Powering Hello Kitty’s rise to the top flight of mobile

How kindness, collaboration and technological prowess saw Sanrio’s most famed mascot win Arcade Game of the Year [View this email in your browser]( You have been sent a sponsored message via GamesIndustry.biz, in association with Unity Powering Hello Kitty’s rise to the top flight of mobile How kindness, collaboration and technological prowess saw Sanrio’s most famed mascot take Arcade Game of the Year at the App Store Awards Hello Kitty Island Adventure is doing a lot of remarkable work to disprove a dated prejudice about kids games based on licensed brands. It may no longer be remotely fair or accurate, but some still default to assuming that such games are somehow less creatively credible, innovative, or technologically ambitious than equivalent works conceived for an older audience. Now, that might have been a slightly fairer presumption in the early 1990s, when the likes of kids’ movie tie-ins were too often rushed out quick and cheap. And we can almost certainly point to that era as the source of the lingering prejudice. However, Sunblink, the team behind the sublime[Hello Kitty Island Adventure,]( clearly aren’t letting preconceptions about licensed kids’ games hold back their ambition. In taking on the the most iconic mascot of Japanese entertainment outfit Sanrio, they have built a beautiful, distinct, ornate life-sim informed by the likes of Animal Crossing. Sunblink has brought plenty new to the formula, however, by blending open-world and cosy gaming mechanics, while bringing a distinct focus on quests and exploration, hooked around an engrossing narrative where the titular character and her friends restore an abandoned theme park. It’s also highly polished and impressively vast; two things that buck any notion that licensed IP kids games don’t bring quality seen elsewhere across the medium’s landscape. The result? Sunblink’s focus on innovation and quality has absolutely been rewarded. Hello Kitty Island Adventure won Apple Arcade Game of the Year at the 2023 App Store Awards, and has delivered a stunning stint as one of the Apple Arcade platform’s most popular titles. In recent days, the admiration has continued, with Island Adventure receiving two nominations for the 27th annual D.I.C.E Awards in the Family and Mobile categories. Elsewhere it carries a 89% Metacritic score, reaching a rating few mobile or licensed kids’ games ever achieve. That success, absolutely, is rooted in not just Sunblink’s clear talent when it comes to game design and development, but also the team's culture, which is directly reflected in Hello Kitty’s most lauded gaming outing. “At Sunblink we like to say we make kind, collaborative, imaginative games,” offers Chelsea Howe, chief product officer at Sunblink. [To read the full article, click here]( [Facebook icon]( [Twitter icon]( [LinkedIn icon]( Copyright (C) 2024 ReedPop. All rights reserved. You got this email because you signed up to an account on GamesIndustry.biz and agreed to receive promotional emails from our partners. Our mailing address is: ReedPop 1-6 Grand ParadeBrighton, East Sussex BN2 9QB United Kingdom [Add us to your address book]( Want to change how you receive these emails? You can [update your preferences]( or [unsubscribe]( [Privacy Policy]( | [Cookie Policy](