REVIEW: ‘Hello Kitty: Island Adventure’ Brings A Big Smile To The Switch

I have been waiting since launch for the news that Hello Kitty Island Adventure would come to Nintendo Switch, and now it has. The cozy Apple Arcade game from Sunblink and Sanrio is finally on console and PC, bringing the dynamic island adventure to an even larger audience. The game takes Sanrio’s motto to heart, “Little Gift, Big Smile.” Only, Hello Kitty Island Adventure isn’t little.

Developed in collaboration with the iconic Sanrio, Hello Kitty Island Adventure takes cozy gameplay, dynamic puzzles, vertical zones, and iconic characters and crafts an experience fit for all-ages. It’s perfect to jump into even if you’re not familiar with the world of Sanrio. Through friendship progression, you get to learn more about Hello Kitty and all her friends, including My Melody, Retusko, Kuromi, Keroppi, Badtz Maru, and more.

In the game, My Melody is invited to open a gift shop at Big Adventures Park. She invites her friend Hello Kitty and her friends, including you, to an island getaway. But things go sideways when plane troubles happen. The friends find themselves separated, and the park isn’t bustling with life—it’s abandoned. Your goal is to bring the abandoned park back to its former glory with the help of Hello Kitty and her friends.

While Hello Kitty Island Adventure boasts the traditional staples of the cozy island genre, like crafting, gathering, interacting with neighbors, and decorating a house, that’s not all there is to do. What keeps you playing at first is that the game doesn’t restrict you to one island.

Exploration is key in Hello Kitty Island Adventure, making it the perfect handheld game.

Nearly every character has their own area that matches their aesthetic and personality. Because of the island variation, the game’s open world doesn’t confine you to one linear path. While there are small condition-based elements like needing a mermaid tail to go underwater, the world’s scale and design encourage you to play the game your own way.

This extends to building up your relationships with those on the island. You can be egalitarian and give every friend the same level of attention, doing their quests individually. Or you can prioritize your favorite friends, getting rewards along the way as you level up your relationship with them. The relationship progression system also balances against the fact that the game doesn’t feature a specific level progression for your character, but with so many characters, leveling up your closeness with them keeps you invested in a larger narrative.

Hello Kitty Island Adventure uses friendships and a larger narrative to build each of the Sanrio characters larger than the small descriptions fans of Sanrio have gotten so far. While each character has had personalities that have brought their fans to them, this game allows you to interact with them tactilely, deepening that connection.

Since friendship is the game’s core, it also determines how you get new items. Instead of having a currency system, you collect different items from across the island and barter with character. Without the stress of making any kind of coin or, you know, paying off a home, Hello Kitty Island Adventure prioritizes the experience of exploring the island instead of just trying to make money.

Sunblink finds a great balance of challenge and accessibility. 

In addition to the friendship and exploration, Hello Kitty Island Adventure also includes mini-games that involve different areas of the island and impact different characters and exploration. You can collect nature across the areas and help Keroppi with his nature preserve, fix rides, or explore dungeon-like areas with complex puzzles. These puzzles offer a difficulty balance for the wide range of ages the game targets. While the environments offer detailed explanations as you look around, there is enough challenge to keep you invested and challenge you if you are accustomed to puzzle games.

Hello Kitty Island Adventure features stunning vertical areas that you can traverse by climbing, floating, and even swimming underwater. This latter form of traversal and exploration makes the game truly unique, with something we haven’t seen in other cozy games in this subgenre. Once acquired, jumping into the water, you don a mermaid tail and can explore the world beneath and around the island in a way you don’t see in other games in the genre.

While it’s small, one of my favorite mini-games in Hello Kitty Island Adventure is snapping pictures of the adorable tiny hidden Gudetama. When you see the adorable little egg, take a picture! The game balances large mechanics critical to it and small moments of mini-games that you don’t have to partake in that add a lightness to the game. To put it simply, this is one of the most expansive cozy games I’ve enjoyed playing.

Additionally, the game gives you a chance to express yourself as an original Sanrio-styled character that you create, acquiring new color palettes as you befriend different characters. This was enough for me to fall in love with the game. Collecting new outfits and adjusting your appearance is a key part of the game that feels absolutely excellent. One element that helps this is just how good Hello Kitty Island Adventure looks on the Switch, given the system differences between an iPhone and that console.

Playing with friends is more than just walking around with Hello Kitty Island Adventure.

The game’s biggest selling point is that it captures the balance of being an all-ages game. Hello Kitty Island Adventure is accessible to young players, and the ability to play with others only helps foster a communal aspect. The most exciting thing about this is that playing with other people isn’t relegated to just exploring the island. You can complete quests with them as well.

If there is one small critique I have, it’s’ the 24-hour timer on resource gathering. When you play for long periods of time, it’s easy to deplete a resource (which happened to me consistently with sticks) and then get locked out of completing a quest until it respawns. While the 24-hour timer is okay for small play sessions, it’s easy to get yourself to a point where you just have to stop playing. But for me, that was hour five, and ultimately, that’s still a long time spent rebuilding Adventure Park.

Hello Kitty Island Adventure is your new favorite cozy exploration game. While it looks similar to others in the genre, once you start playing, the truth is that there is nothing like Hello Kitty Island Adventure when it comes to exploration. That keeps you invested, and it keeps you coming back.

Ultimately, this game could have rested on the deeply rooted nostalgia that Sanrio has cultivated over the decades. Instead, the game embraces the characters and adds an important new element to its legacy by giving audiences Sanrio characters like you’ve never been able to see before.

Hello Kitty Island Adventure is available now on iOS, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4|5, and PC.