Yo, co-dev here, here's some stuff the other guy told me to say:

"ARI, a character half inspired by a horrible fanfiction written by me (SomeBloke), and half inspired look wise by my never ending love of Paper Mario, is your companion character for this fangame, in Single or Multiplayer, she'll constantly follow the 1st Player around in levels and on the overworld, and help you traverse through Exeldri, with togglable hints towards puzzles if you're a game journalist, and thus shit at games :D

She seems to have a near encyclopedia level knowledge of the world and needs Kirby's help to stop the 4 Chain Breakers from abusing the power of the mysterious Dimensional Chains keeping Exeldri's timescapes* stable.

I wonder if ARI stands for anything..."

*Timescapes - A word meaning different sectors in time, periods from a worlds history being split into multiple 'bubbles' of reality which you can traverse.