Next year, Sanrio’s cast of adorable characters will transcend your iPhone and iPad. Hello Kitty Island Adventure is a game with a warm community feel that debuted on Apple Arcade in July 2023, eventually launching as a limited-time exclusive on Nintendo Switch and PC in 2025, before coming to PS4 and PS5.
Notable is the absence of Xbox. But even releasing the game outside of Apple Arcade would be a welcome change for Sanrio fans outside of the Apple ecosystem. Hello Kitty Island Adventure is a calm, low-stakes experience roaming a tranquil island performing fun missions, and it fits perfectly with Sanrio’s adorable cast.
Sunblink chief product officer Chelsea Howe said fans have been playing the game, with more than 40,000 people participating in the official Discord campaign. She attributes the game’s popularity to the characters and the game’s uniqueness – letting you create your own Sanrio-style character, adventure through dynamically different areas, decorate your home, craft and create.
“I think we always get the initial surprise [at the game.] If you are a Sanrio fan, they have never seen a game like this.
But Sunblink also keeps fans satisfied with regular content expansion. Hello Kitty Island Adventure has provided players with over 30 hours of content since its launch, and Sunblink Studios has kept fans engaged by adding content regularly (updates every three weeks, and new features in major updates every six weeks). This pushes the development of the game to about 80 hours now.
At first glance, Hello Kitty Island Adventure looks a lot like its cozy Yu-Gi-Oh! predecessor, Animal Crossing: New Horizons . The games have similar island settings and community vibes. But Hello Kitty Island Adventure has some unique elements that will surprise fans, such as its open-world aspect, Howe said. There are biomes and island features such as ruins to explore, which contain underground puzzles and logic rooms. The main mechanic isn’t to pay off your sketchy raccoon landlord’s debt, but to level up your friendships with Hello Kitty herself, Chococat, Cinnamoroll, and other Sanrio characters.
“It was very important for us to consciously blend the open world with the comfort of simulated life and continue down that path despite the Animal Crossing comparisons,” Howe said.
Another way it differs from Animal Crossing: You’re not supposed to adjust your console’s clock to trick your game into thinking it’s earlier or later, something fans call “time travel.”
“Don’t do it. You did it in Animal Crossing. Don’t do it in this game,” Howe said with a laugh. This isn’t a promise of punishment – if you time travel, you’ll miss out on immediate events, which may lock you out of new content. Yes, Sunblink adds the same content every few weeks.
This includes in-game events related to holidays, such as Valentine’s Day, which all players will experience at the same time. Now that the game is coming to platforms other than Apple devices, Sunblink faces the additional challenge of updating multiple platforms simultaneously. To that end, it will roll out Apple Arcade version updates at the same pace as multiple larger updates for consoles and PC.
Howe said Sunblink listens to fans and adds features or makes adjustments based on their suggestions. Sometimes that means introducing features similar to those found in Animal Crossing, and other times it means removing problematic features. For example, the game has no inventory cap: “That’s the number one thing that’s been a huge frustration for me personally and for other people in Animal Crossing,” Howe said.
Another added feature is the TikTok-friendly ability to edit your character’s island home. If friends are watching, they can send emojis and other instant feedback as you decorate. “If one of your higher-level motivations is self-expression, and if you want it to be a social experience, the more you can enable collaborative self-expression, the better,” Howe said.
All of these non-combat, friendship- and cultivation-focused games are coming to consoles and PC for an undisclosed price, but Sunblink inherits another Apple Arcade feature: no microtransactions. Instead, there’s a mix of free and paid updates, which Sunblink believes will better resonate with the fan base. “It’s definitely about making sure you feel like it’s worth the value you’re providing,” Howe said.
Fans of the cozy game will have another option when Hello Kitty Island Adventure hits multiple platforms next year, with Howe stressing that players will decide how long the game lasts.
“We view this as the beginning, not the end. This is a live game. We have at least two more years on the road map,” Howe said. “As long as people enjoy it, love it, play it, we intend to continue to maintain it.”
