Kirby: Canvas Curse is a 2005 Nintendo DS game where the player has to use a Nintendo DS stylus to draw rainbow lines as a main way to make Kirby move. Lines drawn around Kirby can increase the speed, while the copy abilities used in this game were mostly useless since the dashing and drawing of the line make the game go faster. In this glitchless run, this game was done without any glitches and did not use a line glitch or an out-of-bounds glitch. The second version of the submission improved this run by 38 seconds.

Kirby: Canvas Curse is a spin-off game of the Kirby series where Kirby is turned into a ball and a Magical Paintbrush appears to draw a line to move Kirby using a Nintendo DS stylus. Although this game had more modes, the any% run only featured a story mode run of twenty-one levels, six bosses, and one final boss. No medals were collected in this run, nor were the big switches. The glitchless run eliminates all the time-saving glitches used on the main stages, although the Paint Roller stage contained invisible lines drawn to make a shape. After getting into the goal door of each stage, I restarted the game unless it was the last stage of the level (the stages can be played in any order in the level). The three boss stages take place after the three stages of the level are cleared, and can be played twice, with the second visit getting more difficult. Some parts of the run involve Kirby with copy abilities, like Ghost Grounds, where I must use Burning for 2/3 of the stage. The RTA timing is 54:54.56 and the in-game time is 49 minutes. After the epilogue plays after defeating Drawcia Soul, the credits roll out.

The Plant Plain stage, the first stage of the game, was smooth, with a lot of tapping and some line drawing to make Kirby faster. In the last part of the stage, Kirby gets the Wheel ability to reach the goal door faster, tapping the obstacles to remove it.

Tiny Town has multiple parts separated into pipes. In the second part, I drew lines to Kirby to avoid the cannons, and the mid-boss appeared on the bottom. I have to destroy the spear Waddle Dees as fast as possible, then take the cannon to the top that leads to the door for the final part. The goal door is located in the center, after going through four sections.

In Ravine Road, I have to go under the stopping floor and then skip the last switch by drawing a line to the floor. In the last part, Kirby uses the wheel again by drawing a line before he hits the enemy.

In Ghost Grounds, I avoid the cannons on the left half of the first part, use the Burning ability until it reaches the cannon in the center, and use the ability on the right half. The second part is the vertical stage, where I have to use the lines more than the ability, and the final part uses the ability until Kirby reaches the tap cannon. The bottom part involved a lot of dashing and using a line in both horizontal and vertical paths.

I used this stage last in this level for this run. The second part of Growth Grasses is a fully vertical portion of the stage where I have to dash and use a line as well as tap on the clouds so Kirby can go through. Once he reaches the bottom, he grabs the Spark ability by drawing a line similar to the Ravine Road and defeats the mid-boss by both using the ability and tapping on bombs multiple times. The last part involved dashing and drawing the line to avoid the second portion of the gray zone, where I cannot draw in this area, and taking a shortcut near the goal door by grabbing a 1-up.

On the second part of Mag Mount, I have to use the burning ability to skip the stopping floors and the cannons on the bottom half. On the top half of this part, I have to draw lines to indicate the position of Kirby burning until it reaches the door. The final part involves Kirby reaching the goal while the lava is going up as a third-layer background (the lava stays on the screen while the movement of the screen remains the same).

The first part of Rift Ruins is to go through these large balls on the first part without damaging Kirby. The second part is a short part where Kirby can navigate the door in darkness without lighting the lantern. The third part involves Kirby firing two different cannons: one to get the second cannon down, and the other to move on to the fourth part. This part is a vertical level, using the fan to go up and avoid the fires, then draw lines to get to the door leading to the final part. Fortunately, the final part is short, requiring a single line to be drawn.

Contrast Cave is the first underwater level, where Kirby will float if he does not draw a line. There is a mid-boss after eating the Maxim Tomato and destroying the rocks and enemies. The last part involves using the Stone ability to get to the goal door from top to bottom.

The Silver Submarine stage is the first time where colored switches appear, and I have to match the color of the gate with these three buttons. Before the door leading to the second part, I avoided the cannons. The final part is complicated because I have to make a complete loop, opening a colored gate and activating a switch before taking another circle leading into the pipe. I have to make Kirby draw a line to get to the door, which is turning clockwise.

Machine Mansion featured the first auto-scroller of the game on the last part of the stage. In the second part, there is a long scene where Kirby fires a cannon leading into the pinball circular bumpers before hitting the wall. Then, I drew lines to reach the door.

I chose stage 3: Paletto Polis because of another auto scroller on the last part of the stage. The first part avoided the usage of a moving platform, so I drew Kirby multiple lines to get to the top. In the second part, I have to open three colored gates and several switches. The first two colored gates involve a gray zone, and the final colored gate is near the door to the last part. The first portion of the auto scroller is similar to GloriousLiar’s run. Note that during the auto scroller, the x position speed slows down at the halfway mark, so I have to draw a line to keep the auto scroller moving.

Dreamy Darkness involved lights because it started with darkness. I have to light the candles at least several times. Parts 2-5 involve the Needle's ability to navigate horizontal and vertical areas, avoiding Gordos, spikes, and electrical parts. The final part is the mid-boss where I have to tap on the bombs before reaching the goal door.

The Cold Course is one of the longest levels used in the any% run. There were a lot of ice rocks, and I had to go through two tap cannons. The wheel ability was collected in the second part, and in the final part, I had to activate the switches before going further down the stage for the goal.

Dungeon Dome is another underwater level, and the last part was the longest. In the second part, I used the wheel ability at the beginning and used it in the mid-boss, where I had to defeat enemies when the top ⅘ of the area was a gray zone. The last part looked like a spiral where Kirby uses the wheel ability for most of this part, dashing and drawing the line on the last vertical section of this part.

Canvas Canyon has a westerly wind on the first part and uses a cannon. I have to dash for the most part. The second part uses the Balloon ability on the upper half to get to the door quickly. The final part features three occasions of Kirby going vertical: from up to down, taking the tap cannon, and up to the goal. A lot of line drawing was used on the final part.

Collapse Castle featured darkness again, so I tapped on the candles several times. There were switches as well as tap spikes that rotated. In the second part, I have to deliberately damage Kirby because there is a short cutscene when the tap block is moving in the direction, and the lasers are in the gray zone. The final part is a combination of tap cannons in a gray zone and the usage of a line to draw in a vertical section of this part.

Volatile Volcano features lava again. This time, no damage was involved, and right before the door to the second part there was a gray zone, so I drew a line under it. The third part featured the mid-boss where I let Thudd fall into the bottomless pit. The final part was the lava rising and falling after a set amount of time, and reaching the goal safely.

Silent Seabed is one of the longest parts of the stage on the second part. In the first part, I have to use the Stone ability on its way down and Spark on the up portion. The second part uses Spark to activate switches not visible from the screen. The final part is an auto scroller, separated by the upper and lower sections.

Frozen Fantasy is one of the longest stages in the game. There were switches to move on to the upper portion of this part. There were spikes in some portions of this part. In the second part, I was involved in a semi-auto scroller part where Kirby was in a gray zone and a stopping floor, separated by a secret part. After that, the right half of the stage has a bit more freedom, but the portion after the pipe contains a series of stopping floors, so I wait for one, and dash through the remaining stopping floors to avoid going back, and the final part has a series of colored switches to reach the goal door.

Mad Mechanism featured an auto scroller on the first part of the stage with the third-layer ground going up and down on some occasions, so I tried to avoid getting crushed. The second part is another semi-auto scroller because I have to pick the correct path in a gray zone before fighting the mini-boss, which is to put the bombs near the switches to open the door leading to the final part. The final part featured lasers I had to cover, then avoid the electrical blocks when going up, since this part looked like a spiral. In the final section, the goal door appeared and disappeared randomly, so I drew a line into the goal door with some RNG manipulation.

Spectacle Space is one of the longest stages in this game with spikes taking up most of the first part. The second part required Kirby to touch two colored switches to open the crescent section of this part, then match the colored gate to reach the door to the final part. The final part is an auto scroller, and I have to damage Kirby to reach the goal door and RNG manipulation of the final boss.

Before the boss door, I have to draw numerous lines as the ink runs out on the second part, and the boss is located inside the door.

After clearing the level 1 stages, I picked the Kracko Jr. stage to defeat the enemies while clearing the blocks to move on to the next part. I pressed the bomb button on the third part to clear a 3 x 3 area of blocks, causing a 24-frame delay and a 96-frame wait time until it cleared the area. The boss was defeated within a few seconds by making Kirby hit the eye four times.

The Kracko stage featured an increased difficulty in the first four parts. The boss section required Kirby to hit the clouds, and then the eye to defeat it.

The first battle has three courses, and Kirby is trying his best to get the fruits and some “max speed” occurrences. The speed depends, but the character’s x position does not change.

The second battle added one more course and threw hammers for the first two courses. The hammers harm Kirby, however.

In the first battle, I have to draw lines when Paint Roller expects the lines to look like the picture. To be quick, I drew it fast, but in some cases, the lines drawn were invisible even when it sounded when the lines connected to the dot correctly. The last part was to press the panels when it was blinking, like a memory game. The last dot required four panels to tap.

The second battle has more dots to connect and more questions about connecting the dots. Like the last time, the panel pattern was similar, but the increasing difficulty led to the last dot requiring five panels to tap.

The Drawcia Sorceress part of the boss stage on level 8 started with attacks based on Kirby’s position. Two consecutive attacks lead to damage to the boss by drawing the line to reflect the attack, then the enemies spawn from the drawings by the boss. Some of the drawings feature spikes and bombs, and Drawcia sometimes spits out enemies.

The second and final part of the boss stage is called Drawcia Soul. There were attacks as well as enemies spawning from the soul. These attacks were not based on RNG based on Kirby’s movement, as it took 4 rounds to defeat the Drawcia Soul. RNG manipulation caused the part of the final boss to have more frames wasted than the previous run.

Some things need to be improved in this run. For example, RNG manipulation occurred during the Drawcia battles, and I needed to trim the number of rounds to less than 4 in the final phase. Another improvement is needed on some of the longest parts of the Silver Submarine, Silent Seabed, and Spectacle Space stages. The Dedede stages must be improved by letting the Kirby cart move up and down to collect the fruit.

Some stages showed an improvement on the second run attempt, while others did not. The first run used to be 55:39.51 trimmed down to 55:01.80 after trying to improve the run.

I double-checked the MelonDS settings, with the use real BIOS set to true when it was supposed to be false and skip firmware set to false when it was supposed to be true. Therefore, it syncs without the firmware. In this revision, the movie syncs when the real BIOS is false and the skip firmware is true, and I think I created the minor revision run by scratch using the default sync settings.