After Nintendo inexplicably pulled the plug on Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Hello Kitty Island Adventure was the hero players didn't know they needed. A life sim filled with Sanrio characters and packed with a slew of open-world ideas to differentiate it from Nintendo's efforts, it seemed like the ideal alternative to Tom Nook's mortgage supremacy. There was only one problem - Hello Kitty Island Adventure was an Apple Arcade exclusive.
Thankfully, that limited release doesn't seem to have held it back. "Since launch we've been beyond thrilled with the reception," chief product officer Chelsea Howe tells me. "We got the mass appeal we were hoping for. We were so grateful, so happy." Being an Apple exclusive had its benefits, too - Howe explains that launching on Arcade meant that "we could do live services without ads and microtransactions and all the stuff that makes a cosy game way less cosy." Apple's subscription-based model limited the need for commercial success, but critical acclaim wasn't far away, and Island Adventure found itself nominated for - and winning - a suite of awards "alongside Honkai Star Rail and massive games made by massive teams. And we're this little 35-40 person studio. It's like 'is this even real?'"
