Review: Hello Kitty Island Adventure Is Animal Crossing with a To-Do List

Know what I love about Animal Crossing and all other life simulations like it? It lets you really relax and take your time. You don’t need to rush around. Go meet cute colorful characters who all want to be your friends and enjoy life at your own pace. Hello Kitty Island Adventure is definitely like Animal Crossing in some ways, as it does offer an island to make your home, but it’s really more of a take on Disney Magical World 2 or Disney Dreamlight Valley. There’s a massive to-do list ahead of you, lots of ingredients and materials to collect, and familiar mascots who want to be your friend.

Hello Kitty Island Adventure begins with a plane ride to Friendship Island, a place that is supposed to be home to a resort and entertaining attractions. However, something happened and now it’s abandoned. After deciding if you’re a bird, feline, or dog in the character creator and getting to know the Sanrio all-stars on the same flight as you, a cake disaster forces everyone to skydive to their new home. Since everything is abandoned and a strange sentient hologram known as TOPHAT is suffering from amnesia, it’s up to you to find all the Sanrio characters, make friends with them, explore the island, and lure new visitors there.

Image via Sanrio and Sunblink

I like to think of Hello Kitty Island Adventure as an errand simulator, rather than something like Animal Crossing. Like Disney Dreamlight Valley, every Sanrio character you meet is going to need something. My Melody? She wants the Strawberry Crates that you’ll also need to repair houses so visitors can stay in them. Chococat? He wants Power Crystals. Tuxedosam? He wants you to make him some pineapple cake concoction. Since these can involve crafting projects, that also means watching the ground for any little bits and pieces, like branches, rubber, fruits, and flowers, so you can combine them into whatever they need. Not to mention you also have to get an idea of what kind of furniture theme visitors might want so you can tailor vacation homes to them.

That may sound like a lot, but it really isn’t so bad. I only found Hello Kitty Island Adventure somewhat overwhelming with its degree of requests in its first five or so hours. This is due to the fact that you’re being tasked with exploring the island and finding new hallmarks and rounding up missing Sanrio characters while also seeing tutorials, being assigned busywork by your new friends, and getting a feel for the game. Especially since you’re locked out of the fast travel options initially and the island is a genuinely big place.

Image via Sanrio and Sunblink

It’s a pretty one as well. Hello Kitty Island Adventure is an extraordinarily cute game. All of the familiar characters are well rendered and look adorable, with their styles all matching in a complementary way. There isn’t the degree of customization as in Animal Crossing here, so you won’t be changing the island to look how you want via decorations and terraforming. But what is here is fun enough, and there are a nice array of different biomes to help make the island feel richer and offer regional diversity.

What’s a little odd is how it actually implements some adventuring and platforming elements. There’s a stamina wheel, which increases as you find apple slices, determining if you can scale steep hills or other sorts of surfaces. It’s unexpected and usually works well, though it is weird if you move slightly too far in one direction or another and move off of a ladder and start using up stamina. Prior to getting the flippers from a Keroppi quest that let you swim, there are some timed challenges that feel like they expect you to do some light 3D platforming to jump over gaps. Given I was playing on an iPad without any controller, this was very fiddly, as the “jump” button also happened to be where the items wheel is. It lacked quite a bit of precision and could be frustrating. There’s also a glide function, wherein you can press and hold a jump if you have enough distance to pull out balloons, but again, it lacks the precision I prefer from such features.

Image via Sanrio and Sunblink

Once you do really start settling in, it really feels like Hello Kitty Island Adventure is about contouring experiences for virtual guests a la the Disney Magical World games. For the permanent residents you are befriending, it comes down to learning their preferences for their three daily gifts so you can further befriend them and get bonuses from being in their inner circle. For ones who are visitors, it comes down to pinning down their personal aesthetics so the more obscure characters like Mimmy or Chiffon.

Hello Kitty Island Adventure being so focused on doing things for other characters made it sometimes feel like it lacked the charm and socialization of Animal Crossing and Disney Dreamlight Valley sometimes. When I’d play both, I’d sometimes have fun just checking in with residents to chat with them. But here, the conversations tended to feel really transactional. It could be because I was playing the game in conditions where I was under a crunch to do and see as much as possible. But while it is fun to see these characters and the indicators go up to show “we are friends,” it didn’t feel as neighborly as it would when I’d wander around and check in with Isabelle, Marshal, Sasha, or Raymond.

Image via Sanrio and Sunblink

The thing is if people did really love the Disney Magical World and Disney Dreamlight Valley life sims or adore Sanrio, Hello Kitty Island Adventure is definitely a must-play game. It is pretty well executed, even if it does often feel like you’re constantly checking off to-do lists to make your favorite mascots like you. It doesn’t have the depth of some similar simulations and I’m not sure it will have the staying power of an Animal Crossing game. It’s definitely a pleasant, simple simulation.

Hello Kitty Island Adventure is available for on Apple devices for Apple Arcade subscribers.