Before the game's release, "Kirby's Epic Yarn" won numerous awards at E3 2010 including "Game of the Show" from GameSpot. It was released later that year to largely positive reviews, receiving an Editor's Choice award from IGN, who ranked it as #95 in their "Top 100 Modern Games". As of April 2011, it has sold 1.59 million copies worldwide. It was re-released digitally via the Wii U eShop in Europe and Australia on May 21, 2015, in North America on July 28, 2016, and in Japan on August 9, 2016. A spiritual successor to "Kirby's Epic Yarn" titled "Yoshi's Woolly World" was released in 2015 for the Wii U. A port of the game for the Nintendo 3DS entitled Kirby's Extra Epic Yarn was released on March 7, 2019. The port was the second-to-last game that Nintendo released for the console, only to be followed by "" released three months later.