Hello Kitty Island Adventure has been my addiction since its launch for Nintendo Switch in January 2025. I have played every single day. I have met every single character. I have earned every single visitor. I have completed all the puzzles. I have completed the main storyline. I’ve completed the Wheatflour Wonderland DLC. I’m basically dry to the bone for content now, though the game does have events to keep things flowing nicely. Still, I was craving something new; honestly, I’ve been waiting for City Town on Switch for-freaking-ever. But rejoice, the time has come! (To clarify, yes, my coverage is for the PC version, but it is also available for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5.)
Matt has reviewed Hello Kitty Island Adventure twice (for Apple Arcade and for Nintendo Switch), so I’m going to skip most of the basics and narrow down the base game in one sentence. You, Hello Kitty, and her friends head to an island for adventure. Players will make friends with these Sanrio characters, gain visitors to the island, and discover how the island came to be. Along the way, players can fish, catch bugs, complete room-based puzzles, collect items, and more. When Matt reviewed the game for Nintendo Switch, he stated, “Most Kitty games came across as a cheap effort to extract more cash from that lucrative product, but Hello Kitty Island Adventure is different. This is a genuinely worthwhile use of your time.”
For the “is it worth it” fiends out there, here are City Town’s stats: it has over 90 original quests and should take over 30 hours to complete. Well worth the $25 USD price tag, no? The overall story goal is to discover the mystery behind the city’s Fog.
There are three prerequisites to gain access to City Town, but nothing outlandish. First, you have to have the snorkel and the ability to fish. Second, Badtz-maru, Chococat, Keroppi, Kuromi and Cinnamoroll must be at level seven. Finally, only for the initial quest, Badtz, Chococat, Keroppi, Kuromi and Hello Kitty must be available
Hello Kitty Island Adventure’s City Town is a rainbow metropolis built high into the sky. You get there from a boat at the dock at the southeast end of the resort island, though fast travel can be unlocked pretty quickly. Nobody knows how City Town got there, not even Usahana, the new friendable character. The cute and colourful bunny oozes creativity and helps you set up your own café and shops with other Sanrio characters. She says she once imagined the city, and it just miraculously appeared out of nowhere.
And boy, will Usahana keep you busy! She had a whopping 35 friendship levels, but they include some really cool companion abilities. At level four, you unlock the first level of Imaginary Chef, which gives you the chance to create an extra two items at any cooking station. At level 19, you unlock Reimagine, which can be used once per day to alter a flower plot, a mini game price board, or an item. Interacting with a flower plot can create successful breeding results, including pattern transfers. Interacting with a mini game prize board allows you to re-roll the prizes on the board once. Reimagining an item allows you to give Usahana one item, which she will turn into another item with one of the same tags (including event items).
I much prefer the Reimagine ability, which is especially helpful when running your customizable Imagination Café, as it adds the ability to gain two extra items per item cooked. And it just gets better from there: by level 12, the odds are 100% that you will gain those extras. When it comes to Reimagining, I can also see its uses. Flower-breeding fanatics can complete rare flower transfers. Players looking to complete their collections will use it at the mini-game board. And players looking to move in visitors but are missing event furniture can use it for a chance at getting what they need sooner than an event might occur.
In the Imagination Café, your own customizable shop, serve delicious treats to your Sanrio friends in exchange for currency and City Keys to help unlock new places and puzzles. First, someone comes in with an order. Then you’re able to make it at the chef’s station with no time limits, and serve it up immediately. You can pause the stream of customers, and your last customer will reappear when you begin again. Be careful, though: customers can be cranky when they can’t get what they asked for!
Usahana doesn’t come alone, of course. She brings with her five new visitors: Panya, Buppi, Wanwa, Sora, and Nyako. There is even an all-new cameo character with unique tastes, KIRIMIchan. Usahana’s friends live in the customizable apartment complex inside the impressive Rainbow Tower.
One thing Wheatflower Wonderland lacks is puzzles, though I suppose just jumping to each location is a puzzle on its own. City Town has over 60 puzzles that take you throughout and beneath the City. When you’re not gardening, exploring, or puzzle-solving, help your Sanrio friends open seven new shops in City Town. These will unlock plushies, orchards to grow fruits, an arcade, and more. The arcade includes three retro minigames that reward nostalgic prizes.
There is a new flower, Sunburst. Their special effect is sunbeam, promising to bring radiance to your gardens.
Customization is the name of the game in City Town. You can create your own custom avatar palettes, customize your own signature aesthetic, enjoy three new clothing sets, and explore new dye options.
Briefly, I’d like to touch on what Sunblink will be doing with HKIA in the near future. The next free major update will occur in the Northern fall this year. This prevents core gameplay from being locked behind a paywall and focuses on strengthening and expanding core gameplay. There will be smaller paid content packs as well; these will be free to all Apple Arcade players, as AA doesn’t allow for microtransactions.
I’d also like to discuss Sunblink’s use of AI, which I only discovered a few days ago. (That’s on me, I should have done more research.) It’s difficult for me to fully praise City Town knowing that the developer contracts a company that uses AI for translations, rather than hiring people who are desperate for work for that very reason. Sunblink is not terribly upfront about this. The translations aren’t even great — for example, in one language, a fish tank is translated as a military tank.
About one year ago, DDnet’s AI policy came into effect. The second rule states, “A game that has AI-generated assets in it automatically gets a 0/5 score. If you’re not going to invest in your game and you’re going to be a parasite that leeches off the work of other people because you’re too lazy or incompetent to create for yourself, then you’re going to get a score that reflects the effort you put into the game.”
Luckily, this isn’t a review, or everything positive I had to say would be useless. So, keeping that in mind, and if you’re okay knowing that the developer uses AI for translations, let’s get back to City Town! It is a delightful experience that existing Sanrio fans and newcomers alike will surely love due to its colourful world, bubbly characters, and sheer amount of things to be done. Usahana’s abilities are the strongest out of all characters’ abilities to date. The Imagination Café is a cute, fun minigame that can keep you playing for hours. As I stated earlier, I believe it’s well worth the cost. I only bring this up because I’ve seen a lot of criticism of the price on social media, but this is a lot of work put into one DLC pack.
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