Nintendo Switch Just Quietly Released the Cozy Game of the Decade
Dear Daniel makes his brief cameo.
The science behind making something feel cozy is quite simple, video game developers tell me. The more frigid and imposing the outside world is, the more heightened the sense of coziness tends to be.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the world of Hello Kitty Island Adventure in 2025, the Apple Arcade chart-topping mobile phenomenon that is now coming to Switch. The characters of Hello Kitty crash their plane, declaring there are cakes on the plane (a clever Samuel L. Jackson reference), and players must brave all sorts of terrain, including swamps and volcanoes, to finally encounter beloved mascots like Kuromi and Retsuko, the heavy metal-loving red panda with her own Netflix show. Hello Kitty debuts on console this week and simultaneously on PC, and namely, the Steam Deck, but does not have any plans for PlayStation or Xbox just yet.
Nintendo, it seems, is perfectly comfortable with this slightly off-kilter Sanrio extravaganza landing on the Switch. “We’ve been very happy working with Nintendo,” Tom Blind, Hello Kitty developer Sunblink’s chief commercial officer, tells Inverse. “They’ve been very gracious and very helpful in terms of getting ported over the Switch and getting the word out there that it’s coming.”
I call Hello Kitty off-kilter because while the small, cuddly, cute mouthless creatures have long dominated plushie stores and Chinatown gift shops, this game is the first to dredge up ancient, nearly forgotten lore, to give us cameos from characters like Hello Kitty’s boyfriend, Dear Daniel, all in a unique setting. The game developers have also been surprised to find how much leeway they have with playing around with Sanrio’s characters, perhaps a contrast to how buttoned-up some companies can be with brand icons.
While at a glance, Hello Kitty on the phone and the Switch highlights an extremely cute feline, it’s a game full of secrets and unexpected challenges. Early on in the game, players will have to use their wits to unlock some of Sanrio’s most popular buddies, with the gameplay posing a bit more challenge than you might expect. Surprises abound. (For the record, Hello Kitty isn’t even a cat. She’s a little girl who just looks like a cat. Even though I have been told this fun fact plenty of times in the past, it’s still a surprise to hear each time.)
Retsuko is far from the start of the game, and players must brave quite a few problems before getting to her. Blind explains that this was intentional as in some ways, this is the first time she’s “entering the universe of Hello Kitty.”
“We even considered not having her on the airplane and making it a total surprise later when you run into her,” Tom Blind says, “but we decided that it’s good for players to know upfront that she’s there, she exists. You should go find her. But it’s kind of an Easter egg.”
Hello Kitty slots in perfectly on the Nintendo Switch with its similar cousins — featuring exploration that brings to mind Animal Crossing, the platform elements of Mario, and the puzzle challenges of Zelda. Its weirdness and unexpected richness just adds to its cozy charm. There’s also future funny meme potential as up to two players can play together with the online features on the Switch or PC. Nintendo Switch users will need an online subscription, and there’s no cross-play functionality available, so returning mobile players will need to invest several hours into getting up to speed. Blind says it’s fun for players to just log on and hang out together — a statement that brings to mind the early months of the 2020’s.
“It’s a false belief that a lot of folks have that Hello Kitty is strictly like a very young girls’ brand. That’s not actually true,” Blind says, “A lot of adult women grew up with Hello Kitty and are still fans of the brand. Additionally, there’s the rise of cozy games being very popular across all groups of people, including what we would traditionally call core gamers, people who like harder games.”
Considering the breadth of weird little guys in Sanrio’s world, there’s a little mascot for everyone, from gudetama’s laziness to the appeal of the clumsy dog Pochacco. Blind says he personally likes Chococat the best, who seems to have a solution for every problem. As for me, and any number of women in their late 20s you could ask, it’s Kuromi, a devilishly charming companion of Hello Kitty. It’s for her that I opened up the world of Island Adventure, but it’s for the strangely endearing weird vibes that I stayed.
