Another New Horizon: Hello Kitty Island Adventure

So, Hello Kitty Island Adventure is the new Animal Crossing, right? Well… not exactly. But if I enjoy Animal Crossing, I’ll probably like HKIA, right? Well… not necessarily. Are the two games even comparable? Well – okay, you get the picture, I’ll stop now. Obvious cuteness aside, one of the main reasons I was excited for Hello Kitty Island Adventure was because of the undeniable similarities (at least, at first glance) to the game that got me through the entirety of the pandemic. Now that I’ve spent some time with Hello Kitty and friends, however, the game feels quite different to me in a lot of ways. They’re similar, but not necessarily with as much in common as you might expect. I think fans of Animal Crossing could find a lot to like about HKIA, but I don’t think this is going to be the case universally across the board. If you’re going into the game wanting New Horizons 2.0, I think it’s important to manage expectations and understand what you’re signing up for.

Hello Kitty Island Adventure has a much more traditional game structure in comparison to something like Animal Crossing – whereas Animal Crossing leaves you pretty free to do whatever you want on a day to day basis, with only vague goals like getting a museum built, or upgrading your home, HKIA has a formal story and quests to go along with it. Progressing through the game takes both completing quests, and levelling up your friendship with the island’s Sanrio residents, like My Melody, and Kerropi. Some quests will be unlocked specifically by reaching certain friendship levels with characters, while some are general story quests that can be completed whenever. Finishing these quests gives you access to more areas on the map, new items, and new characters to meet and befriend. Now, are these quests involved, thoughtful, and compelling? No. But are they fun, wholesome, and simple? Absolutely. So yes, I will go around the island and put up advertisements for Pompompurin’s ice cream boat, and I will do so happily. But, if you are a member of the Fetch Quest Haters club, I could see this becoming grating or boring fairly quickly.

I’ve also seen a surprising amount of hate online for the “locked” progression style of the game, which works in a couple of different ways. Because a core element of HKIA is levelling up your friendship with your Sanrio island pals, there are a ton of quests gated behind reaching certain levels with certain characters. Or, occasionally, you’ll have to complete a different quest before another becomes available. For example, if you want to upgrade Hello Kitty’s oven in the café, you’ll have to reach friendship level 17 with her first. On top of that, the game runs on a calendar system, where items and resources around the island only refresh after the day rolls over. HKIA also explicitly warns you when starting your save file that you should not “time travel” by changing the date in your system (if you do, Hello Kitty will show up to your residence to break your knee caps and take the game away, don’t say you weren’t warned). So, your in-game progress each day might be limited by the resources you’re able to gather, and what you’re able to do with what you have. There are a few special items to reset/refresh materials across the island, as well as the amount of gifts you can give to characters for that day, but you don’t get access to a ton of them.

Personally, I don’t mind this structure at all, and I might even go so far as to say that I prefer it. Sure, having complete freedom to do what you want, whenever you want, is great, but it can also be overwhelming. I understand the frustration of having certain quests be unavailable for what feels like an arbitrary reason, but hear me out: I am old. Tired. Employed. Having a very achievable amount of tasks available each day, as well as a good selection of quests, is working just fine for me. I also have a bad habit of hyper-focusing, and obsessing over a new game to the point where I can sit and play it for 3, 4, even 5 hours at a time without realizing – and I know I’m not alone on this one. I could easily see myself rushing through this game if it allowed me. I’m more than happy to take my time, and have something to look forward to each evening that I get to sink a couple hours in. I think this structure also makes sense when you consider the mobile origins of the game. So I’m trying to take my time with it, and not be fussed about the fact that I have to water a beanstalk for 3 days in order to reach a new section of the map (okay, this one annoyed me).

But such is life, and this daily routine is the key to quest and game progression, as you focus on building your friendship with all the different characters. You can gift each character a maximum of three items per day, in order to increase your friendship level. Reaching these higher levels can unlock all sorts of goodies for you – it might be a new crafting plan, a unique piece of furniture, a new quest, or a special ability that you can take advantage of by asking that particular character to come adventuring with you. Each gift you give will also grant you the resource item unique to that particular character – for instance, if you’re looking for strawberries, you better give Pochacco something good. The resources they’ll give you, as well as the increase in friendship, is dependent on the quality of the gift you give them – see, every character has their own set of likes. Furniture, food, and other craftables all come with their own tags (a kind of item descriptor), which you’ll try to match to the tags that each character desires. This is how you can figure out which gifts are best suited for all your friends. Cinnamoroll likes chocolate, fire (spice), and beverages. It was pretty easy to figure out that I could whip up a chocolate chai at the espresso machine for him, which it turns out, is his favourite. You may have to work your way up to each characters perfect gift, as you won’t always have access to the resources you need to make it (Pompom’s favourite requires an upgrade to the dessert machine) but it’s kind of a fun, ongoing puzzle to try and figure out what all the characters are looking for. I was pretty glad to finally be able to craft Cinnamoroll’s, as I had only been giving him spicy pizza’s up until that point. I hope I didn’t give him explosive diarrhea.

In addition to your Sanrio friends on the island, you’ll also have the opportunity to build and design cabins for visitors, which will really test your ability to ration your resources. In Animal Crossing, when I invite a new villager to my island, they show up to a naked plot of land with their own house and all their furnishings. Not this game. In HKIA, you have to prepare a cabin that caters to each visitors preferences (again, with the tags) and furnish it accordingly. I personally love decorating houses in games (shoutout to The Sims where I had my humble beginnings) and would love to do more with the cabins once my pitiful resources allow. Some characters require much more rare/complex items to be present than others; as such, most of my cabins meet the bare minimum requirements and are laughably terrible, and for the record, I do feel bad about it. My Melody’s Papa has a cabin that consists of 3 potted plants, and 3 pieces of tofu. I did try to arrange them nicely, at least.

In another contrast to New Horizons (which technically has multiplayer, but doesn’t allow you to do much with your friends), HKIA supports a surprising amount of activities to do with a real life pal. You can play the island’s minigames together (my partner and I have played approximately 7 million rounds of Rockadoodle Roundup to win the Nest Egg Hat), assign your friend(s) their own cabin to decorate on your island, and complete weekly multiplayer quests together to level up your friendship and earn rewards. It reminds me of older Animal Crossing titles, like New Leaf, that allowed you to travel to Tortimer Island to play minigames with your friends. I really enjoy having the option to have someone join me – it’s a nice change of pace. Also very handy to be able to steal resources from your friends islands when they’re not looking, or trade items/furniture to help each other out. Truly the best of both worlds.

A problem I notice with new game releases (possibly because of the live service phenomenon) is that people expect games to be entertaining forever. Ideal runtime aside – whether you’re a fan of 200 hour JRPG’s or 15 hour solo-dolo action titles – I find that expectations regarding the amount of content, and playability of certain titles to be… a bit ridiculous. I don’t know if I’ll put over 1,000 hours into Hello Kitty Island Adventure, like I did with New Horizons, but I’m having an absolute blast for the time being. As someone who’s been struggling (for years, frankly) to focus on games that aren’t Fortnite, I love having this little gem to play. It’s adorable, wholesome, and I feel like I always have something to do; whether I’m collecting fish, donating new bugs to the Nature Preserve, crafting gifts for my fellow islanders, exploring the island searching for hidden Gudetama (if you know, you know) or prepping cabins for new visitors. Sure, the quests are pretty derivative, and the game is sometimes limiting, but I’m not mad at it.

So even though I am out here in the trenches, resource-wise, with 4 sand dollars and 11 sticks to my name, I am having the time of my life. I’m close to opening yet another new area on the map – which is much larger than I originally expected – and slowly levelling up my friendship with all the Sanrio cuties. If you’re a fan of the collection elements of something like Animal Crossing, with all the fish, bugs, and sea creatures, I think you’ll have a field day with this title (especially because you’re rewarded for completing collections and reaching certain achievements). Then again, maybe the formal quest life isn’t for you, and you’d find these tasks boring or tedious compared to the open nature of New Horizons. I also won’t deny that the game feels grindy, even this close to the beginning, and I can understand why people would get frustrated with material scarcity or high requirements to level certain characters. I think it’s also worth noting that, to the surprise of no one, the game doesn’t run perfectly on the Switch – there’s a bit of lag, and regular hitching when the game seems to be doing work in the background. It doesn’t bother me at all, nor has it affected my gameplay, but it is noticeable. The main takeaway for me when it comes to Hello Kitty Island Adventure is that individual enjoyment may vary. While this game is very much working for me, it may not hit the same mark for others. Personally, I think it’s a fun, cozy, low-commitment game that I’ve already gotten dozens of hours of enjoyment from, and well worth the investment. How could you turn your nose up at this face?