Screenshot by Bonus Action
With gameplay focused on friendship, adventure, and exploration, Hello Kitty Island Adventure has captured the hearts of thousands after its PC and Nintendo Switch debut. Bonus Action has had the opportunity to sit down with Sunblink’s Director of Marketing Logan Beru to talk about how the game came to life, and what the team focused on bringing to players.
Hello Kitty Island Adventure takes everything players love about games like Animal Crossing, and turns it into a Sanrio adventure filled with open-world exploration.
From diving and cooking to helping characters and building friendships, Hello Kitty Island Adventure is a beautiful game. There is plenty to do, and no shortage of secrets to uncover.
Logan Beru, Director of Marketing at Sunblink, explains to Bonus Action that the team worked hard, with diversity and inclusion at its core, to create a game that everyone can enjoy in the most authentic way possible.
Hello Kitty Island Adventure is An Adventure For Everyone
What was your role in Hello Kitty Island Adventure during development, and what are your favorite parts of the game?
“I’ve had quite the journey with Hello Kitty Island Adventure so far. I joined Sun Blink as the primary Producer on the game, actually. So I started right at the beginning, right at the prototype phase, and I was the producer on Hello Kitty Island Adventure concept all the way up until launch on arcade, so halfway in 2023.
Then after the initial launch, I moved over to managing marketing and marketing services for the studio. I have a lot of love for this game, a lot of stories about development.
Some one of my favorite things about the game is how sweet and inclusive it is. Really, truly, that’s something that was really important to all of us who are working on it. I did not know anything about Sanrio or Sanrio characters before I started working on Hello Kitty Island adventure, and I just absolutely fell in love with the universe working on it. There’s over 400 characters. They all have different personalities. They’re all unique. It was just so fun to learn about that world while we were working on building it.“
Bonus Action deeply appreciated the amount of freedom and inclusion within the Hello Kitty Island Adventure character creator. After commenting on how important it was to us, Logan added:
“That’s a lot of the intention behind that system and behind the customization. We really just wanted people to feel very free in terms of creating whatever they wanted to look like, whatever their style, day to day. You can change your look at any time. Any of the avatars or any of the players can wear any of the clothing items or have any of the facial features or body types. It’s just we wanted it to feel completely open like that.“
There are so many ways to engage with the world in Island Adventure. What is your favorite mechanic in the game?
“I think that my favorite mechanic, personally, is diving. And it’s been one of my favorite mechanics since the very early stages of the game, since the prototype, when everything looked real off and it’s just the bare bones of the game.
But even then, exploring the island, and then all of a sudden the world opening up underwater, and the sudden gasp that you’d get from people who are testing it or even just people on the team of like, Oh, there’s so much more, always brought me a lot of joy. So I think that I love those kinds of mechanics, especially working on a game like this, where I see people’s eyes light up and be like, there’s so much more, is really exciting for me.“
Was there any big hurdles when porting Island Adventure from Apple Arcade to Switch and PC? What did that process look like?
“I have less insight into that experience, actually, because by the time that the team was looking at porting options to bring it from Apple Arcade onto Switch. I was no longer a producer by that point. We had taken production and brought on a new lead producer who was really focused on DevOps and those sorts of things.
One of the things that I do know was not as big a jump as maybe people would expect going from Apple Arcade to a different console like a Switch or PC. Because Apple Arcade is a subscription and does not include microtransactions, there wasn’t ever a version of the game that had microtransactions and time gates.
That feeling of open world where you can do anything at your own pace has always been core to the game. I know that because we had the freedom to make that game without any of those, maybe what you might think of as typical free-to-play mobile tropes, it just made the game that experience from the beginning.“
Do you know if there are plans for a DLC or additional content?
“I know that there are plans for additional content in the future. I think that the details of exactly how those are going to be surfaced are still in the works.
I know for sure that there are events that we have planned that are going to be seasonal and holiday events. For example, we have a little sneak peek, but this is coming up pretty soon, is that we’ll have our Valentine’s Day event starting as soon as February 8.
So that’s content people will be able to look forward to immediately. After that, we have the springtime celebration coming up in March, which is going to be another limited-time event with its own set of clothing items, event decoration items, and things like that. We have events planned ongoing for a number of months at least. I know that there’s going to be a lot for players to look forward to. Then we’re also looking into some potential DLC in the future.“
What was the biggest hurdle that you ran into while developing Hello Kitty Island Adventure and how did you navigate it?
“I think, and maybe this is just my two cents as a producer, the biggest hurdle was number of ideas and figuring out what could be in the game and what could we do, especially when it came to the unique blend of ideas that we had for Hello Kitty Island adventure, where it’s definitely cozy.
It’s low stakes. You can take it at your own pace. There isn’t really any danger. There’s stamina. There’s stamina to balance the exploration, but that was part of the other bucket of ideas. I think a bit of the secret sauce to what makes it work so well is that it’s cozy, but there are quests.
There’s a lot of ‘take it at your own pace’, but there’s also ‘you have to figure out how to climb this mountain with the stamina that you have’. And there is a way, and you might not be able to do that right away, but you can get there eventually. So I think that the biggest hurdle that we had during game development was figuring out what elements of these different genres do we bring together and blend in a way that makes it the best game possible because we had a lot of ideas.”
What were some of the ideas you guys had to scrap?
“Mini-golf. It was part of the prototype.
Maybe there’s a world someday where we can still bring in some of those kinds of games into the island. But I think ideas like that ended up evolving into things like the obstacle courses. It’s like, how do we take this idea of these mini games and make them part of the world and challenge players if they want to, to interact with the world in a different way.
Ideas like mini golf or frisbee or some other things like that were some early ideas at those kinds of mini games that could get players to with the world and the terrain and a little bit of a different way. That’s a silly answer, but that’s definitely one of those things that we explored that was like, Yep, just not going to add as much to the end game as something like a lot of the other big ones that we ended up doing, diving or even obstacle courses with how broad that system can be and all the different things that we can do with it.”
How did you decide on a Nature Preserve over a typical cozy Museum?
“That was a really interesting early discussion in the game, do we have a museum or do we do something else? It ended up after discussions with the team, we felt like the idea of a nature reserve fit better with what the game was trying to be.
It is very much about restoring the island, which is about exploring and doing different quests, especially as the game goes on, just contributing to the island. We felt like having a place where the critters could be safe and live instead of being on pedestals was more the direction that the game wanted to take.
That’s an example of one of those early direction decisions that really, I think, shaped the overall tone of the game through those series of decisions. I really like it, too. Personally, This is going to sound very cozy game niche, but there’s something always pretty sad about going and picking out a butterfly and then having it just sit forever on a pedestal in a room.“
Those looking to jump into Hello Kitty Island Adventure can do so now on Apple Arcade, Nintendo Switch, and on PC via Steam.
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