiko's tornado and Koopa's bubble share the Right Trigger. Both are ranged abilities that take an enemy out of the fight rather than simply damaging it.

Core Abilities

Air Dash: the signature move

A timed dash that flies level through its opening stretch, then climbs late on an exponential launch ramp.

  • The level opening stretch is the aimable attack window. The late climb is what turns a dash into height.
  • Chains. A fresh press of B extends into another dash, up to a dash limit that resets on landing.
  • Drives straight through enemies, damaging and hard-shoving each one once, then phasing through its body so the dash follows through onto the next. This is Kiko's answer to a crowd, and the mirror of Koopa's rolling plow.
  • A landed dash-hit grants a brief forward-speed boost, so clearing a line of enemies accelerates.
The one exception

A rolling Enemy - Medium Crab wins the exchange; Kiko takes the hit instead of pogoing off. The armoured charge has to be dodged by both characters, or the Medium Crab's whole design collapses.

Glide

A Kirby-style float with an exhaustion model: full speed for a normal duration, then a tired phase that smoothly slows before forcing a fall.

  • Entering is free. No charge is spent, so the glide can be dropped and re-entered freely while airborne. The limit is the exhaustion timer, not an inventory.
  • Speed eases toward its cruising target from either direction: a slow entry picks up speed in the air, a fast launch decelerates gently rather than snapping.
  • Toggles an air-trail VFX so glide state is readable at a glance in split-screen.

Dive → Roll → Daze

A three-link chain, and Kiko's only real risk/reward line. The dive is not on a player button; it triggers only as a follow-up off a bounce pad.

  1. Dive: a steep downward plunge under multiplied gravity, also driving forward along the facing.
  2. Roll: landing from a dive rolls, and the roll accelerates over its duration.
  3. Daze: a roll that slams into a wall stuns Kiko for a fixed duration.

The faster the roll, the better the traversal and the worse the wall.

Peck (X)

Kiko's melee.

  • Damage and the state's lifetime are both driven by an animation event on the clip, not a timer. Enemies only take peck damage while the strike window is open, and the state lasts until that window has opened and closed, so wherever the event sits in the clip, the two can never desync.
  • Standing still, Kiko turns to face the nearest valid enemy in range and pecks in place. There is no lunge; closing the gap is the player's job.
  • Enemy hurtboxes grant the peck a +1.25m reach bonus, because the beak strikes ahead of the body.

Tornado (Right Trigger)

Kiko's ranged ability, and the only ability in the game that both fights and solves puzzles.

The tornado travels forward along the ground for its whole range, sweeping up every tornado-able enemy it overlaps and carrying them along; it does not stop on a catch. Only at the end of its travel does it hold position, and only while still carrying something.

Each caught enemy runs three phases:

  1. Ground pull: spiralled across the floor into the middle of the funnel.
  2. Rise and spin: climbs the funnel, whirling rapidly.
  3. Eject: at the top it dies inside the funnel, and the corpse is thrown clear.
The tornado is always the kill

An enemy never leaves the funnel alive. Anything still caught when the tornado expires or hits geometry dies the same way. This is a hard rule; it is what makes the tornado worth a button.

It also catches Koopa (see Tornadoed, below) and charges Tornado Windmills; see Systems - Interactable and Triggerable.

Swimming

Kiko swims on the surface only, held at a float depth by buoyancy, and can jump back out of the water. He cannot dive; depth is Koopa's, and always will be. Anything below the surface is a lock only the Turtle opens.

Duo States

StateWhat happens
MountingThe hop-on animation onto Koopa's seat. Boarding from the side plays an up-and-over arc; boarding from above (dropping out of a dive) skips the hop so Kiko settles straight down.
DockedRiding Koopa. Kiko's controller is disabled and he mimics the Turtle, cross-fading the matching duo animation whenever Koopa's state changes.
Duo GlideThe first A press of a grounded-to-air stint pulls the pair up and engages the duo glide immediately while A is held; no tap-vs-hold threshold. Kiko has full steering control from the jump itself.
DismountPressing A again (a fresh press, at any point) jumps Kiko off.
FlungKoopa's spin while docked launches Kiko upward. The launch is involuntary, so it uses clean full gravity rather than the short-hop arc, giving a consistent pop. It owns the whole arc and carries Koopa's world velocity snapshotted at launch, so a Kiko flung off a moving Turtle keeps pace and can land back on him.
BubbledKoopa's bubble can catch Kiko out of any state. No controls: the bubble puppets him (float, wobble, tumble-flail) and eases him back to the ground before releasing.
Both characters can disable each other

Koopa can bubble Kiko; Kiko can tornado Koopa. Neither is a punishment mechanic. Both are the same systems the enemies are subject to, applied to a friend. That is a strong co-op comedy engine and is currently undocumented anywhere in the design.

Polish Details

  • Idle breaks: three flourishes (blink, foot tap, look around), never the same twice in a row, never while floating on water.
  • Distinct hop and backflip animations for the first and second jumps.
  • Turn-banking on the model while flying.
  • Ground alignment on slopes.

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