If you have the game, you have the manual, which is accessible from the Home menu while you are playing. It walks you through the same basics that you'll find here, though I'll share some extra tips.
Items and Collectibles
You can gather various items through the game. Most of them are useful in only an individual level, but some serve other purposes.
1up
Grants an extra life. If you lose all of your lives, you arrive at the Game Over screen, so this is a nice way to avoid that. It will reappear in the same position every time you enter a stage.
Assist Star
This item can hold something useful to 'assist' you as you work your way through the game. It may be more valuable if you have StreetPass enabled and run into someone with something cool. When you receive an Assist Star, you can tap the inventory screen if you need to use it.
Food/Medicine
You can collect various types of food or medicine to refill Kirby's life meter. These are often revealed by breaking apart objects or fragile pieces of the environment, or sometimes they are just sitting out in the open.
Miracle Fruit
Let's Kirby initiate Hypernova, an ability that allows him to inhale much larger objects and enemies as if they are nothing.
Stars
You can find these in standard and color varieties, and they add to your total star count, one or more at a time. When you collect 100 stars, you gain an extra life. You can also gain stars at the end-of-level bonus game, which awards as many as 30 if you fire Kirby out of the cannon at the right moment (when the gauge is at its fullest).
Keychains
There are 256 unique Keychains in the game. Many of them are of the standard variety and are distributed at random. If you pick up a Keychain, its exact type will be revealed once you finish a stage. Standard Keychains are blue in color and rather common.
Rare Keychains
There is a Rare Keychain hidden within each action stage in Story mode, and you also receive an extra one if you locate every Sun Stone. Once you collect a Rare Keychain, it will not reappear, but a standard one will take its place each subsequent time you visit that stage. Rare Keychains are gold in color, with rainbow highlights.
Sun Stones
There are multiple Sun Stones hidden throughout each stage. You can collect all of them for a special reward (see above), and to advance through the game. Once you have gathered one, it will be replaced by colored stars if you revisit that area. You can easily tell from the stage map if a given level has any Sun Stones you haven't yet found.
Level Features
You'll encounter various elements with some frequency as you progress through the game's action stages. Some of the most common are outlined below.
Door
There are two sorts of door within a typical stage. First, there is the standard doorway, with a small star overhead. I am in the habit of sometimes calling this a Star Door. Then there is a much rarer door at the end of a stage, which I have been known to call a Goal Door. You pass through it to complete a level.
Gate
You can't pass through a gate without a key, which can usually be obtained nearby (you may have to solve a puzzle first, though).
Switch
Hitting a switch will trigger an action nearby. For example, a barrier might disappear so that you can continue exploring.
Cannon
Cannons may come in a few varieties. When you jump into one, you can press the A button to fire in the direction the cannon is pointing. Sometimes, you can change that direction by tilting your handheld.
Warpstar
The Warpstar is a large yellow star that hangs in the air. You can jump and grab it to warp to a different portion of the stage, with an animation.
3D Warpstar
It looks similar to a standard Warpstar, but is surrounded by a circle. It lets you travel a shorter distance, either to the foreground or background of a stage, depending on your current position. Levels consist of two planes, and you'll have to pass between them if you want to progress smoothly and find everything. The 3D Warpstars can be easier to miss, because they are often optional.
NEXT: Story Mode
