Subsequent 12 months, Sanrio’s lovable forged of characters will transfer past your iPhones and iPads. Good day Kitty Island Journey, the comfortable neighborhood vibes sport that debuted in July 2023 on Apple Arcade, is lastly increasing in 2025 to Nintendo Swap, and PC as a timed unique earlier than coming to the PS4 and PS5.
Notably absent is the Xbox. However even releasing the sport past Apple Arcade is a welcome change for Sanrio followers outdoors Apple’s ecosystem. Good day Kitty Island Journey is the type of chill, low-stakes expertise roaming round a serene isle doing enjoyable duties that dovetails properly with Sanrio’s lovable forged.
Followers have saved enjoying the sport, with over 40,000 folks in its official discord, stated Chelsea Howe, chief product officer at Sunblink. She credit the characters and the sport’s uniqueness — letting you create your personal Sanrio-styled character, journey in dynamically completely different areas, embellish your property, craft and create — with its reputation.
“I feel we all the time get preliminary shock [at the game.] If it’s a Sanrio fan, they’ve by no means seen a sport like this,” stated Howe. “They’ve by no means seen a chance the place they will actually get to know the characters and join with the characters, expertise the backstories of characters.”
However Sunblink has additionally saved followers pleased with common content material expansions. Good day Kitty Island Journey launched with over 30 hours of content material for gamers, and studio Sunblink has saved followers engaged by including content material on an everyday cadence — updates each three weeks, new options in a giant replace each six weeks — that is grown the sport to round 80 hours now.
At first blush, Good day Kitty Island Journey seems loads like the comfortable sport king that preceded it, Animal Crossing New Horizons. The video games have an identical island setting and neighborhood vibes. However Good day Kitty Island Journey has distinguishing components that shock followers, Howe says, like its open world side. There are biomes and island options like ruins to discover, which comprise underground puzzle and logic rooms. And as a substitute of paying down a debt to a sketchy racoon landlord, the primary mechanic is leveling up your friendships with the Good day Kitty herself, Chococat, Cinnamoroll and different Sanrio characters.
“It was actually essential for us to deliberately merge the open world points with the comfortable life sim points and proceed to stroll that line regardless of the Animal Crossing comparisons,” Howe stated.
One other approach it is completely different than Animal Crossing New Horizons: You should not tweak your console’s clock to trick your sport into pondering it is earlier or later, which followers referred to as “time touring.”
“Do not do it. You probably did it in Animal Crossing. Do not do it on this sport,” laughs Howe. That is not a promise of punishment — for those who time journey, you will miss out on real-time occasions, doubtlessly locking you out of latest content material. Sure, the identical content material that Sunblink provides each few weeks.
That features in-game occasions linked to holidays, like Valentine’s Day, which all gamers will expertise on the similar time. Now that the sport is coming to different platforms past Apple gadgets, Sunblink faces the additional problem to replace a number of platforms directly. It will do that by rolling out the Apple Arcade model updates on the identical cadence whereas bundling a number of in greater updates for consoles and PC.
Howe says Sunblink listens to its followers and has added options or made tweaks primarily based on what they’ve instructed. Typically this has meant introducing options which are much like these in Animal Crossing, and different occasions it is eradicating offending options. As an example, the sport has no stock caps: “That was the primary factor that was an enormous frustration for me personally in Animal Crossing and for lots for others,” Howe stated.
One other added function is the TikTok-friendly capability to edit your character’s residence cabin on the island. If mates are watching, they will ship emoji and provides different dwell suggestions whilst you’re adorning. “If certainly one of your excessive stage motivations is self-expression, and if you’d like it to be a social expertise, the extra you possibly can allow collaborative self-expression the higher,” Howe stated.
All of this non-combative, friendship and nurture-focused play is coming to consoles and PC for an undisclosed worth, however Sunblink has carried over one other function from Apple Arcade: no microtransactions. As a substitute, there’s a mixture of free and paid updates, which Sunblink believes will resonate higher with the fan base. “It is undoubtedly all about ensuring that it feels prefer it’s well worth the worth that you simply’re offering,” Howe stated.
Cozy sport followers can have an alternative choice when Good day Kitty Island Journey involves a number of platforms subsequent 12 months, and Howe emphasised that gamers will dictate how lengthy the sport retains going.
“We see this as the beginning, not the tip. This can be a dwell sport. We have got not less than two years of roadmap forward of us,” Howe stated. “So long as persons are having fun with it and loving it and enjoying it, we intend to maintain on sustaining it.”
