The elephant in the room: the price

$39.99, that is what you’ll need to purchase the base game of Hello Kitty Island Adventure while the deluxe edition is $59.99.

The latter gives you some items to make your progression easier and exclusive cosmetics from future events. Offering digital percs for $20 seems nonsensical in itself, but it’s even worse that it’s for a supposedly cozy game. This, right out of the gate, tells us that the game may not be so chill than what the presence of all those cute Sanrio characters may have led you to believe. It tells us that the progression heavily relies on certain key items, that are time-gated, and that by paying this additional cost (half the cost of the base game, mind you) you are giving yourself a better start. If the game can be frustrating to play because of these limitations, why am I engaging in this from the start… ? Another game with a deluxe edition is Disney Dreamlight Valley which is also $20 more expensive than its base game but offers 14,500 Moonstones currency that is equivalent to $49.99 worth.

The base game of Hello Kitty Island Adventure is also at a steep price, even on sale (as of April 12th) at $31.99. Many people criticized this price point stating that it was a “mobile game”, but as an Apple Arcade Exclusive it was never just your average mobile game. But Wylde Flowers was also ported to Steam and Switch. And for $20.99, you’ll need over 50 hours to complete the main story line, and more if you engage in the side content. This is a fully-voiced engaging adventure, with different environments, customization and fun activities. I think that both games weren’t priced properly, Wylde Flower being too low and Hello Kitty too high.

I like to think that Hello Kitty Island Adventure has a pink tax and a license cost. No matter how much you try to reason, there is no justification for this price. The aim of this game is to make you think that it’s really cute, that’s it. That’s why you can take pictures with the other Sanrio characters, dress them up, or pay $20 more to have those nice outfits. And there is nothing wrong with wanting this and I believe that it’s actually a way to improve our mental wellness, more so in the stressful world that we live in. Companies are just weaponizing this need that we have against us by increasing their prices.

I myself wanted to boycott Hello Kitty Island Adventure, thinking that it wasn’t fair to be manipulated like this! But alas, I gave in and asked someone to gift it to me (as a late birthday present…!). In the end, cuteness won over me.

25 hours in, I still don’t know if this game is fun

The main gameplay loop of Hello Kitty Island Adventure is like this: you gather resources to craft things to offer to the residents of the island in order to level up their friendship levels and unlock new content. Those items that you craft are also important to welcome new residents in your bungalows. Everything is tied to the materials that you collect, and it’s time-gated. You have a maximum amount of apples, seashells, wood sticks and so on that appear each real-time day. This leads to an endless loop of collecting things, crafting things, gifting things over and over again. Even the shops don’t use any currency, and to purchase clothes or furnitures you’ll also have to use your resources.

Because resources are so important, you’ll feel the need to plan carefully their usage and their collection. Each character on the island has a special ability that we’ll help you manage this: Hello Kitty may give you an additional meal if you cook with her, My Melody helps you increase friendship levels faster, Tuxedosam provides you a small chance to get another copy of an item you bought…

While this is nice and gives some role to the residents, it also creates an awful lot of planning. You’ll need to juggle activities and change which character will follow you to utilize their abilities to the best. While other cozy games like farming sims also need you to plan your in-game day based on your stamina, the weather and your priorities, this is nowhere near as stressful as in Hello Kitty Island Adventure. You know that here, if you lack in any resources, this may hinder your progression later on.

As a result, this game can make you feel both like you are in a rush and as if you were a slave to those cute characters. An interesting experience but a not so cozy one.

The quests of Hello Kitty Island Adventure are also basic fetch-quests. While I find them tolerable in other games, here since you are looking forward to unlocking new content it makes progression seem worthless since the quests aren’t well-written nor did they add any depth to the characters. The worst quest was one with Pocchaco where you have to jog with him, basically walking, stopping to talk to him, and repeat for 5 times. That was the worst quest all-around from any game.

The time-locked mechanic brings another factor that may hinder how much fun you have with this game: limitation. While this makes sense for a gacha game to limitate how much you can do in one day, given that’s a F2P game, here it doesn’t make any sense. Animal Crossing New Horizon also functions in real time, but it doesn’t restrain you as much as you can always time travel. While a lot of new games tend to be highly customizable for players to set the game how they want to play it, Hello Kitty Island Adventure is plagued with limitations and offers a rigid experience.

Limitations, and at the same time a list of obligations to partake every day if you want to lift those restrictions. Rather you like it or not, it will be fairly recommended to forage every day, increase your friendship levels. As a result, playing this so-called “cozy game” doesn’t feel fulfilling and more like an obligation or a checklist.

Another justification for the price: the live service “content”

Hello Kitty Island Adventure will offer regular updates to add free contents. Now, the real question is if these updates will all be free, or if there will be DLCs down the line. I think that the second option is more likely, where the free contents will add time-limited cosmetics and the DLCs new maps and characters. Even if we get new maps for free, most of the updates will be those limited cosmetics that add nothing to the game and only increase Fear Of Missing Out in the players. New cosmetics also have a very specific theme (New Years, Spring, Carnival), making these items useless most of the time. Cherry blossoms furnitures and outfits will only look good when it’s Spring in real-time…

A lazy port

The UI of Hello Kitty Island Adventure screams mobile-game, and while it didn’t look out of place on a small smartphone screen, here it looks bad and kind of immersion-breaking. There is some noticeable lag in certain areas. And you’ll also notice the characters bumping into each other a lot of time. The worst is when you are in a dialog and you have someone following you. They will walk in circle for no particular reason. This isn’t the level of polish of a $39.99, and that’s weeks after its release.

They also could have lifted or adapted the time-gated elements, which are more acceptable on Apple Arcade than on a paid game. But they didn’t.

The need for higher standards in the cozy game community

I saw some outrage over the price online, but for the wrong reasons. Thinking that Hello Kitty Island Adventure (or Faefarm or any other cozy game) is priced too high because Stardew Valley is only $13.99 and worth hundred hours of content is plain ignorance. You can not compare a game developed by one person entirely in 2D pixel-art to Hello Kitty Island Adventure. Cozy games can be at $39.99, but there has to be a justification for it.

Cozy game is still a niche in the market, and when a project with a higher budget comes out, it’s exciting and it’s normal to want to get into the hype train and get it for yourself. With the ongoing trend of increasing prices (under the pretext of inflation, when video games are more popular than ever), I think that we’ll sadly witness other cozy games selling at a price that doesn’t reflect its content or quality.