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Howdy Kitty Island Journey is every thing I need in a repetitive, stress-free open-world life sim of its type. The Animal Crossing inheritor, made by Howdy Kitty’s huge merch firm Sanrio and small sport studio Sunblink, is a honeycomb-sweet mixture of caring for buddies and a surprisingly giant, secretive island; it’s the right cozy sport for summertime.
It’s not reinventing any of Harvest Moon’s well-oiled tractor wheels—it follows most of the conventions established by almost 20 years of video games prefer it. However I’m impressed with how fast-paced Island Journey feels. Many life sims, like Ooblets or Espresso Discuss are slow-burned sugar, ensuring gamers have invested in watering their backyard or steeping the identical lemon tea for just a few days earlier than letting them into the particular sauce, a brand new recipe or piece of furnishings, or one thing. In simply my 5 hours with Island Journey, although, the sport already seems like reaching right into a full Christmas stocking with no backside.
Howdy Kitty Island Journey stands out
Its plot makes ample area for exercise. It’s someplace between a typical life sim origin story (it’s as much as you to revive a abandoned, however charming, amusement park) and the inscrutable timeline of the live-action 2002 Scooby-Doo film. Howdy Kitty and her buddies—which embrace her animated sequence companions pink-hooded rabbit My Melody, big-eye frog Keroppi, and portly pet Pompompurin, in addition to extra area of interest Sanrio characters like moaning egg yolk Gudetama and tap-dancing duck Pekkle—have been instructed to maneuver to an deserted island.
In, I assume, an effort to enchantment to all ages (the Apple Arcade unique is rated 4+ within the App Retailer) the sport appears often uncertain of how unsettling that’s imagined to be, including unmarked graves to the map but in addition making it so your character by no means has to sleep and may by no means die.
Its dialogue can be generally incongruously self-conscious, coming throughout as a family-focused Millennial. Like, when Howdy Kitty’s plan to supply me with a aircraft snack leads to underbaked dessert splatting onto seats and faces, grumpy penguin Badtz-Maru shouts a reference to the 2006 film Snakes on a Airplane (“I’ve had sufficient with the desserts on this aircraft”) earlier than leaping out the emergency exit with a bouquet of balloons. Later, when an odd, talking hologram seems after opening a locked gate, Chococat wonders out loud if it makes use of “neural networks to course of data.”
The title Howdy Kitty Island Journey, too, appears to name again to 2006, borrowing from a South Park episode the place Butters says he’s not on his PC enjoying World of Warcraft, he’s enjoying Howdy Kitty Island Journey, a sport that didn’t exist earlier than its launch on July 28. These fourth-wall breaks are often off-putting to me, a grown-up Sanrio fan who prefers its characters to be clean canvases for kawaii projection. Like, canonically, should you can name it that, my favourite character Pompompurin has few outlined qualities apart from the truth that “he loves milk” and is often depicted with a star-shaped butthole.
I believe that’s surrealist artwork. Island Journey, regrettably however understandably, for the good thing about its friendship and reward techniques, chooses as a substitute to hook Sanrio characters and their dialogue to concrete actuality with outlined persona traits and utility.
Howdy Kitty is my greatest pal
Whereas the sport limits you to giving three presents a 24-hour interval (in-game days transfer faster than that, denoted by both a glittery little moon or solar on the high left of your display screen, subsequent to a painterly mini-map) per character, I like how simply friendship slots into the remainder of the sport. In related life sims, it may well appear to me that I have to disrupt instinctive gameplay by discovering an merchandise a personality would possibly like. In Island Journey, although, presents may be simply acquired via intuitive open-world exploration and play.
Due to this, I degree up my friendship with a number of characters virtually instantly, receiving themed furnishings, colour palettes to customise my character, and sidequests in return.
Additionally, loads of tofu. In between friendship ranges, I depend on the constant friendship bonuses I get for presents, which, for Howdy Kitty, is blocks of jiggly tofu. My Melody all the time provides me baggage of flour, and I ultimately come throughout free pineapples prepared for slicing whereas strolling across the seashore. I’m going to Howdy Kitty’s bakery to experiment with its oven, and I find yourself with a layered pineapple cake Tuxedosam, Sanrio’s bowtie-wearing penguin, apparently likes to eat and get as a present.
Pleased accidents like this make friendship in Island Journey really feel inextricable from its core gameplay, which is heartening. Different points are equally breezy. Island Journey permits me to discover almost each a part of the mysterious island from the second I step onto it. Mandatory objects, like sparks that energy ziplines, and instruments, like strawberry-colored crates that enable me to open up customer cabins for attracting new characters to my island, are all instantly inside attain.
There’s so much to have a look at, too, from pumpkin-lined swampland to difficult gemstone cave networks, to volcanic rock mountains which can be effervescent with magma, to kelp mazes rooted deep within the glittering ocean.
I rotate my fast merchandise instruments to carry out the entire commonplace life sim hobbies as I navigate these mountains and rivers. After I’m feeling leisurely, I stroll round completely peaceable seashores to seize coconuts or pink sand greenback disks, the sport’s predominant foreign money. I’ll spot a rainbow fin I haven’t seen earlier than, and I yank out my fishing rod for a easy minigame (press proper and left to verify a white line stays inside the limits of a inexperienced bar). There are tropical bugs to catch with a internet that by no means fails. But when I’m bored with the solar, I can all the time take to the frilly cave networks with mine carts to experience over stalks of iridescent stone.
Once more, there isn’t a lot that units these commonplace life sim qualities aside from different video games that did them first, particularly for gamers who aren’t alone thrilled by Howdy Kitty gracing them along with her elegant presence. They play out the way you anticipate them to—an undiscovered guppy so as to add to your assortment, one other recipe beneath your belt.
However they’re all so painless to carry out, and in contrast to different video games with extra trial-and-error, it’s uncommon that I ever fail in no matter I got down to do. Nothing is troublesome or resists once I push, and that’s what I like—forging forward, discovery, meditatively following My Melody wherever she leads me.
I’ve sufficient complication to weed out in my very own life, so I don’t get bored when Island Journey seems like a hands-free, mowed path to victory. It balances ease with exercise, and I maintain checking duties off what appears like an iPhone 4, which homes the menu and quest progress.
There are many collectibles and bonus actions. Slate temples conceal puzzles, and I sojourn in them to unravel in alternate for quest objects, meals, and decor, and there are buttons within the floor that launch minigames when stomped on, depositing a flurry of cherry blossoms to gather earlier than the clock runs out. The whole island additionally gives, so far as I can inform, infinite assets to gather, blueprints to appreciate at Chococat’s work desk, and Sanrio characters to help to find out why we’re on the island whereas serving to it flourish.
The latter purpose is evaluated by one other hammer thrown on the fourth wall; I ask My Melody for a “vibe examine,” and she or he assigns me an Island Vibe Rating primarily based on how properly I’m revitalizing my new dwelling by finishing duties like serving to Keroppi reopen a Nature Protect to retailer all of the critters I catch.
Gameplay mechanics like this make Howdy Kitty Island Journey really feel, often, ridiculous, however not more than some other Animal Crossing offspring the place you get to place speaking animals in a sundress. My few hours with Island Journey have been promising, and entertainingly instant-gratification. It to date appears easy and stress-free, a summer time with none heatwaves, however with a cartoon canine that has a butthole.
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