Hiya Kitty Island Journey, Assessment

Hiya Kitty Island Journey was offered by Sunblink for evaluation. Thanks!

After numerous a long time of sport builders making an attempt to money in by producing a low-quality sport tied to a well-liked franchise, you might be forgiven for rolling your eyes once you first heard about Hiya Kitty Island Journey. It might even fill you with dread should you aren’t a fan of Sanrio’s iconic characters. However I am very happy to say that that is positively not a sport simply making an attempt to money in on the Hiya Kitty identify. It is a totally practical, well-made product, and should you’ve received youngsters, it’d simply be probably the greatest video games to play with them.

Hiya Kitty Island Journey locations the Hiya Kitty gang on a (largely) uninhabited tropical island. Whereas at first, all of your favourite characters are scattered across the island, you’ll quickly be reunited with them, and the workforce discovers that there are locations that appear to have been constructed only for them on the island.

You may get to create a personality with some primary selections, particularly, what species of character you need, similar to making a personality that is extra cat-like, dog-like, bird-like, and so forth. Together with some alternative of patterns, colours, physique shapes, and clothes. You may additionally be capable to unlock new character customization choices as you play via the sport.

The core gameplay mechanics kind of fall into a mix of Animal Crossing and Disney Dreamlight Valley vibes. On the Animal Crossing aspect, we will fish and catch bugs with a internet, and there is even a Nature Protect the place we will donate our bugs, very like Animal Crossing’s Museum. Then, very like Disney Dreamlight Valley, a significant a part of the sport is constructing friendships with all the opposite Hiya Kitty characters by gifting them the objects they like or serving to them with issues they should do within the type of quests.

This all provides to the very cutesy really feel of the sport, with an emphasis on serving to out your fellow residents with primary duties similar to baking a cake and extra advanced ones like restoring energy to numerous components of the island.

Though you are on a tropical island that largely has the solar shining, there may be nonetheless loads of selection within the setting, with a swamp biome, volcano biome, desert biome, and extra, in addition to a big portion of the map that incorporates water, wherein you are capable of freely swim and dive, as soon as you’ve got crafted some flippers for swimming and a snorkel for diving.

Invisible partitions are employed across the map boundaries, however not a lot within the enjoying space itself, so that you do have just about free reign of the decent-sized island. It is not overwhelmingly massive, so youthful gamers should have no bother discovering their means round and may nonetheless discover the sport world participating and crammed with actions to maintain them busy.

The motion within the sport is stored fairly easy, permitting gamers to stroll, bounce, and maintain the bounce button to glide. You can even climb mountains with a stamina bar ala Breath of the Wild, and as you progress via the sport, you will unlock flippers, which allow you to swim, and snorkels, which allow you to dive and discover extra of the island’s underwater sections.

Whereas Hiya Kitty Island Journey’s development is essentially tied to you discovering “Energy Crystals” across the island and restoring the island to its former glory with them, there are many unlocks and rewards you may get via different means, such because the aforementioned Nature Protect donations.

Friendships are one of many key methods to get unlocks. As you give your fellow island residents items they like and assist them with their quests, they will achieve friendship ranges that may unlock new cosmetics to your character, further quests for that resident, and even different surprises. It types the premise for lots of the development within the sport.

And should you had been questioning if Gudetama, the lovable egg character that gave the impression to be all around the web a number of years in the past, makes an look within the sport, it does! There are Gudetama all around the island (over 100 in complete), with the participant tasked to {photograph} all of them to unlock rewards. It is a enjoyable aspect quest, and so they’re in all types of places, so that you all the time have to observe for that cheeky egg!

Visually, Hiya Kitty Island Journey will not be profitable any awards, however it retains issues easy and cute. The world and objects are introduced, and the colourful and playful presentation makes even the “Spooky Swamp” not scary, which is nice for me!

Plus, new occasions occur all year long, very like Animal Crossing. Throughout my time enjoying for this evaluation, occasions had been working for the Lunar New Yr and Valentine’s Day, providing themed objects you might unlock by finishing in-game duties.

Apart from a few points with the digicam not positioning itself nicely (you may’t manually management it), there is not a lot for me to dislike about Hiya Kitty Island Journey. Maybe a few areas of the map really feel a little bit empty and serve little goal, however it’s not all the time a foul factor to have some areas purely for aesthetics.

Hiya Kitty Island Journey is a superb sport for younger youngsters and is not a foul shout for some adults too. The sport is simple to play, has loads of actions to maintain you busy, and is only a good little bit of harmless enjoyable, and you’ll’t say something unhealthy about that. The worth of $39.99 is completely affordable for this sport, and it has on-line multiplayer, though we did not have a possibility to check this ourselves.

Hiya Kitty Island Journey – Steam Deck Efficiency

Hiya Kitty Island Journey was initially a cell title, and that is evident in its ease of use. That is to not say that some enhancements have not been made for the PC viewers, although.

The sport helps 1280×800 decision, so there aren’t any black borders, and it additionally has nice gamepad assist, which means it controls completely on the Steam Deck. I would suggest making use of a 60 FPS Body Restrict in SteamOS and a 9W TDP Restrict, together with increased graphical settings that I like to recommend:

At these settings, the sport holds 60 FPS all the time. The one exception within the sport world I discovered was on the backside of a waterfall close to the Swamp, the place my FPS would drop into the mid-40s at particularly that time. Additionally, when opening a UI window, there seems to be a short second of slowdown, however it would not have an effect on the gameplay in any respect.

The facility draw for this one was regular, round 9W-11W, with temperatures round 55-60C. So anticipate round 4.5 hours of battery life from a Steam Deck OLED and three.5 hours from a Steam Deck LCD.

Accessibility:

Hiya Kitty Island Journey has rebindable controls, though there aren’t any different accessibility settings. All dialogue within the sport is textual content, and for some puzzles, the sport can full them for you should you discover them troublesome.

Conclusion:

Hiya Kitty Island Journey is not only a fast cash-in on the favored IP. The sport feels prefer it was made by a workforce that knew how beloved the IP was and has been cautious to retain its appeal whereas additionally providing an entire and competent sport that is excellent for teenagers and that adults will doubtless take pleasure in, too.

It additionally runs nice on the Steam Deck, with totally working controls and easy-going system necessities that imply you get loads of battery life to discover your tropical island. It is an effective way to chill out on the finish of the day.

Our evaluation is predicated on the PC model of this sport.

Should you loved this evaluation, remember to try the remainder of the content material on SteamDeckHQ! We now have all kinds of sport evaluations and information which might be positive to assist your gaming expertise. Whether or not you are on the lookout for information, suggestions and tutorials, sport settings and evaluations, or simply wish to keep up-to-date on the most recent tendencies, we have got your again.