Kirby Air Riders is not just a chaotic multiplayer racer. It also has a full single‑player story mode, built into a campaign called Road Trip.
Road Trip runs alongside the classic Air Ride, Top Ride, and City Trial modes, but it’s structurally very different: it’s a one‑player, narrative run where you build up a machine, pick branching routes, and eventually decide the fate of Planet Popstar.
Story mode name and basic structure
The game’s story mode is Road Trip. It is:
| Aspect | Details |
|---|---|
| Mode name | Road Trip |
| Type | Single-player campaign (Story Mode) |
| Players | 1 |
| Core loop | Drive along a route, pick a challenge or event, clear it, gain stats and rewards, move to the next stage |
| Replayability | Branching paths, higher difficulties, New Game+ and a “true” ending |
Each Road Trip run is broken into numbered stages (Grassland Lane, Big Brawny Jungle, Digital Superhighway, and so on). Between stages, you watch short vignette cutscenes that show Kirby‑universe characters clearing obstacles and nudging you toward new biomes.
How the Road Trip story works
Road Trip tries to answer a specific question: where did all these sentient Air Ride machines come from, and why are they on Popstar at all?
The rough sequence is:
- Air Ride machines “rain down” on Popstar. They are inert until they bond with a being who has a strong will. Those beings become riders, and machines become part of everyday life.
- Over time, riders notice their machines all “looking” in the same direction toward an unknown point. Your chosen rider decides to follow that pull and investigate.
- On the road, you keep running into a mysterious, dark King Dedede look‑alike called Noir Dedede, who aggressively tries to stop you. You also collect pink crystals that gradually reveal the backstory.
The crystals lay out the real cause. Long ago, a motionless inorganic being named Zorah crashed into Popstar in a remote area that became known as The Farthest Land. Zorah cannot move, but its desire “to roam freely” is so strong that it reaches the Fountain of Dreams. The Fountain forwards that wish to the clockwork wish‑granting star Galactic Nova.
Nova interprets this in the darkest possible way. Instead of simply giving Zorah a body, it:
- Mass‑produces Air Ride machines patterned after Zorah, then drops them onto Popstar so that strong‑willed riders will become common.
- Sends drones to The Farthest Land to dismantle Zorah and steal its core.
- Rebuilds Zorah into Gigantes, a legendary Air Ride machine turned planet‑killer. Gigantes is still immobile; it needs a strong rider’s will to move.
- Uses Zorah’s core as a beacon, transmitting a recall signal to every machine. The strongest rider–machine pairs can hear it and begin converging on The Farthest Land, without knowing why.
Zorah’s consciousness refuses to go along and escapes into a new form: Noir Dedede. It technically has its wish — a mobile form to explore the world — but now sees Gigantes as a catastrophe waiting to happen. Noir Dedede stalks the Road Trip routes, trying to intercept any rider who gets too close to Gigantes, including you.
Normal ending vs true ending
Road Trip has two major outcomes tied to how much you have done with your machines.
| Ending | Trigger | Key events |
|---|---|---|
| Normal ending | Clear Road Trip once, without collecting every Air Ride machine in New Game+ | Fight Gigantes, race Noir Dedede for the core, prevent (or fail to prevent) a bad ending, Nova departs |
| True ending | New Game+ Road Trip run with every Air Ride machine collected | Gigantes becomes Hyper Gigantes, co‑pilot showdown with Noir Dedede using Dragoon and Hydra, fight inside Nova with Leo, Nova destroyed, Zorah finally freed |
Normal ending
At the end of a standard run, your machine reaches The Farthest Land. The twist is that your Air Ride machine betrays you: it answers Nova’s call and forcibly awakens Gigantes.
The last sequence plays out in two parts:
- You battle Gigantes directly and deplete its health bar.
- Immediately afterward, you enter a race against Noir Dedede, with both of you rushing for Zorah’s core inside Gigantes.
If Noir Dedede wins that race, it fuses with the core, and both Noir Dedede and Gigantes self‑destruct. That’s framed as a bad ending, and the game asks you to retry the sequence.
If your rider wins, you pierce through Gigantes with your machine, disabling it without detonating Popstar. Noir Dedede watches the sunset, visibly fading away and turning to dust. Galactic Nova, which has been observing everything from orbit like a satellite, simply retreats back into space, and your rider returns home. Zorah’s original wish remains unresolved.
True ending (New Game+ requirement)
To see the complete story, Road Trip expects more investment:
- Beat Road Trip once to unlock New Game+.
- On a New Game+ Road Trip playthrough, collect every Air Ride machine that can be used in the mode.
Only then does the true ending branch trigger.
In this version, your rider never even gets to attempt awakening Gigantes. On arrival, Gigantes swats you aside, then hijacks every machine you’ve obtained and absorbs them, evolving into Hyper Gigantes, its final weapon form.
Your rider is stranded until Noir Dedede appears again, this time as an ally. Noir Dedede summons legendary machines Dragoon and Hydra. You choose one, Noir Dedede takes the other, and you fight Hyper Gigantes in a co-op-style battle to save Popstar.
Once Hyper Gigantes goes down, Noir Dedede seizes Zorah’s core and fires a colossal laser into space. The beam hits Galactic Nova and solidifies into a physical road called Journey’s End, a rainbow bridge that doubles as the final boss rush stage.
A new legendary machine, the living Leo, awakens independently of Nova and joins your rider. Together, Leo and your rider race along Journey’s End into the interior of Nova itself, destroy the Galactic Nova Nucleus (its heart), and finally kill Nova outright. The game mirrors Kirby’s Milky Way Wishes finale with your triumphant ride back to Popstar.
Only after the “THE END” slate does the epilogue quietly resolve Zorah. Gigantes has been destroyed, but Zorah’s core survives. With help from the now‑free Air Ride machines, Zorah’s original body is reassembled. It rises into the sky, capable of moving under its own power for the first time, and peacefully leaves. Your rider heads home with Popstar safe and Nova gone.
How Road Trip actually plays
Under the lore, Road Trip is a structured, repeatable format that borrows ideas from other games directed by Masahiro Sakurai.
Run flow and choices
Each Road Trip run works like this:
- You pick a rider (Kirby, King Dedede, Meta Knight, Bandana Waddle Dee, and many others) and start on a basic Warp Star at level 1.
- The road ahead constantly offers three lanes at each “node”. Each lane contains one of several event types: a challenge, a boss, a shop cart, a new machine, or a utility event.
- You switch lanes in real time to lock in which event you’ll take next.
Challenges span a wide range of race and battle scenarios, such as:
- Standard races and time attacks
- “Defeat Rival” duels focused on a specific character
- Objective‑based tasks like destroying boxes, eating a quota of food, or reaching the Halberd
- Survival, skydive, and obstacle gauntlets like Beam Gauntlet or “Destroy the Huge Pillar”
Some rival riders glow with a purple aura. These are higher‑difficulty variants that pay out more rewards and are guaranteed to appear at least once per stage. Noir Dedede can also overwrite one of your current lane options, forcing you into a duel that drops a memory fragment when you win.
Stats, patches, and Road Miles
Every successful challenge gives you “patches” that directly raise specific machine stats, as well as experience and currency.
| Stat | What it affects |
|---|---|
| Boost | Strength and responsiveness of your boost charge |
| Top Speed | Maximum cruising speed |
| Turn | Cornering and steering responsiveness |
| Charge | How quickly you can build charge through braking/boosting |
| Glide | Hang time and air control when airborne |
| Weight | Knockback resistance and how easily you are shoved around |
| Offense | Damage output |
| Defense | Damage taken from hits |
| HP | Total health before your machine is destroyed |
Winning also grants Road Miles, a mode‑specific currency. Losing presents two options:
- Retry: Pay some Road Miles to immediately attempt the same challenge again. The fee is charged up to two times, then further retries are free.
- Start Over: Roll back to the previous rest area. You keep all your stat upgrades, but repopulate the road with new events from that checkpoint onward.
On Super‑Hard Mode, you can only Start Over (no paid retries), and you cannot save mid‑stage, which pushes runs into more of a roguelike structure.
Machines, shops, and rest areas
Road Trip gradually fills out your garage and lets you reshape your build between segments.
- Air Ride machines can appear directly on the road as events or be bought from merchant carts run by Waddle Dee. You can swap to any machine you own when you enter a new stage, leave a rest area, or retry a challenge.
- Waddle Dee shops sell four broad categories: Air Ride Machines, patches, Copy Abilities, and items, all priced in Road Miles.
- Rest areas appear at intervals, fully heal your current machine, hand you a Gummy, and let you choose one of three free patches. They also often tease what kind of crossroads event is coming at the end of the current stage.
Road events between challenges
The spaces between main challenges are packed with smaller, instant events that let you trade risk for growth or skip content:
- Burning carts hand out multiple stat patches instantly, but chip away a bit of your HP.
- Bombs wipe out all rival machines on that node and grant you their rewards while cutting your own HP in half.
- Treasure chests drop one to three patches.
- Super‑jump ramps let you skip a challenge and also give you Glide patches.
- Flame Wings, Dash rings, and similar icons either skip or instantly clear nearby challenges while still granting their rewards.
- Chickie icons lower the difficulty of the next challenge.
- Cannons fling you backward along the road so you can re‑run previous nodes and pick up missed rewards.
These quick events are why runs can stay short on paper but still feel dense; a lot of your machine’s power comes from how well you route through these micro‑choices.
Length and replay value of Road Trip
On an initial clear with a single character, Road Trip tends to fall into roughly a 2–4 hour range, depending on difficulty, route choices, and how often you fail challenges.
Several factors push total play time much higher if you chase everything:
- Two major endings (normal and true), with the true ending gated behind New Game+ and full machine collection.
- Branching routes in many stages, signaled by different stage names such as Big Brawny Jungle, Mega‑Blossom Meadow, or Digital Superhighway.
- Per‑character runs, if you want to experience the campaign with different riders and machines.
- Super‑Hard Mode, which removes safety nets and saves, making failures more punishing and runs more intense.
For players who only care whether Kirby Air Riders has anything to do solo: yes, it has a full‑fledged story campaign in Road Trip, with its own mechanics, lore, and multiple endings. For players who want something to grind, that same mode quietly hides a lot of hours behind unlocks, New Game+, and the push to finally dismantle Galactic Nova.
