hkia-dev-and-design

[merry ruin]

popping in because I am also interested 👀💖

[karmic mulch]

Same!

[mystic crag]

I tried the game on iphone Se model and its still works very well.. The game have detailed meshes and textures so i was wondering how its works? i mean is there any title, page about mobile optimization that i've to read? any suggestions?

First i was thinking camera frame is limited so the game is always culling most of models and its working smooth. And then i played the game and game shows me entire map from far away.. Clearly some methods going on in there

[deep mesa]

Ah -- the beginning of the game, when you're jumping out of the airplane, is very much a trick!

[mystic crag]

i'm curios actually

[deep mesa]

We rely on relevancy culling a ton, so we don't actually have any LODs or anything. When you jump out of the plane (and you can do this repeatedly once you get to the quest where Cinnamoroll goes missing), you're actually (I believe) seeing a projected planar version of the Seaside Resort; the actual 3D models only pop in when you're close.

[brazen spruce]

i was curious about this too!!

[mystic crag]

wow... projected? entire map? but how the houses, trees match with the projected frame? When the models pop-up you can see the difference in a frame i believe (of course you must look carefully)

[deep mesa]

Yeah - have you gotten to the part where you can get back to the plane? Do it a few times and you can definitely see the rough edges if you're looking for them 😅

[mystic crag]

that is fantastic... i have lot of questions actually. Can i ask? is that okay for you?

[deep mesa]

You're welcome to ask! I can't promise we can answer everything or that responses will be super fast, but if you're curious I'm sure a lot of other folks are too 🙂

[mystic crag]

i have not yet but i will 😄

Thank you.. my second question is, do you have custom shader or not? I think lot of props have solid color instead of hand painting right? how many material calling for one frame (in the render time)

[cold dirge]

love this channel!

[deep mesa]

We have tons and tons of custom shaders; we rely on shaders for a large portion of the overall style. As far as per frame material calls, I don't know off the top of my head. Maybe one of our engineers will pop in 😄

[polar lagoon]

also following - dev is my side interest from my day job..always love to learn the mechanics of this game

[cold dirge]

i will always remember the funny story of the missing yummy furnitures under map 😭🤍

[polar lagoon]

that was so entertaining. i loved how that was explained

[merry ruin]

Would love to work in game development-just have no idea what youd need to major in? 😵‍💫

[deep mesa]

It depends on what specific field you want to go in to, but no matter what taking computer science courses and psychology courses (or cog sci / HCI [human comp interaction]) will help a ton. All of our artists, designers, and audio folks work in Unity and need to be familiar with development tools, and the more you can understand the underlying code and logic, the better! Similarly, the more you can understand the end goal of what you're making -- that is, how the player will experience it -- the better decisions you'll be able to make.

The advice I also always always give students is to participate in game jams. Nothing will teach you better than actually trying to make a thing in a set amount of time. The lessons you can learn about collaboration, communication, scoping, playtesting, etc are absolutely invaluable and in many cases just as good as a formal uni course.

[cold dirge]

did the sunblink made some other “official” games before hkia?

[deep mesa]

https://www.heroish.game/

[rich swan]

I’m a recent graphic design graduate and I’m really curious about the thought that went into the game’s UX/UI design, for example furniture and item icons, menu pages, the logo itself, anything that involves design, I was curious of what programs the devs for this game use to make these designs and how they are implemented?

I’m currently working on UX/UI for an app a friend of mine is building in swift, I’m familiar with design of course but I’m not as tech-savvy as he is, I’m more curious about how these designs are actually added to a game through say Unity for example, if that makes sense? (I’m looking to learn the basics of Unity so I can understand this)

[simple mason]

not exactly related but. I upgraded from the 2017 Apple TV 4k to the 2022 Apple TV 4k and suddenly there’s bloom, the magma blooms are positively glowing o.o

[zinc scaffold]

Unity has a decently solid built-in UI system. I can't speak for the team specifically (I havent touched UI since HEROish) but on personal projects I've found that those integrated tools do a pretty decent job without any modification.

how these designs are actually added to a game through say Unity
In most cases, you upload the image files directly into Unity, and then build a prefab and modify the parameter's until your UI is behaving as desired. Of course, its much much more complex than that, but the simplist case of 'add image into UI' is as straightforward as two or three drag and drops.

[rich swan]

Interesting! I’m mostly an artist (with minimal experience in blender and some basic web coding at best) so learning Unity is pretty daunting! I’m confident in my art but a bit rusty around the tech side of things, are there are any artists or designers at Sunblink that are solely tasked with doing design/art without knowing Unity?

I do plan on learning Unity, but curious if there’s any space in the game industry for graphic designers

[zinc scaffold]

The thing with working on a video game is that you're gonna end up touching the engine that game is made on at some point. Unless your working for a publisher or a massive AAA team, where marketing is a separate entity, you'll probably end up in engine at least a bit. Design especially, there is no thought on my head where a designer isn't in the engine atleast weekly. Artists can get away with working on their art in other tools, and then getting design/engineering to help implement, but its still a collaborative process. Concept artists also do a lot of out of engine work, but if your team is small enough, your concept artist is probably also doing some normal art that will end up in engine.

As an artist/designer, will you have to touch code? Not necessarily. Its highly recommend for design work though. Being able to actually make your ideas work so you can prove they are fun is a massively important skill set

And I say this is a Game Designer, not necessarily a Graphic Designer

as those are two seperate professions, technically. Graphic Designer is closets matched to a UI Designer, however, which is imho a subcatagory of Game Designer

[deep mesa]

To answer part of your original question, our UX team uses Photoshop, Illustrator, Figma for wireframing and prototyping, and Unity of course for implementation.

We also use Notion to capture all of our documentation. A design starts as a spec in notion, then gets wireframed in Figma, then gets all of its art done in photoshop/illustrator, and those are brought into Unity.

[rich swan]

This is so helpful! I work in adobe and Figma now primarily, just need to move on to really learning Unity. This helps motivate me a ton to actually get to it

[rich swan]

This is so helpful, I was very curious of the process of getting a design from ideation to actual implementation, happy to hear Notion is something you guys use as well as it’s such a helpful organizational tool for me

Thank you both and sorry for the questions, even though I’m done with university I still have a bit of an obsession with learning, I may ask another question in here if they come up, but I’m really appreciative for the answers provided here!

[zinc scaffold]

Learning is a natural human condition 😋

Personally I love answering questions like this, even if Im not the most qualified for the answer. If I get something wrong Chelsea can just wack me out of the way and correct me

[cold dirge]

I'm sorry for the question that doesn't have much to do with this discussion, but would it be possible to have a channel where we can give ideas to the developer who deal with the graphic part of the game like clothes, etc.?

[deep mesa]

I'd use feedback for that!

[cold dirge]

got it! thanks 😊 🙏🏻

[mystic crag]

Hello again. We have developed a game almost the same type as yours. But we encountered many problems during the developing process. We're not sure if the issues are caused by graphics or code. For exactly this reason, I would like to ask you the things I am curious about.

• All of your models have hand painted texture or solid color from a color chard texture? So, have you painted the models with a Texture that has hundreds of colors? By painting the models in this way, we gained a lot of space in performance.

• On average, how many triangles are rendered within the camera frame and do you render two-sided surfaces? This is something I'm curious about because while some trees have thick leaves, some plants on the ground seem to be rendered double-sided with meshes consisting of 2-3 surfaces.

• How did you solve the problems caused by real-time shadows? I see that real-time shadows are drawn for trees, plants and some houses, and it is not easy to add shadows in a scene with a high number of polygons. At least in the game we made, we used completely static shadows and baked the entire scene.

• How should we group models with textures? If they appear in the same scene, I fit them in the same texture. The texture size increases slightly, but the number of materials in the same Frame decreases considerably.

Thank you

By the way, we reduced the steps per frame in our game to 7 steps, but our game was still not working well enough. (I'm talking about the Fram Debug window in Unity.)

[mild zephyr]

I’d be happy to talk about that with you guys too. I get so frustrated when the new items from an event don’t even match to make full outfits. Like there was a black and red bat bow but no other clothing piece from that set was red and black. Just an example. But yeah, as you might have guessed fashion and colors are important to me and I’d be happy to share my feedback if you need it.

[cold dirge]

Oh yes ofc! i was planning to do a channel in feedback explaining my idea and for letting everyone speak their opinion/ideas so the devs that are interested can read all in one channel, i will tag you in

[red flint]

Alguien habla español aqui, necesito ayuda con la casa embrujada, tengo una cabaña igual 🙌🏻

[languid gale]

No hablo español, pero puedes encontrar a alguien que te ayude en este canal. #1134514869731852358

[mystic crag]

well.. I probably asked too many questions

[cold dirge]

i think they are busy with the update release.

[merry shore]

Also you posted at 4am EST which is ... 3am for the Sunblink team, I believe 😂

Let's give them a bit of time to respond ❤️

[mystic crag]

Sorry, i'll wait for sure

[merry shore]

No worries ❤️ nothing to be sorry about! It's hard to keep timezones in mind when it's not easily accessible information! 🙂

[calm anchor]

This is a bit late, but scope out your local courses! I'm doing bachelor of software engineering currently but the course is fully focused on game development. We have collaboration classes with our sister art class and all of our assignments have some kind of video game twist to them. From what I've seen, there's quite a few schools that offer similar courses, so definitely shop around! If you can't find anything specific to video games, I totally agree with the game jam thing! Even if you're just setting your own goals and don't formally participate :)

But, speaking of game jams, does anyone have any advice when planning a really open ended project on a small scope? A lot of my assignments at the moment are kind of "make a game in this language/engine" and I'm kind of struggling with coming up with and sticking to a plan in such a small amount of time :,) I don't struggle as much when I'm in a team but doing all these mini solo games has me a little stuck for ideas.

[languid gale]

^^ to add onto this, in one of my uni psychology courses, we discussed information processing theory and how the theory was inspired by computers! more interesting though, is... when designing ANYTHING, it's important to have the proper affordances and constraints in place so that users can easily use it. For example, the new guiding glow ball (idk what it's called exactly) for quests, or the quest icons that appear on the map during a quest so the player knows where to go — things like that make gameplay accessible for everyone 😊

Long story short, thank you Sunblink for all the hard work you've done for this update, it's incredible!

[merry shore]

You can try something like chatgpt just to get the ball rolling 💖💖

[deep mesa]

I recommend putting a twist on a known quantity arcade style game. What if there was physics simulation in Tetris? What if there was shooting in Pacman? What if completing wordle leveled up a character? This way, most of the design is solved for you, and you can really focus on a single twist and dig into it!

[polar lagoon]

ahhh this sounds SO fun! its so artistic, creative, and imaginative! i always love the concept of art meeting engineering/tech.

[zinc scaffold]

To bounce off what Chelsea said, as she beat me to it; my game design professor in college called this (or something similar atleast) the 'Mashed Potato' approach. Sure you could make a new never seen dish with tons of crazy new flavors, or you could make some really darn good Mash Potatos. Everyone knows what they are, but that's not a bad thing, it means you have a foundation to make something really good. And like Chelsea said, you can add a spice to your Mashed Potatos to help it stand apart (and for a fun "cooking" challenge)

[cursive otter]

I'm not sure if this is posted anywhere, but I'm curious what programming language and setup HKIA is developed in. I want to get into 3D gamedev but I'm quite unaware of what you can use to create a game like that.

[merry shore]

Some of it is probably written in Swift (as all ios apps must be) (maybe Dart -- which I believe allows for easy translation of code for ios and android) and I think Unity!

[cursive otter]

Thank you so much! I just appreciate this channel so much.

[teal halo]

Can you please make the game free

Hi

[acoustic folio]

@teal halo If the game is free how do you propose the devs make a living wage?

@teal halo I understand you’d like to play the game & perhaps the cost is currently prohibitive for you, but the devs have put quite a lot of time and effort into this game & it’s not right for us to ask them to have done that for free.
They have bills to pay, families to feed—this is their work.
Just like it wouldn’t be right to ask you to work at McDonald’s for zero dollars, or for you to go get food from the grocery store for zero dollars. it’s not okay for us to suggest they provide the game for free to us.

[deep mesa]

Actually Unity lets you avoid working with most platform-specific code! That’s part of the reason so many folks use it.

[merry shore]

Bless unity!! I had no idea but that’s amazing!

[zinc scaffold]

Since this never got officially answered, our code is C#, which is standard for Unity

[sullen thicket]

I’v been a developer for 8 years now, watching HKIA devs team return my passion for development 🤩💗 I developed some small games during my first year of college but never published a real one, hope i’ll start working on a new game soon ✨

[merry ruin]

pretends to understand this foreign language y’all call coding 😭

slowly backs away from the possibility of majoring in any computer science course because it seems way too confusing and you have less than a 0 understanding of anything thats being said here😂😩

[deep mesa]

It's not as intimidating as it seems. Most foundational CS is just about logic ("If the player presses jump, add vertical velocity to the character") and loops ("For each visitor whose requirements are satisfied, generate a random number 1-100 and compare it to 50 to see if they visit")

[polar lagoon]

burning question: did the team use lucky 7 in any of the mini games or character boxes? 😆

okay serious question: what is a key quality that makes folks stand out when they are breaking out or within the gaming industry? how do you sustain longevity in the industry with the gaming lifecycle?

i have family that work for big animation studios and not going to lie, it’s tough out there. it’s great when your show is a cash cow but tough when you need to find your next project. she def 💯 relies on her network more than any other skill.

[deep mesa]

I think network plays a huge role in any industry mostly because network means you've seen how someone works. The game industry is definitely the same! If I've worked with someone before I know if they take initiative within their discipline, I know if they bring up concerns and help troubleshoot issues ahead of time, I know at what level they can manage and what their style of communication is. Raw skill at a particular discipline is only half the battle.

[crystal cliff]

speaking of how someone works.

I still wonder how such obvious blunders went all the way up into a release. I’m aware that game-dev never had the level of responsibility some other fields are pressed with, and largely evolved from “sacrifice quality for speed” paradigm.. but still.

was the whole team overworked/overwhelmed with the multiplayer remake? or it’s an intentional attempt to prolong the gameplay? or someone got really upset and exploited the system pushing last-minute unchecked update?

that’s the mystery I’ve been wondering about.

[rich swan]

How long have you guys worked at sunblink? And if you could give any advice to your 22 year old freshly graduated self (or if you didn’t attend college, when you began applying to jobs to break into the industry), what would it be? My job is marketing and design right now but I want to break into the industry as soon as I can, but it feels a bit daunting.

[polar lagoon]

i personally would give the development team the benefit of the doubt. i 100% doubt someone was intentionally trying to exploit things esp with how tight-knit the game development community must be and as mentioned early, your reputation is so key to success. who would risk their livelihood? my thinking is this was a HUGE update and i’m sure they had to change a lot of things and maybe things got lost in translation across teams. it probably doesn’t help to have to get everything green light from sanrio and apple as well and they could have asked for specific changes that didn’t get across all the teams working on the game. i just think that with the tight launch timelines, there’s probably not much schedule for testing. this isn’t the same as a hard software where there’s a full beta period to work out the kinks. i’ve accepted that the first launch updates are soft beta and they plan their schedules to do multiple bug updates. for the amount of content they delivered in this update, i’m more than happy and will be happy to give them some grace on the bugs we encountered.

[deep mesa]

When you're working on something enormous with a small team, you don't have the bandwidth to test everything. Sometimes you sacrifice ad hoc testing, aka "just play the game" for functionality testing "is this straight up broken". Hence, things that function just fine (like My Sweet Piano's preferences) shipped because they weren't technically broken, just experientially/design broken.

Similarly, with something like the watering flower, you don't have time to go and try every single flower in the game every update. Instead, you test a few flowers, and if there are no signs of anything wrong, you move to the next thing.

[crystal cliff]

I see. thank you.

from my PoV, the major work of this update went under the hood in multiplayer functionality. it indeed got much better. great job.

there were a few things that may have required extra touches to the code, yet most of the update was surface level on the framework that was already there. or at least should have been. importing the story lines, putting in new & cute 3d models is also work, but of the different kind. requires less brain and much more attention to details (at least if framework is already in place). attention may suffer if people are tired or bored.. or have no one to validate the integrity of the whole design.

as for watering the flower - it’s the least of the concerns. even kinda cute. the main trouble was the conflict of tags of the new character with her own 3-heart gift, and the thing that happened to the gifting dialogue with hearts chaos. that was just “wow”. cause that’s like the core and most used functionality of the game.

[zinc scaffold]

If you're aim is game design, get games on your portfolio! Make a project, show it to people, then iterate on it. That can shine really well on your portfolio.

[cold dirge]

i volunteer as beta tester for every patch (free) 😂😂

[rich swan]

I second this lol, if the need ever comes around I do part time work as a beta tester

[polar lagoon]

y’all. we are already the beta testers! 😂 every update is like a soft beta

[deep mesa]

We'll definitely have some beta test opportunities in the future!

[deep mesa]

But also this 😅

[cold dirge]

count us in

[static sparrow]

ohh interesting.

[merry shore]

yeah! To add on to what Chelsea said, a lot of my first first year classes (first post-secondary school LOL), the profs were offering partial marks on tests and quizzes for pseudocode (the if A then B else C that was mentioned) ❤️
Problem solving and knowing HOW to find the information you need is a HUGE part of developing/coding!
And not just finding the fastest/easiest solution but taking that easy solution and branching off it to get something more efficient and less 'costly' (memory wise and time wise) ❤️

When I started, I also had zero knowledge (my secondary school never offered programming) but once you get into the mindset of 'could I code a way to do this task more efficiently', it really helps in developing the skills to be not just a programmer but a GREAT one ❤️

[simple mason]

Knowing how to do a thing is less important than knowing how to find out how to

Don’t ask me to write a Hello World in C, I would not even know where to begin

[merry shore]

Going to add to what Keiran said too, saying that getting into the space of game dev can seem very daunting!
Finding a game you love, try to join the modding communities (there's a lot out there, even on discord) ❤️ then you get a taste for how big games are structured, how their databases are organized, and the logic (again, so much is about the logic) of how big games run ❤️

[merry shore]

stackoverflow? 😂

[zinc scaffold]

I can second "experiment with modding!" One thing I wish I had jumped on way sooner was making maps for Team Fortress 2; it's been an excellent extra learning experience that would have been stellar to have in high school. However, it's made for a great hobby instead. Working on HK doesn't give a lot of time or mental energy for me to devote towards personal game projects, so the infrastructure of TF2 allows me to scratch my level design itch without overworking myself 😋

[rich swan]

This is really interesting! I’ve never been big into TF2 (save for funny videos back in the day) but maybe I can find a game I like that I can make mods for somehow…that’s a cool idea!

[zinc scaffold]

Yea think about what kinda of game development you enjoy doing, then find a community that can help you foster those abilities

[idle reef]

If you're new to coding, I'd recommend Paul Hudson's (free) 100 Days of SwiftUI course. It gives you a solid foundation in programming, software development, and core design skills like layout, drawing, animation, and gestures. Additionally, you can build simple, 2D games in SwiftUI and SpriteKit. Sure, everyone suggests using Unity and C#, but those are just tools. In the beginning, you should focus on learning how to think like an engineer, break down problems, and define, scope, and build on projects. This course does that. It covers the basics of the Swift programming language in 15 days, and from there, gets you building projects, with code challenges and quizzes at the end of each one to check your comprehension. By Day 19, you're building solo projects. More importantly, it gives you opportunities to improve or build on previous projects. That may seem like no big deal, but you'll be surprised how much harder reading code is than writing it; and on teams, being able to read (and explain) code is more important. Paul is also dogmatic about understanding how things work and teaches you how to investigate the source code and read documentation. Those are essential skills that very few courses cover. The best part: if you're miserable, you know exactly when your misery will end. 100 days goes quick. One other recommendation, since (from what I can tell), you're an artist: check out the creative coding community, especially p5.js. I'm taking Daniel Shiffman's "Nature of Code" course right now, which is about simulating nature, and it's such a joy to just build beautiful things. As someone who's math-challenged, I've also been surprised how easy it is to learn advanced math concepts when the goal is building a swaying tree or flowing river!

[short wharf]

This is a new section I didn’t see until just now! I’d like to add something from my own personal experience working in games.

I think something that’s also important to remember is that there are often many pathways to making games, and not all of them are going to be Software Related (although having a decent understanding can help you for sure).

Try to think about what part of Game Dev do you want to be apart of as well. I’ve always found that the lesser known roles are things like Community, Design, and Narrative especially.

Personally, I am an Engineer and working in Systems and in Design was always my forte, there are so many paths one can explore!

[merry ruin]

wow thank you so much for such great info!! Will definitely look into it💖💖💖

[languid gale]

OMG this is so exciting! Over the summer I taught myself some SwiftUI and created a little mental health chatbot just to add to the portfolio 🙂 I will have to look into the course!

[neat locust]

how many game developers and 3d artist are working on HKIA? how many years of experience do they have?

[acoustic folio]

Does anyone here have any experience with any of the 42 School campuses?

[mild zephyr]

I have two friends that are going there. But I don’t have any specific feedback about how it is going and what are the prospect after the school

[zinc scaffold]

I don't have any exact numbers, but we have an awesomely diverse team when it comes to experience! Some folks have over 15/20+ years, and some folks are a lot newer to the industry

[cosmic tree]

Does sunblink have researchers on the team?

[deep mesa]

Do you mean UX researchers?

[cosmic tree]

mostly UX researchers , yes, though I've heard some places also have insights teams and other positions that have non UX researchers too (legit role question completely unrelated to the 'research' happening in spoiler chat rn, haha)

[deep mesa]

Usually those roles only start to show up once a team is >50 or part of a much larger organization. We’re too small to have any sort of dedicated UX research role; all of our insights come from a mix of data analysis (this is mostly on me, our Game Director, and our VP of Engineering), player feedback (me, our Marketing Producer, and our Support person), and competitive analysis (me, Game Director, and many of our designers)

[cosmic tree]

You job sounds so fun! being able to do a mix of everything. Have you talked about what you did before that brought you to this role?

[idle reef]

What are the typical roles on a game development team? And, on the engineering side, how important is mathematics?

[rich swan]

Piggybacking off of this but actually Chelsea, I don’t know your position ! D: what is your job title, if I may ask? I love everything you do ^~^

Also a question I have, how would you guys say the marketing positions are in the video game industry? I’m currently working as a marketing specialist and been considering changing industries to gaming to get my foot in the door. I’m part of a “marketers in gaming” group on LinkedIn lol, but other than that I don’t know much about how sought after marketing positions are in the industry? I’ve been trying to find a small studio I could do marketing for, but so far no luck, at least not on most job boards, and was wondering if they are really even in demand at all?

I understand this could be out of your scope though, mostly just curious 🙂

[mystic crag]

On average, how many triangles are rendered within the camera frame and do you render two-sided surfaces? This is something I'm curious about because while some trees have thick leaves, some plants on the ground seem to be rendered double-sided with meshes consisting of 2-3 surfaces

[deep mesa]

I did everything! I actually went to college for linguistics because I loved world-building, but wound up creating my own major that was specifically games focused: psychology, computer science, HCI, creative writing, music theory, digital music composition, 2D art and graphic design, 3D art and animation, cogsci, etc. But what helped most was doing an independent study each semester where I ran a team and we created a game. It meant by the time I graduated I’d shipped 12+ games between all my classes and game jams. Some of them were super terrible, but they all taught me some super practical lessons about production, communication, teams, scope, deadlines~ all the critical stuff!

When I graduated I got to work on FarmVille back in 2010 when it had 32M DAU and 100M MAU as a designer/product manager, which was absolutely wild. I did mobile and applied games for many years while teaching and making indie games on the side, always in a design/production role, then did VR for six years working on Job Simulator, Vacation Simulator, and Cosmonious High, and then joined up with Sunblink about a year before HKIA launched.

[deep mesa]

It depends on the team size and game type! An AAA console title is going to have a truly massive art team with folks so specialized they might only work on interior building lighting or somesuch; 3D artists who literally only make rocks. Vs a small indie team your artist might have to do concept, modeling, rigging, animating, lighting, environment design, UI, iconography, marketing and promo art, etc.

The core pieces you need are usually tech, art, design, business. And then the more you grow the more specialized you get. design breaks out into game design and ux. Tech breaks out into frontend and backend, or maybe gameplay and systems. Art breaks out into audio, 2D and 3D. and then it’s deeper and deeper~

[rich swan]

This was my dream major and I didn’t even know it existed ;-;

[deep mesa]

I’m the Chief Product Officer— so high level design and production with a bunch of business thrown in.

[deep mesa]

Marketing is hard! We have two internal folks — a Marketing Producer and a Marketing Concept Artist— but that’s mostly because of how heavily we coordinate with and lean on Apple and Sanrio’s marketing teams. For the most part, our #1 goal is just making content for those two teams. At another studio who doesn’t have the same types of partnerships, you could expect a more traditional marketing role focused on outreach, ad buy/acquisition, etc.

(We also work with an external PR team)

[rich swan]

That makes a lot of sense! Thank you! I assume the Marketing concept artist makes all of the visual ads we see on the App Store or sanrio or otherwise?

[deep mesa]

Depends— our Marketing Producer is pretty artsy too and can do a lot of cropping/editing/screenshotting etc. But things like the new concept art and icon each update are very much this person’s specialty.

[neat locust]

i’m a fan of the music. How do you guys create the music? Do you have a music team? Do you outsource it?

[cold dirge]

if i’m not wrong Phill Boucher made it

[crude ermine]

Super impressed @deep mesa

[deep mesa]

Ilenia is right! We have a great Audio Director and SFX group, but Phil does all the composition. I will say though: the background chorus for the main theme is all folks from Sunblink singing! We call it our “Friendship Choir”

[rich swan]

dream job...

[idle reef]

I love that you made a connection between linguistics and world-building 😎 . That's super impressive that you designed your own curriculum. How did you organize it: by project, topic, or something else? That's a massive amount of knowledge and skills to cover!

[deep mesa]

To get into the program you had to know what you wanted to do by early freshman year, and it had to be impossible to do in any other existing program (so this was designed for folks with either very broad or very narrow topics). You had to decide what the topic was (“Interactive Experience Design” for me), what your final paper would be about, list out all the courses you would take, and get three faculty to sign up to advise you. If you made it into the program, the university waived all other graduation requirements except the swim test and two PE credits 😂

[austere oyster]

Thanks, @neat locust! All of our music is composed by the fantastic Phill Boucher (https://phillboucher.com/), who also wrangles all the performers, vocalists, and other pros who make our music possible -- in addition to playing a lot of the instruments himself. He then delivers the tracks to us at Sunblink, where I integrate the music, script its behavior, and perform the final mix. We really enjoy delivering new music with each game update, and we love seeing everyone's reactions and feedback!

[boreal edge]

Hello! I hope this is the right place to ask but I live in a country outside of NA and we need explicit permission from devs/company to stream and make content of the game. We don't have fair use laws in this country so I was wondering if I can inquire for permission to stream the game as I haven't seen any public guidelines about it?

[deep mesa]

You’re very welcome to stream and make content about the game!

[plush venture]

In regards to the music, will the Spoky Celebration song and Friendship Choir hymn be added to the offical soundtrack on Apple Music? I really, really love the hymn BTW. Keep up the amazing work!

[cosmic tree]

Not sure where to ask this but is the sound tracked cleared for streaming/videos other than when it exists as background when playing in game? Like if I'm making a video about the game, can I use music from the soundtrack (just bought the stand alone soundtrack ) in the video?

[wintry geyser]

I don't have an average number for you, but Unity is telling me the camera draws about 650k triangles when the player is standing in the resort plaza.

That may or may not include the army of Retsukos just beneath the surface.

[steep wagon]

Why is there an army of Retsukos just beneath the surface

[shadow yarrow]

for emergencies i would assume, you can never be too safe

[steep wagon]

Emergency Retsukos

[cerulean gale]

can i ask for the reason for some of the variables names for some in game objects? some of them while looking through code have interesting names

[austere oyster]

Thanks @plush venture ! Once we accumulate enough of these newly-added tracks, I would certainly be in favor of releasing them in either an update to our existing soundtrack, or as a standalone followup production. Stay tuned!

[deep mesa]

Hey folks! Several of you have asked for more insight into the process behind each release. Today I wanted to share something that the team looks at every week at our company weekly meetings. Put together by our fantastic Lead Producer, @storm bough, check out the overall timeline and key dates that went into 1.4!

Our 1.4 update did go over the big US winter holiday break, so the dates between phases is not necessarily reflective of the usual process, but does reflect the amount of working days you'd expect in each phase.

One thing to point out is that the planning phase of each release happens before the prior launch -- By the time 1.3 released, we already had 1.4 locked down. This is why often times features that address certain issues (like grind, or deco options) take an extra update to appear. This is why 1.3 still had some multiplayer-gated aspects despite the pushback during 1.2. We of course do fix high priority bugs and small fixes/QOL improvements within the same release, but larger features and fixes take more time, and therefore often seem to "skip" an update before being addressed.

[storm bough]

Hi everyone, I'm Niko! Feel free to ask me questions about game production and I'll answer what I can without giving away any spoilers

[languid gale]

Oh my goodness! Thank you Niko and Chelsea, I was just thinking about asking this question the other day! 😊 and Thank you for all of the hard work at Sunblink!

A question I have is how the process of brainstorming new additions to the game (events, features, the process of story-building for the game, etc.) occur?

[burnt violet]

So this version has been submitted to the Apple Store, is presumably awaiting approval or has already been approved, and is just ✨out there✨?

✨waiting for us✨

[deep mesa]

Yup~ It was approved last week.

It sits. It waits~

[lapis slate]

I wonder if it’s as excited to be released as we are to see it released

[cold dirge]

i have one simply question… where is milk 🥛

[storm bough]

For brainstorming, we have the following:

• Dedicated Slack channel for ideas - Here people can post anything that comes to mind or people working on something can request ideas to help them out (e.g. story ideas for characters)
• Hackathon - Every couple months, the team has a couple days to learn/make something that interests them. Sometimes those things lead to future features... 👀

[shadow yarrow]

what is your favourite thing youve done for the game so far

like the most fun to work on

[languid gale]

Thank you!! Sounds like fun!!

[cold dirge]

Could we have a way in the future to not waste event items? maybe like giving some reward in exchange for how many extras items you got, for example: X material for X extra items… I finished the event with about 70+ lightbulbs and i think it's a little bit a waste not to receive anything in return

[deep mesa]

Add this to #1108858060534988980 🙂

[faint hawk]

Definitely not flower watering lol

[shadow yarrow]

i love flower watering :C

[shadow yarrow]

i hope we can keep them in invintory, i would love to use them ac decor

[faint hawk]

Me too, but I’m sure the devs had a rough time trying to figure out why that one particular flower turned itself into a portal haha

[shadow yarrow]

LOL it would be a cool thing to implement into a game feature eventually, watering a special looking flower and it opening up a portal to a new area

a little refrence to the bug and also a interesting way to unlock the area

[faint hawk]

That’s cute! Like watering the clouds on cloud island can make the rainbow we use for the tracks.

[shadow yarrow]

or like a special flower that is being stubborn and wont open with just water so there is multiple steps and things you must bring to it to get it to open, so its not so straight forwards as just watering

[simple mason]

like watering at a very specific angle and distance a hundred times

[shadow yarrow]

LOL

in order to open the flower you must bring it a nordic sofa and 300 iron

[stark cargo]

@storm bough @deep mesa for 1.4 the time from concept to release seems to be rather short (well, also kudos for that!) where you squeeze in some bugfixes, improvements, etc. Is there, however, any larger track in parallels that would focus on larger content additions that would certainly require more time (if we go by the usual major.minor.patch numbering), is there a 2.0 track?

[deep mesa]

Without spoiling too much, yes and yes! We have a larger roadmap that goes into 2025 and various initiatives start early experimentation long beforehand. For example, we knew before launch that we wanted Furniture Customization (the big 1.4 feature) and a few folks have been putting design/tech time into since around 1.1-1.2

[rotund gull]

building off of what the other person said, (without this being too spoilery, I hope!) are you planning a shift in the direction of updates following the game’s first anniversary?

it seems to me like these first updates have been about introducing the seasonal events and fleshing out some characters, so i’m wondering how you think development might be impacted once they’ve all been developed and you can just start issuing “reruns” 😃

[wise mica]

I have the same question - since events will start repeating after a year I have some worry that the game would start to feel stale/repetitive

[burnt violet]

My thought on this is that they will have the time to make the anniversaries fresh while still providing “anniversary” perks like collectibles

[icy fern]

The dance animation and the espresso machine animation! Some of my favorites 😄

[cold dirge]

can any dev tell us how they thought of doing the BC animation for the balloons? it's my favorite animation in the whole game, it cracks me up and i’m curious 😂

[shadow yarrow]

i love the dance animation 🥺 it’s so so so cute !!!

[shadow yarrow]

i was laughing so hard last night at it omg

[stark cargo]

Hey you - dev who forgot to merge a hotfix (Piano now again requires woodblocks) into the 1.4 release branch - no worries buddy, we've all been there!

[icy fern]

That was our other animator Cliff! He is hilarious and very creative 😄 He did most of BC's animations 🙂

[cold dirge]

love him! 💚

[burnt violet]

BC’s balloons are my new favorite part of the game tbh

[burnt violet]

Please tell Cliff that I would like to buy him an Edible Arrangement for his incredible work bringing my favorite Sanrio character to life

I absolutely lost my entire mind when it was revealed that he was the one we needed to rescue, I have loved that silly boy for years but he got no representation 😭

[icy fern]

I passed the message along he'll be so happy to hear that! 😄 he really did such an amazing job.

[cold dirge]

is he in the server?

[dire flume]

hi :3 Can anyone tell me what is the logo shirt to wear for the multiplayer selfie mission?

[green quartz]

Just joined! Thanks for the kind words about BC everyone it means a lot to me. It's always a little scary when you animate a character that has never been in 3D before so it's great to hear everyone enjoys him.

[cold dirge]

hello!! and welcome! tysm for your incredible work, i love BC it’s one of my fav in the game so far and i love his animations 💚

chilling 😂

[burnt violet]

omg omg it’s the man the myth the legend

[green quartz]

When he was being modeled in 3D there was a brief debate if his eyes should be rotated so he'd look normal from all angles and everyone was like 'No! He is our perfect friend'

[cold dirge]

did you only work on the animations of BC or also of others?

[burnt violet]

THANK YOU SO MUCH @green quartz , while of course I know logically that HKIA was not a game made just specifically for me and for no one else, during the Challenging Rescue quest, for a moment, it felt that way 💖 I know this is silly but I got misty-eyed when I saw him

[burnt violet]

He’s flawless

[green quartz]

That is so nice to hear that makes me feel fantastic people are enjoying what we're working on. Very inspired to get back to work animating ||SENTENCE REDACTED||

[burnt violet]

you got me 💀

[green quartz]

I've done a bunch! Favorites (besides BC) would be Aggretsuko, Top Hat (only character with fingers so I always make sure they're in fun positions) and Gudetama's

[burnt violet]

I have so many questions about BC, but one burning question I have is about his language and personality. I assume he was a complete blank slate, so all of his character traits were invented for the game, I take it? How did his language and personality come to life from a 45-year-old doodle?

[burnt violet]

Before ||TOPHAT became a companionable character||, sometimes I would run to the beach just to get there before TOPHAT and BC did just so I could watch TOPHAT coolly saunter along the beach with his little hand swishes

[cold dirge]

i love this!!

[green quartz]

I pictured him to be the eternal optimist. Glass is always half full. I tried to always make it look like he was smiling, never moving too fast or seem stressed, just taking every big challenge with a positive attitude. He's bouncy when he walks because he's not tense. My favorite animation of his is the 'wave' emote

[burnt violet]

This answer is so much more pure than my wildest dreams 🥹

[cold dirge]

i really hope in the future HKIA will have merchandise sanrio approved, i need a plushie of lil &

[burnt violet]

the dream

[haughty radish]

Yes. Pleaseeeee 🥹

[raven rock]

We love BC over here! My kiddo always overlays a “Boing Boing” sound while I read the dialogue. Adore his bounces. 🥰

[whole scroll]

Will there be anything special in the game to commemorate Hello Kitty’s 50th anniversary this year??

[idle kayak]

Watching BC move around the island is such a joy, thank you so much! I absolutely adore every character in this game and I've loved watching all of them move around (& all their idle animations are so darn cute, and I love going to the dance hall to see them all dance) but something about BC's energy just makes me so happy, and the balloons are so cute I actually want to cry.

[rich swan]

Kind of random, but do you think there will be any beta testing for future updates? I do part time work for a QA company as a beta tester and would love to test for any bugs in the future if the team is ever looking.

[deep mesa]

It’s definitely a possibility for some larger future updates! Right now our update cycles are fast enough that we don’t have a ton of time to organize something like a beta test, as that would extend the time of each update cycle (to release it, have time for folks to play, get the feedback, and act on the feedback)

[deep mesa]

About Eggs

The Rockadoodler feature has been 95% complete since 1.1. We knew that we couldn't put it in, however, until there were good enough rewards. That's where eggs come in. We wanted eggs to make fun recipes! We have a whole list of fun egg-based dishes.

We thought, OK, we'll get it into 1.2.

We made plans for something that required eggs that art was already doing: Decorative Gudetama! And the Decorative Gudetama were ready to release. Except.... the last 5% of perf and QA work hadn't gotten done, so we couldn't release Rockadoodler for 1.2. We went in and removed the eggs from the recipes for the first few decorative gudetama.

We'll release Rockadoodlers in 1.3, we thought! We got a special comic made, and some rooster-y clothes. And.... there still wasn't enough bandwidth to finish that last 5% of work. We removed the eggs from a few more decorative gudetama recipes.

FINALLY 1.4!!! We brute-forced the feature through optimization and QA checks, got the eggs in, mourned the fact that we didn't have awesome egg recipes, but were glad at least that all the future decorative gudetama could, as planned, require crafting with eggs.

As for those other recipes, well, maybe one day there will be an egg-focused event 🤷

[languid gale]

YAY!!! THANK YOU CHELSEA! I've been so excited for this story ❤️ 🥰

[deep mesa]

Haha! No problem! I don't know that it lived up to the hype, but having to repeatedly prep and then cut Rockadoodler Roundup from basically every release sure was a thing 😂

[lapis slate]

Thanks for the background @deep mesa ! These behind the scenes stories are interesting and helpful in understanding how the bigger features come to life in the game

[burnt violet]

“Well, maybe one day there will be an egg-focused event” Pochacco:

[rain shore]

For egg based recipes i have a few suggestions, you can do a breakfast pizza, egg coffee (its Vietnamese) & an egg tart 😁

[burnt violet]

omg breakfast tacos

[lunar kindle]

omelette 🙏🏼

[deep mesa]

We actually learned about egg coffee when looking up recipes! And So. Many. Tarts.

[split spindle]

After trying to get that hat from the Rockadoodler game, I'm really hoping our next appliance is a rotisserie. 😆

[faint hawk]

Deviled eggs for sure with those ones.

[cold dirge]

i hope we get eggs à la coque (french) and tiramisu (italian dessert) 🍮

[deep mesa]

I've also lived in Texas for 10 years so of course my first response was BREAKFAST TACOS 😂

[deep mesa]

Gotta get that protein for leggggg day. And arm day. And tail day.

[burnt violet]

I … have lived in TX for 19 years 😅 BREAKFAST TACO ENJOYERS UNITE

[short wharf]

🥚

[shadow yarrow]

what about scrambled eggs? will we be able to ever make other kinds of foods? like a new cook station

[deep mesa]

We hope so!

[raven rock]

Golden egg goals

[still maple]

Eggs recipes would be great for a Spring event

[faint hawk]

We could also dye them (although anything but grey please)

[shadow yarrow]

omg that would be so cute for the spring

also an easter egg hunt 🥺

[cold dirge]

omg yes please

[torn dagger]

not sure if it was asked before, was bringing back bc part of the plan in the first place? crazy how bc was never used by sanrio til hkia!

in love with his 3d model and animations, he's perfect ❤️ thank you devs!!

[clear bone]

kinda of late but about egg recipes I have a suggestion: there's a ton of portuguese sweets that are 90% egg! like pastel de nata, ovos moles, pão de ló mole, toucinho do céu, the list goes on and on. And a lot of them are also connected with easter!

[zinc scaffold]

A lot of the team were big fans of BC before even starting on the project, so as soon as we knew we had the honor of getting to work with Sanrio and their characters, getting Big Challenges in was a must have!

[cold dirge]

I've always wondered if all the people who work at HKIA are Sanrio fans or there are people who aren't/aren't lovers and just think as work

[zinc scaffold]

I will say that getting to work on HKIA and with these characters has given me a newer appreciation of them, but I also wouldn't call my self a huge lover/Sanrio fan. At the end of the day it is work, but I enjoy working on it! And the Team is awesome, everyone is a joy to work with.

(and I'm really excited about some of the content that I've been working on that you guys will get to see soon! No spoilers though )

[storm bough]

I was OBSESSED with Pochacco as a kid. My school supplies and room accessories were all of him. In fact, when I joined Sunblink/HKIA, my brother found my Pochacco plushie that's ~30 years old and I have it on my nightstand now

[storm bough]

Dog tax

[cold dirge]

this is such a cute story 🥹

[burnt violet]

I really hope that you got to make even one (1) decision about Pochacco, specifically, in HKIA

[burnt violet]

I’m making it through Supercute Adventures and it is very fascinating to see which elements have been added into HKIA! I just watched My Melody’s Relax-A-Thon and I was thinking “classic My Melody” 😂

[storm bough]

This was before my time, but this team did their research! They even spoke with the writers of Supercute Adventures

[burnt violet]

It’s really well-done. My exposure to the characters’ personalities originated with HKIA, and it’s such a treat to see it in other media

omg their mermaid outfits are informed by Supercute Adventures 🤯

[raven rock]

Oh man what has this game started? Now I want to know everything and own everything Hello Kitty.

Well, Kuromi. But same.

[burnt violet]

Yeah if y’all are not watching Supercute Adventures, you are missing out. I feel like it makes the game so much more fun; also, knowing the game makes this show so incredibly entertaining

[cold dirge]

omg! what a dream 😭

[wintry geyser]

I didn't know much about Sanrio when we started the game other than Hello Kitty. It was fun discovering characters like Gudetama and Badtz were Sanrio, too. I didn't realize!
I was so excited when I found out my go-to childhood movie Unico is part of the Sanrio-verse, too 🤯

[cold dirge]

that’s cool! i never saw that movie, probably didn’t came out in my country and looking on google isn’t even translated but i might try to watch it

[wintry geyser]

If you do, I'd recommend Unico in the Island of Magic (1983) ✨

[cold dirge]

i def will, the story seems so beautiful 🥹

[mild zephyr]

@wintry geyser will you add more videos to your YouTube channel? I had so much fun looking at your work on the HKIA characters and items?

[wintry geyser]

I have a couple things I'd like to add. Like a post-1.0 VFX compilation and a video showing off the furniture customizer dev tool.

[raven rock]

I would like to see that! It's really fun to customize the furniture. Took a lot of us until a few days ago to realize the furniture can revolve as you do it. That's a nice touch.

[mild zephyr]

I can’t wait to see that!

[cold dirge]

i forgot who was the person that did this graphic for the empty glow berry but i’m OBSESSED! i want this irl as decoration 🥹

[harsh urchin]

On which youtube channel do you post these?

[harsh urchin]

I just did some googling and see you have the same username on Youtube 😄 so I answered my own question - neat!

I am an ordinary front-end web-developer in moderate to fairly large scale projects, with myself having only some experience with 3D animation, 2D design, sound/movie editing and UX/UI navigation, but I am so impressed by how pleasant this game feels. I never liked Hello Kitty but this game is addictive and casual. Every time I see an animation, or when I see different menus pop-up or I see a certain character I am thinking: this must have taken AGES to develop - how on earth do you make creative decisions? Is Sanrio checking every detail? Do they approve all the dialogues?
Seems like SO much work has gone into this, yet still somehow it seems to be a 'surprise hit'? 🙂

[storm bough]

We meet with Sanrio frequently to give visibility on what we're planning. The main things they review are character designs and dialogue to ensure they're in line with the character to meet fan expectations. They also get feedback to us quickly so it's been great working with them!

[wide marten]

me too!!!

[red hinge]

Oh no! This can’t be the end of these discussions with the devs. I love reading about the little things that went on behind the scenes. I learned so much about Big Challenges and enjoy him so much more now. Thank you.

[zinc scaffold]

We're waiting in the shadows for ya'll to ask more questions 😶‍🌫️

[atomic girder]

this game is incredible. thank you for putting so much work in to this experience for fans of games like this. im thankful that it is on Apple Arcade, and doesn’t have, like, a bunch of micro-transactions and ads. I really hope development and support continues long into the future. It’s really the killer app of Apple Arcade at the moment.

Maybe someday the game will be brought to another platform so many other people can enjoy it?

[raven rock]

Have you all worked on games together prior to working at Sunblink?

[wind field]

I would like some information on how came to be. From its inclusion in the game, to its model, and the Gao Gao of it all! Was this a character that Sanrio requested? If yes, did they give parameters of how they want implemented in the game? Idk if this is shareable information, but I am curious cause of how much I love , from this game.

[broken mountain]

It sounds to be like the devs were fans and wanted him in the game: #hkia-dev-and-design message

And one of the devs talked a little about modeling him starting here: #hkia-dev-and-design message

[versed tide]

Hi I think it would be great if the inventory was set up where we could see what we were missing….like with clothing, furniture and especially comic books. I get some have to stay a mystery until we get them but with comic books it would be nice to know what editions I’m missing thanks!

Bring it to switch! Please!!

[fleet terrace]

Okay.
Where is milk?
Tell us about the Aliens.
And Poron.
🧚‍♀️✨🥹

[fickle spoke]

Hey, that would probably be better suited in #1108858060534988980 I believe I’ve seen posts regarding backpack itemization too so you could just add yours. 😊

[red hinge]

The Rockadoodler mini-game is my favorite to play with visiting friends. They always crack us up. So rubbery and bouncy. In general the critters seem to be well thought out with their appearance, behavior, and ability to catch. What are your favorite critters in the game and would you share a story about working on them?

[zinc scaffold]

This is my first time working with everyone here on the team, but actually a lot of our folks came from Backflip Studios, who are most known for making DragonVale!

[zinc scaffold]

Others can answer this more in depth but since I'm here I'll say what I know;

A lot of the team were big fans of BC before even starting on the project, so as soon as we knew we had the honor of getting to work with Sanrio and their characters, getting Big Challenges in was a must have!
^ That was from my previous answer to a similar question. So it was us requesting from Sanrio, instead of the other way around.

And yes we communicate thoroughly with Sanrio for all their characters, BC included, to make sure they're as accurate and well defined as possible!

[zinc scaffold]

Rockadoodlers are definitely a studio favorite too. I know part of their inspiration comes from the Chickens in HEROish, our first game. For HEROish, if I remember the full story, they had been concepted (art, basic idea) as a basic unit or something, and eventually got dropped (not really fitting in with Imperial Units or something). As I joined the team and started working on levels, I concepted what would eventually become the 'Doomsbury' level, which had Priscilla, an enemy, constantly bombarding the field with magic missiles the player has to avoid. I didn't want them to just do damage though, I wanted something more interesting, so I had them replace a card in your hand with basically a 'dead card.' The team loved it, and the chicken was reborn as that 'dead card;' Costs you a lot of mana and summons a really useless unit! Art knocked it out of the park for the HEROish chicken, so when we were making critters for Hello Kitty, we knew we had to revive the chicken in some way!

TL:DR - The studio loves goofy chickens, so we made a goofy chicken in each of our games!

[raven rock]

I’m sad I missed Backflip studios. I just read about the paper toss game and it would have been my all time favorite 🤣. We played something similar in college, but with physical things (we only had Nokias back then). We made a paper box and had a stick. We called it “box wars”. Many classes were missed due to Box War tournaments in the Theatre Guild office.

Paper, stick, bucket. That’s all you really need.

[burnt violet]

I used to looooooooove DragonVale!

[burnt violet]

Are goofy chickens the Sunblink calling card now 👀

[zinc scaffold]

who could say no to this face

[icy fern]

I worked on Dragonvale! What a great game, and Backflip was such a lovely studio. It was started by the same guy who started Sunblink! He really knows how to get a good team together and make awesome games

[burnt violet]

I would say that Dragonvale and Godfinger are the two iOS games that I still think about frequently

[frigid lava]

sorry for being late to this, but i loved the backflip studios games

one of the games that i like that wasn't mentioned here was spellfall, which was a match-3 rpg battler type of game. i think there's a wiki of it out there if you want to see screenshots of that game (there's also videos of them, there's even someone posting about the game in 2023, now i wish i had an android phone to play it. it's probably an apk but still…)
didn't get too far in the game but still it was fun for me when it was still around in the app store

there was also a game that's like dragonvale but with robots instead (i forgot the name) i liked that one as a kid

glad to hear what the devs (and the other staff) from backflip studios are up to now and that they're still making games 🙂

[wintry geyser]

Gizmonauts! That’s robot one.

[frigid lava]

gizmonauts! yeah, that's one of the first few games i liked in middle school (aside from paper toss) lol
thank you 🙂

[wintry geyser]

My favorite is probably the cloud dragon. I do a lot of the rigging, and to test my work I’ll put the character into a few test poses. One of our animators, @green quartz, used one in the animation set! A very nice compliment 🥰

[burnt violet]

Y’all I just want to say thank you to whosever idea it was to make Big Challenges close his eyes and dog paddle in the water. I just want to watch this forever 😂

[drowsy linden]

I had just noticed this today too! He looks so happy 🥹

[hollow wolf]

Hi ! Is all the testing done in-house for QC , or do you have a subset of users that test the game as well before a release?

[deep mesa]

We have both in house and external QA teams, but don't have the time to do something like a betatest with players, given the pace of our updates.

[yet]

[hollow wolf]

🫣 gives me hope ! If you are ever looking for a Vision Pro tester .. I’m your girl !! * throwing that out into the hello kitty universe .

[viral solstice]

As someone that worked in SQA, I’m actually quite curious about this approach. I noticed in the credits that the Sunblink QA team is only 5 people.

Lionbridge Warsaw is providing external support, presumably with a focus on localization. Are they providing functional testing as well?

Based on the size of the Keywords Studios team, I’m guessing they’re focused on functional testing (though I know they also provide localization services).

If functional testing is outsourced, what’s the perceived of benefit of this over in-house testing?

[icy fern]

that was @green quartz as well!!! He did all Big Challenges Animations 😄

[simple mason]

I think you gotta email [e-mail] with issues like that, probably best including a support code from the app so they can tailor a solution for you

[deep mesa]

Our QA Team distribution is based on typical business considerations: cost, coverage, and flexibility. In house is critical for many many things including in-office on-device testing, rapid back-and-forth with the design and eng teams, and being embedded on feature teams. Outsourcing lets us have coverage overnight for things like smoke and sanity tests and overall 'build health' on a routine basis.

[tiny crypt]

a little bit ago I was one of the people who hit the bug with being unable to interact with the lovebug habitat. I emailed support, and they sent a code to enter into the “Join Friend” box on the menu, and it fixed it; however, since then i’ve been curious as to how that worked to fix it. would it possible to get an explanation?

[stark cargo]

Devs didn't answer, but I would imagine that on the API that usually serves multiplayer on their servers they added some "special codes" that will modify your game state (now, it's a question what exactly should have been modified, could have been just some flag somewhere, depending on the bug and the fix itself). Basically, seems like they reused an existing functionality to do some other task.

[warm wind]

Can someone tell me how do HKIA's characters' animation style is called ? I want to create 3D model of a character, very similar to Null and Rockadoodler. How can I animate them after? May be some tutorial or animation's style?

[green quartz]

The style I try to achieve on those characters is focused on the 'Squash and Stretch' principle of animation. I can't do links in here but if you google 'squash and stretch animation principle' There are write ups and videos that explain the principle. Hope that helps good luck!

[burnt violet]

I found one on YouTube by AlanBeckerTutorials that gives a really great explanation about Squash and Stretch. Thanks for the guidance!

[crude hedge]

[copper crow]

I just wanted to mention the idle animations for the characters are so adorable 🥰 Sweet Piano is my favorite 🤩 Melody and WMM and also precious! Just wanted to applaud the little things again

[ruby fable]

I just want to thank all the developers for their creativity, dedication and mastery of cuteness. HKIA has become my sanctuary. My “inner 11-year-old” thanks you.

[muted igloo]

Just wanted to pop in and say as a fellow game dev (Bethesda Game Studio, I’m an environment artist), I love you all so very much and appreciate the efforts behind this masterpiece of a game. 😄
Also, whoever wrote Hangydon’s routine with Retsuko, you have a kindred spirit at my studio - one of our designers has put heavy metal references in everything from Skyrim to Starfield and was delighted when I showed him the dialogue options ❤️

[obtuse coral]

Also came here to say thank you devs . I can’t imagine how much time and work was put into this update. Thank you for this wonderful game ✨

[cosmic tree]

The pre-rain lighting is perfection

[rotund stratus]

I have also come here to say thank you and send all the good vibes to the team for working so hard on fixing the cabin bug 🫶🏼

[raven rock]

Honestly would be bringing the doughnuts if I could. We know you’re working hard. ❤️

[raven rock]

@zinc scaffold I wish we had one of your puzzles to solve every day to work out our brains a little. ❤️. I loved level 2 Merry Meadows! First my Wordle, then your puzzles. That’s a good morning.

[zinc scaffold]

I wish I had the mental strength to make a puzzle every single day! That'd be awesome. Expect more good things as we keep going though! Our Engineers have been doing an awesome job, and our design toolset keeps growing! (E.I. the new blocks, though Tom also gets a ton of credit there)

[cosmic tree]

OK we all love the band quest dance, so who helped Pochacco choreograph that and do the steps have names?

[mild zephyr]

I want to learn that dance and make a TikTok dance style video with it!

[green quartz]

The dance is an amalgamation of several dance moves I found across Hello Kitty episodes, movies and games with the final move being based on the Hapidanbui Sticker Pack

[raven rock]

Perfection. But did you all perform it?

[cosmic tree]

and now I want to see a compilation of the inspo sources

[green quartz]

Really the only one you need to see

[burnt violet]

new phone wallpaper

Badtz has me on the floor

Tuxedosam is out here trying his best

[twin olive]

looks like theyre trying to mimic pochacco's signature butt pose sooo adorable 😭🫶

[primal zinc]

omg! does anyone have a screen recording of them performing it? i wanna watch again now hahah

[silent patrol]

Thank you devs for Christmas in April! 🥹🥹😊 I saw so many items in inventory that I went to each cabin to make sure the contents didn’t empty back into my inventory! So many items you gave me! Thank you!

[cosmic tree]

#🕹creator-content message

[harsh urchin]

I've put at least one rockadoodler in most of my cabins and I'm trying to stuff my Nature Preserve with as many as I can, wondering what the maximum is... 😬
Love goofy chickens!

Also: good luck with the Webby awards; I just voted and rooting for you all 🤞

[thin steeple]

I just want to say a huge thank you to the devs (and the mods who have been fielding all the complaints) who worked so hard over the cabin furniture loss debacle. I’m really happy with the compensation, and looking forward to when I get the trophy I had in Lou’s cabin back (I made another one for now, Lou can be patient 😜). Thank you so much, your hard work is appreciated. 🥰

[deep mesa]

I can confirm that whether a seed spawns is a separate calculation from what the seed becomes

And believe (aka that’s what specced but I have not Seen The Code) that it considers all possibilities.

[frigid lava]

interesting. would be better with a headspin and the worm but i still like it.
i understand that those two moves might be hard to animate tho lol

now stream the cover of all so bad by hapidanbui (hapidan bouquet)

[queen venture]

They seriously did that at near the end of the quest where you have to make microphones for Hapidanbui

[deep mesa]

Posted a small Dev Story Time in this feedback post: #1237578744793796710 message

[raven rock]

I just wanted to say that I love the sound it makes when I run around the swamp in the rain, and the weird thud when I catch a frog :).

[rotund stratus]

Sending great vibes for the team, hoping for no big bugs 💕

[rotund pollen]

Sending a big thank you to all of the developers that made this game soo awesome!!!

[hollow wolf]

Hey what was the inspiration for this game?

[neat locust]

why we can have backpack with various clothes, but not necklace with various clothes?

[deep mesa]

Necklaces are flat to the body, so will intersect with any sort of dimension to the clothes. Wings and Backpacks stick out far from the body, so will be visible/legible in almost all cases.

[deep mesa]

We really wanted to combine open world adventure gameplay with life sim gameplay. Sanrio was the perfect cross-generational, international, widespread appeal IP to bring a game like this to life.

[rotund stratus]

Did you guys go to Sanrio or did Sanrio come to you?

[deep mesa]

It was Sanrio+Apple and then we came in with the game vision 😄

🪻 🌷 🌹 🌻 🪷 🌺 🪻 🌷 🌹 🌻 🪷 🌺 🪻 🌷 🌹 🌻 🪷 🌺
OK! Dev Story time about flowers and their timers.

Initially, we programmed in variability per flower type on how quickly the flowers grew. The idea being you could have a flower that grew super slowly (like a 7 day sprout stage) but then bloomed superfluously (single day bud stage), or a hyper rare flower that had a 30 day bud stage and only bloomed once every two weeks.

We wanted the base flowers to be quickly rewarding, so we kept the sprout and bud stages small (but still wanted some room for joke flowers to be faster) -- hence the two day timers for sprout and bud.

When flowers came out, we realized that most of the fun was really just in colors and getting pretty blooms, and that changing up growth timers would likely just lead to bug reports, so we nixed the idea of having different growth styles for different flowers. However, if you were wondering based on yesterday's flower conversation why in the world some stages took multiple days: there you have it!

[cosmic tree]

oo- now wondering about joke flowers

[merry folio]

same! although i did LOL the first time i troweled an eggwort seed and saw the name

[pale siren]

I know that when we encounter a bug, we’re supposed to grab a support code before we leave the game otherwise it won’t be helpful, and I’m really curious about why that is. Does some of the less important data get deleted after each play session? Does the bug get buried in all the new data so that it becomes too hard to trace?

[deep mesa]

So what the support code does is send logs of what's happened in the game that session. After each session, those logs are cleared (and actually, they're dumped throughout a session as well, so for longer sessions we often don't even have all the info).

The save file is still the same the next session, but often time the save file isn't useful at all for telling us what might've happened to make an issue appear 😄

[pale siren]

Oh, I see! Thank you Chelsea! I love learning about things like this

[alpine beacon]

Quick question: I know trading with others and Keroppi is how you’re gonna get old event furniture. But will there be a way to get back old event clothing? What about clothing exclusive to the log ins?

And will some events return(like the Halloween or Christmas event)

[deep mesa]

Yes, yes, and yes 🙂

[alpine beacon]

:0. Yaaaay! Thank you for answering!

[raven rock]

Now that it’s summer can you guys make a HKIA dev camp for kids so that parents have adequate time to play the game?

[twin olive]

sorry if this isnt an appropriate question since its not about hkia development, but i saw that sunblink was on the list of partners for summer game fest 2024 and i was curious about what that meant? i watched all of the livestreams for SGF24 and didn't see any mention of sunblink, is there something there in-person only that i can't find, or is sunblink maybe just a genral partner? thanks!
(screenshot from the sgf website 😅)

[deep mesa]

Not everything that happens at SGF is public during the event~

[twin olive]

tysm for replying! i hope those who experienced whatever it was in person had fun then

[hollow spade]

Ninjump 😦

[alpine beacon]

I’m super excited for the release of the game on swiiiitch. But I have like- Several questions sorry-

1. I imagine we won’t be able to transfer our progress because Apple Arcade is entirely different from Nitendo online. But will we be able to get our items back via the event returning?
2. What does it mean that the game is a timed exclusive?
3. How much will the game cost?

[deep mesa]

1. Yep!
2. It’s a “Timed Console Exclusive” which means that for a certain period of time it will be available only on the Nintendo Switch Console, and then later will become available on other consoles
3. Not announced

[alpine beacon]

Thank you! ^-^

[tulip nimbus]

What do you mean event returning? Is there a time limit for when we have to get the game on switch and log in to get our items back?

[frigid lava]

you can get the items again through events because you can't transfer save files from two different consoles

[tulip nimbus]

Ohh so basically we restart the game from scratch

[frigid lava]

yeah. sorry about that :/

[neat locust]

how does releasing the game on other platforms affect your partnership with apple? (if it does at all)

[alpine beacon]

Since 1.8 is called “sounds like summer”, does that mean the summer event with sunscreen will be returning?

[rotund stratus]

yes but it might be slightly different than last year (esp timing) #1-8-sounds-like-summer message

[storm bough]

It does not - we'll still be updating the game on Apple Arcade 🙂

[cosmic tree]

How do you figure out what to include in the avatar creator. I'm so impressed with the max difference and range of options/looks we can get with the horses even though there aren't as many individual to click options as the others, it feels like it's going avatar optimization

[languid rose]

Whoever added this. I love you. I’ve been laughing and sobbing for the last 10 mins I can’t believe this is real 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

[languid rose]

legit freaking out and unable to get over this 😂😂😂

[frigid lava]

not hangyodon as the nirvana baby
also the text kinda spells "hangyodon" if i squint
like at least the first two katakana characters are correct
the others are a bit of a stretch
looks more like gibberish than anything

[uncut flicker]

OMG where did you find this? 😂

[languid rose]

Out of a rain flower!!!!

[languid rose]

It’s been like 5 hours and I’m still thinking about how funny this is so whoever thought of this please know you made my week 😭💖

[hollow wolf]

What was the game breaking bug that almost delayed 1.8?

[storm bough]

Two quests weren’t appearing because their requirements were incorrect. They were quick fixes, but unfortunately caught late so we were worried Apple Arcade wouldn’t have enough time to review our builds by our launch date. Luckily, Our Dear Friend at Apple helped move it along!

[storm bough]

From the artist:

We always shoot for variety: one basic, one silly, one cute, one that’s just over it, see if they mix and match well and go from there. You get a nice range if you aim for the edges and then fill in the gaps between.

[atomic jay]

hey, I have a question some time ago it was said that in early 2025 Hello Kitty Island Adventure will be released on Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4 and 5 and has it been said anywhere on which PC platform this game will be available but I heard it's on Steam but not from the official sources sources, so it's more of a guess?

[graceful dragon]

how does developing for apple arcade work? does apple reach out to you or is it the other way around

[storm bough]

It's a two-way street. We have a tight relationship with Apple Arcade and we meet regularly to discuss things like release schedule and marketing.

[brisk rock]

Do you guys also have to get things approved by Sanrio?

[storm bough]

We have a lot of creative control, but these are the major things we run by Sanrio so that the characters are represented properly:

• Sanrio character models and outfits
• New avatar species (so these look distinct from Sanrio characters)
• Promotional materials (e.g. key art, trailers, messaging)

[hybrid robin]

Is everything made on blender or what app? And could tutorials be given?

[stark fog]

will we ever be able to get new colors the event flowers again? i’m devastated to just have orange marigolds and only being able to get orange trim flowers😭

[storm bough]

#1236870624127877151 message

[storm bough]

We develop on Unity. As for tutorials, this isn't something we have the bandwidth for, sorry!

[harsh crystal]

How do licensing issues occur with certain characters even if they’re owned by Sanrio? Apart from collab characters like MaiMai?

[pale siren]

Before, Chelsea talked about how it’s currently impossible to visit an offline friend’s island because the servers aren’t persistent. So that got me wondering, how come we’re able to take back furniture we’ve placed in people’s cabins even if they’re offline?

[deep mesa]

That furniture lives in both places, so either person can kick or retrieve.

[deep mesa]

Many different parties could have been part of a creation effort, even if Sanrio ultimately owns something. We never know what underlying deal structure was behind it.

[halcyon moss]

How many players do y’all have daily? Is this game really popular?

[deep mesa]

We can’t share that information, but you can check Apple Arcade’s rankings for an idea.

[halcyon moss]

Alright

[thin plume]

how long did the game take to make and how big was the team? i’m an aspiring game dev and i’m trying to identify the scope of games i like to help me better understand what i’m potentially able to do by myself

[wintry geyser]

This game was in development for roughly 3 years, from initial ideation/pitches to release last summer. The size of the studio has hovered around 30-50 people (my estimate).
If you're setting out to make your own games as a solo dev, I'd encourage you start small! Like super small, uncomfortably so! Even tiny games will help you identify the art you can make in a timely fashion and the the engineering architecture you can handle.

[thin plume]

thank you!!!

[graceful dragon]

What timezone are the HKIA devs in?

Also, what time of day do updates release (or are scheduled to be released?)

[cold dirge]

post appreciation for the devs, i wanted to thank the devs for this incredible music video of IS, playing for 1 year and seeing some scenes is truly something fantastic and also makes you emotional, thanks for making this game more and more enjoyable at every update! and a special thanks for including important dialogues with important topics such as changing friendships or overcoming fears! amazing work 🫶🏻

[cunning stag]

Really, the end of this quest was fantastic. Thank you so much, Sunblink! Thank you so much for consistently playing every day for the past year and making it cute and fun. 💖 I can take pride in that it's the best mobile game ever! You guys are absolutely amazing and awesome 🫶🏻
Let me tell you that other Korean users saw the end of this quest and were so cute that they were satisfied enough to leave a full video✨

[storm bough]

We're scattered mainly throughout the US, but our headquarters are in Colorado. Updates typically release on Wednesdays between 10-11am MT.

[graceful dragon]

How does the contract work with an Apple produced game coming to Nintendo Switch, PS5 and PC?

[pale jewel]

may i ask what is the initial idea(s)/concept(s) of the game that you guys have or this is an original idea that you had pitched to sanrio?

[deep mesa]

This was an original pitch we brought to Apple and Sanrio.

[halcyon moss]

Was the yellow guidling light inspired or an orignal idea from y'all? just curious :D

[restive rock]

I don't know if this is the appropriate place to ask but I saw Sunblink will be at an upcoming Career Fair and I was wondering if there is a place to apply for the position beforehand in preparation for it.

[storm bough]

We have participated in college career fairs in the past, but there aren't any upcoming plans that we're aware of. Sorry!

[restive rock]

Thank you for the response. Have a good day!

[mild zephyr]

We hit 50k members on the Discord! Congrats 🎉

[rain shore]

How do you pick what gets taken from the back log into new updates? Because im sure you guys have a long list of things you want to work on 😭

[deep mesa]

We analyze cost/benefit, basically.

Benefit Factors

• Severity/Frequency of issue (something that blocks progression MUST be fixed, something that makes 5% of players have 5% more frustration is less urgent)
• Alignment with player motivation (something that makes core gameplay like exploration easier and more efficient is prioritized above something that makes min-maxing decoration easier/more efficient)
• Alignment with company values (we might prioritize an accessibility feature that only benefits a fraction of a percent of the population because kindness is one of our core values and we believe the more people who can play, the better)
• Long term potential (if adding an espresso machine on top of a table also lets us put multiple things on top of a table, it's higher value because it clears the way for more future features)
• Business KPIs (things that are critical to ensuring we can continue to make this game, like having events and new features every 6 weeks to boost our acquisition and re-engagement)
• Contractual Obligations (things we have to do, because we signed papers saying we would)

Cost Factors

• Bandwidth across all teams, including testing (some simpler-seeming fixes would actually take days to test properly, so we've had to deprioritize them)
• Time to create (something that's going to take 8 weeks to make and only excite 1% of the players isn't super valuable, for example)

[rain shore]

Thank you and the team so much for all your hard work💗💗💗

[rotund stratus]

thank you for baby milk my heart is happy and i havent even opened the game yet today!

[rotund gull]

I remember a while back there was a post that we wouldn’t be able to dress up exactly like the characters because of Sanrio’s wishes, but this bow is pretty cool (and is a key part of Hello Kitty’s appearance)! Did something change with Sanrio, or does the limit on character customization only apply to avatar items like palettes/face options?

[deep mesa]

We talked with them due to the amount of art coming out for HK’s 50th and the number of other Sanrio characters wearing her bow, and they decided that the benefit outweighed the concern of character confusion! So we got lucky with this one 🙂 We do bring up cases like this from time to time, and this one just happened to make it through!

[rotund gull]

Very cool!! Thanks for sharing the story. It’s nice to be able to make use more of the assets in the game (same with the furniture in the Dessert Boat that’s now obtainable)! Hopefully there are more opportunities for similar things in the future

[graceful dragon]

we need 's beret

[proper lark]

Should pin this one!

[fickle agate]

And how did you get the chance to pitch to them?

[deep mesa]

Many folks at the company have been working on mobile games since they came into existence, including early mobile megahits, so plenty of connections to folks at Apple and the App Store.

[simple mason]

Yes, I did read that as

since they [the folks] came into existence

[merry folio]

just wanted to say thanks to the devs for the weather events, and the work they have done to make them so enjoyable. i’ve been busy irl so have only been playing in small amounts lately. today i had some extra time, and while it rained in the swamp i was able to open star chests, break boulders and water rain flowers. so much fun! i love that i dont have to feel like i am “missing” weather events like when they first started. thanks for all the hard work!

[clear bone]

idk if this is the right channel, but what does the island vibe score do exactly? does having a higher score help with visitors?

[rich swan]

This may be considered off topic but I was wondering how the marketing team generally functions in the video game industry. I’m a marketing coordinator currently but I work in another industry. I’ve always dreamed of transitioning to the video game industry but I know marketing probably works differently here. Any insight would be useful, just in regards to how you guys track metrics or KPIs, how many people are usually on the team, and any softwares that are common among studios for marketing or SEO? When I do research on the games industry it’s mostly surrounding devs and the actual build of a game, but im interested in how the marketing/sales/design teams work in this context. Appreciate any feedback or even any tips! 🙂

Part 2: do the marketing team and dev team ever work together or collaborate? I assume so, but I know in my particular position I don’t have much interaction with other teams, I was wondering if there is any overlap or if they ever bounce ideas off of each other/share insights

[rotund gull]

I know the game is still being actively developed—but would it be possible to get a periodic spotlight of features you all considered adding to the game but that didn’t make the final cut? Or things worked on in the hackathons? Would be very cool to see!!

[deep mesa]

Island Vibes was originally intended to be the overall meta XP of the game -- a way to summarize all of your progress across quests, collections, cabins, outfits etc etc all in one place.

However, because we were continually adding stuff the game, it was near impossible to maintain a standard for what would be 3 vs 4 vs 5 stars. And that made it even more impossible to follow our original intent of having content (visitors, store stuff, quests) locked behind certain vibe scores. So it's always been sort of..... like the appendix. Folks don't really need it, don't really use it, and we think they're not really gonna miss it when it's gone.

[deep mesa]

There's a ton of different ways that marketing can be a part of a studio. For some teams, marketing is entirely outsourced to professional firms. For some teams, marketing is an internal team but separate from others: they track what moments for each game they need to highlight and collect/generate assets for it. For us, we have a combo: we have one fantastic internal marketing / social media person, and they interface with Sanrio and Apple and the rest of our team to create and coordinate assets for all the opportunities that you see us in.

I would think that KPIs would be the same across industry: counting impressions, clicks, engagement, and conversion. Because of Apple's high privacy and safety standards, we actually get much less data than most teams on how things are performing. We also, thanks to our fantastic partners, don't need to do much paid advertising / SEO.

As far as collaboration, at least at Sunblink it's an absolute yes! A huge part of why we do events the way we do them is to support marketing, and there's constant back and forth between art and marketing about the new keyarts that are coming up, what we want to showcase from a product and narrative perspective, what characters Sanrio wants to highlight to synchronize with their Friend-of-the-Month and other opportunities, and so on. A great example is the recent Milk teasers, where I basically went to the designers and said "hey, we want to do a few fake-out teases about Milk, what are the lowest cost things we can do?" and the design team helped come up with the coral milk spawns, the art team helped come up with the milkshakes, and narrative came up with the milk bread quest.

[deep mesa]

This is intriguing 🤔 Most of what we do for hackathons is something we intend to do in the future, in some shape or form, but maybe I can find a few things that wound up on the cutting room floor!

[lofty pivot]

Hello, I'm a solo-dev that trying to learn some optimization stuff in unity.
I played your game and wonder how did you guys do the changeable avatar/cloth stuff.
The way I do the changeable cloth in my game is, I will export all the clothes and character mesh with single fbx. Then I place all the clothing on character and activate/de-activate. This bloats the scene, how can i do this differently? My way seems like a really messy one. Please help me 😦

[wintry geyser]

This was my first time attempting a customizable avatar, too! It took a couple months of work to find a good solution and lots of help from our engineers. Here are the basics:

• Skin each clothing piece in their own scene (Maya, Blender, etc) to a copy or reference of the character rig.
• Export each clothing piece to Unity and include the copy of the rig so that Unity recognizes the exported mesh as a skinned piece.
• In the game when the character needs to equip a piece of clothing, instantiate the clothing and **edit its SkinnedMeshRenderer **to point at the joints/bones of the currently spawned character rig. Now the clothing should be skinned to the in-game character rig, and you can delete the copy of the rig that came with the instantiated clothing.

Once you have those steps down you can look toward optimizing further:

• Some kind of pre-process step when integrating clothing that gets rid of the rig copy in the clothing prefabs.
• Pooling clothing pieces in the game so you don't need to instantiate the same piece over and over again.

[lofty pivot]

@wintry geyser Thank you for answering. It really helped me and opened my mind about this topic. I will be definetly trying this. Thank you ver much!

[rich swan]

This actually just blew my mind, this is so helpful and fascinating! This makes me even more excited to break into this field. I admire yall so much and hopefully I’ll be able to do this kind of work, the collaboration sounds so fun too 🙂 thank you, Chelsea!

[cold dirge]

I'd like to know how much freedom Sunblink has in creating new characters unrelated to Sanrio, like Tophat 🤔

[woven dune]

Is the plan to release both the PC and Switch versions simultaneously? As a game developer myself who released games on multiple platforms, I understand how difficult it can be to optimize for every hardware infrastructure especially when it comes to the Switch.

You guys have done such an amazing job with the game, definitely not what I was expecting when I saw it on Apple Arcade a couple of weeks back without knowing anything about it. Extremely polished and tons of content. Cannot wait to play it on a bigger screen and maybe 60FPS on PC? 😛 (If the framerate isn't tied to animations)

Thanks for creating my new addiction!

[prisma spindle]

I also can wait to see the debut on PC and other platforms!!
I actually sign up for Arcade only because of this game lol. I have decide to cancel it because it is a bit costly to have Arcade just for one game, so buy the game on the other platforms was a REAL lifesaving. Now that i has stopped the game and ready to start the journey again in the near future,
have you guys done planning on the exact date of release yet? Or have you consider any month or season is the best to releasing it?
Anyways, love the game and hope y’all working well.

[hollow wolf]

While there's no confirmed month, you can expect PC and Switch in early 2025!

[woven dune]

That’s awesome, can’t wait!

[rain shore]

What is data mining and why is it so frowned upon if we agree not to speak on it in on discord ? (Re: todays #heads-up message)

[hollow wolf]

Data mining is complicated to explain, but the TLDR is that it's the process of scraping through digital data and trying to make sense of the information.

In the context of HKIA, it is finding assets (clothing, events, models, items, etc) that you should not have access to by playing the game as it's meant to be played or if it is posted on the game's social media. Think of it like if people posted Jam Jamboree outfits or spoilers early because they time traveled. They were not supposed to regularly have their hands on this data. It spoils the fun for others, and with some companies, it can get into sketchy legal territory.

People get in trouble for posting data mined content or "leaks" with certain companies. Data mined content may only be placeholder assets and may be changed or entirely removed. I have been part of gaming communities where entire events, clothing, or other game items were scrapped from the game and never released because people leaked them early.

[rain shore]

That makes alot more sense, thank you so much

[pale jewel]

hii i know i had briefly mentioned it early today (#2-0-city-town message) that as most of us don't want to see any unreleased content in the game, is there any possibility that you guys can (maybe?) release an specific artbook of the game in the future?

i figured that some of us (including me!) would love to see some of the bts current & scrap artworks &/or just want to support it financially. :)

[clear bone]

a bit on this and just overall, as someone who's interested in pursuing ip law, can you tell us a bit more about the deal you have with sanrio in regards to licensing? only of course, if you're allowed to speak on it 😅
i kinda got curious today since i discovered there's hkia merch 😮

[deep mesa]

Sorry this one slipped through the cracks!

TL;DR we knew that we needed some unique characters for the mechanics and plot of the game. We needed to have Nuls because we needed to have persistent interaction points at various stations even if main characters were off questing. Sanrio was initially quite hesitant -- they worried that the Nuls might become too popular and take attention away from the Sanrio characters, but ultimately understood the mechanic necessity.

With TOPHAT, we needed a character who could be anchored in the world of HKIA and who had a bit more flexibility in behavior (appearing, disappearing, amnesia, the good ol' game tropes).

And then later in the game our spirit friend was also an original, though obviously tightly tied to the appearance of the nuls.

All of the characters went through rigorous Sanrio approvals, and belong to Sanrio now.

[deep mesa]

We can't say a lot on this front! We work with Sanrio's digital team and license the IP for the game; everything that has Sanrio IP goes through a pretty rigorous approval process, but we've also developed a good amount of trust when it comes to mechanics and story. Merch also takes a very long time to create, so we've been seeing how that plays out!

[deep mesa]

We'd love to do an art book! Per the prior response, anything that is non-digital has extra hoops to jump through, but there's definitely ongoing discussions about what we can bring into the physical/merch world from the game 🙂

[cold dirge]

How interesting! I didn't know that the characters now belonged to Sanrio! Thanks for the response and information! ♥︎

[clear bone]

oh that's so interesting about the ownership of the characters 🤔 very different topic but did the nuls become named nuls as a play on the word and because they replace characters when they are gone?

[deep mesa]

I think there's deeper lore but I need to confab with the design folks who were here in the early days (Nuls were invented before my time)

[clear bone]

ohhhhh 😮 i am excited, for this long i thought there could be merch limitations due to sanrio ip restrictions but i am glad to see that it's a possibility!!

[pale jewel]

i know its quite a hassle for it to happen since it would take quite some time. i wanna ask about it since many other games/franchises had done their own artbook so im just interested on how to make it happen :)

[safe apex]

Can I ask about the stylization of Usahana's name? Sanrio is usually very serious about maintaining the stylization ofU*SA*HA*NAin all of their materials relating to her. I'm guessing in your conversations with Sanrio, you discussed that maintaining that constant stylization would be difficult in a mobile game? Or was it basically a non-issue with them?

[deep mesa]

For all marketing and one off usecases we do tend towards the USAHA*NA styling, but Sanrio acknowledged that when constantly talking to her and referencing her in game, it would be more legible to just use Usahana! You’ll see both from us, depending on context 🙂

[safe apex]

Thanks! I really appreciate you sharing these insights into the dynamic of working with a company which so closely guards its IP, they've been really interesting 🙂

[frigid lava]

oh, me too lol
it is tedious to write U*SA*HA*NA every single time, so i get it

tip: to maintain the asterisks, type \ (backslash) before it
i've done it a few times already on here
(it's like escape characters when writing code )

additionally, casing is easier to read and maintain as with Wish me mell, so that makes sense

[rain shore]

This is more relating to the discord but what is the difference between "announcements" and "heads up"? because i noticed after 1.8.1 announcements havent really been used by the team any more and it was always confusing to me anyway 😂

[deep mesa]

Announcements go out to far more folks, and are for more formal markety posts, whereas Heads Up is much more casual/quick notifications.

[frigid lava]

i forgot to reply to this message

but yeah as someone who is enthusiastic about drawing the characters, i would like to purchase the artbook too. i'd love to have a physical book that i can refer to while i draw

(and if we do get an artbook, maybe then chococat gets more space in an artbook for once, instead of being confined to a tiny square lolol)

[runic wharf]

out of curiosity, when the game is ported to switch is there a plan for what players will do if they don't have nintendo online? the only way to get previous event furniture is to trade beads w/ keroppi or trade with someone via multiplayer, which will both require nintendo online access. will keroppi's initial multiplayer quest be gated behind having nintendo online active?

[rotund stratus]

there are a lot of games that you don't need the online membership for (like fortntie, fall guys, etc)... so maybe it won't be necessary for HKIA! (one can only hope lolol)

[runic wharf]

oh i didnt know that!! brb getting fall guys on switch 🏃

[woeful drum]

This is more of a joke question but in South Park butters goes “I don’t play world of Warcraft,I play hello kitty island adventure “ I just wanna know if that inspired the name at all? Or was it just the friendship island thing?

[deep mesa]

Alright! Here's something that wound up on the cutting room floor that came out of one of the hackathons. We were trying to figure out a way to improve deco mode, but this particular hack wound up being too memory intensive to come to fruition.

[cosmic tree]

was waiting for a step where you pick up the easter poptart with everything on it to make a second floor or something. Also furniture stacking mini game when?

[reef orbit]

There’s a free stacking mini game in the haunted mansion lol every time you walk in it’s back on the floor ready for you to rearrange

[still charm]

It would be so cool to be able to move the carpets from some of the floorings or divide the flooring into sections for a kitchen bathroom bedroom effect

[round locust]

Ok, so reposting but in this channel. What font does the game use? I’m interested to see if I can use it and make something with it 😄

[frigid lava]

omnes bold for the in-game text

not sure about the font in the logo though

[round locust]

Thanks!

[ornate spade]

I’d love to know more about the aesthetic choices for each biome. For example the 70’s flower power vibes from City Town and the Spook Swamp which makes me think about New Orleans (even its soundtrack).
The game is WONDERFUL in this aspect, props to the teams for creating this immersive environment 🫶

I don’t care much about collecting things or the quests and stories. I’m all about the visuals, music, decorating cabins and buying cute clothes 😍

[fluid cliff]

Thank you for the kind words! One of our goals with the biomes (especially the more recent ones) is to create visuals that reflect the vibe, colors, and themes of characters that are inherent to the area. You mentioned City Town which is Usahana's city. We leaned heavily on Usahana's aesthetic for the inspiration for colors and motifs. For Merry Meadows, we tried to design a lush pastel world that would be fitting for Wish me mell. Cloud Island was a reflection of Kiki and Lala and their backstory of being born in the Land of the Stars. In each case we also do our best to bring a richness to these locations that feels authentic to the characters that they represent.
I hope that answers your question. Thank you again and very glad you are enjoying the game!

[ornate spade]

Tysm for your answer! 💖 By the way the first day I entered on Merry Meadows it was such a wonderful surprise! I was not expecting because I wasn't paying attention to the quests 🤣 I spent HOURS absorbing all the beautiful details. The lush pastel description is on point! 🩷

[fresh hedge]

With the completion of the quest “Incredibly Critterful” we receive recipes for a multitude of critter theme furniture… is this a potential spoiler/hint that we will be getting a revamp of the nature preserve soon as well as cabins for Keroppi’s visitors? 👀👀👀

[lethal tinsel]

Do the devs sleep, or is the team just that big? We got new quests, designs, user interface, flowers, visitors, etc back to back to back in a couple months.How do yall do it? Where are you getting all the extra hours in a day to work this much!

[harsh lynx]

It's probably a bunch of dev teams who work on specific areas and tasks

[raw jungle]

This is so beyond what I expected to hear! I was really thinking it might be AI, but the sound quality and voices were so good it made me question myself!

[raw jungle]

Big Challenges dance animations=😍😍😍😍😍

[raw jungle]

This might be my new favorite info about the game! 😍

[slow fossil]

Can anybody explain what is going on with "deformed body" bug in multiplayer? It's just so funny! My partner plays with me sometimes and it's our favourite thing when one of us gets all cursed. Why's it like that???

[jolly lion]

it’s just a known bug:) nothing bad❤️

[slow fossil]

but why does the bug happen? why do the bodies go into those particular shapes?

[deep mesa]

The avatar gets randomly assigned to the Aggretsuko rig, IIRC.

[slow fossil]

LOL okay i can see that! it's my favourite bug of all time

[cold dirge]

Any info if HKIA will be available in the xbox game pass? thanks ☺️

[deep mesa]

The only subscription service HKIA will ever be on is Apple Arcade.

[novel hill]

any idea if there ever will be the possibility of being able to transfer saves from different platforms? this is literally the only reason im debating getting the switch.

[deep mesa]

We have no ability to support cross-platform saves nor multiplayer.

[runic flower]

Why is the game called Hello Kitty Island Adventure and was the inspiration behind it? 🤔

[crystal slate]

Will the PC version be available through Steam?

[cosmic tree]

it's already up on steam

[crystal slate]

Cool thanks and will there be a Mac client in Steam soon?

[cold dirge]

When Sunblink has to introduce a new character or visitor and, I imagine, asks Sanrio for information, does Sanrio have contacts with the creators of various characters? For example, some characters don't have much information available online because they're less common. I’d be curious to know how Sunblink might bring in less common characters about whom there's very little information online. Do they somehow manage to speak with the creator of that character? I find this very curious and fascinating

[clear bone]

Regarding the new platform releases, will they release at a specific time or will it be at everyone's midnight? Also, when can we expect the steam pre-sale to begin 👀 ?

[deep mesa]

The only way to play on Mac is Apple Arcade, and that will never change.

[deep mesa]

There's a whole internal process at Sanrio that involves both our friends here in North America and Sanrio HQ in Japan! All of the information we want to key off of for the game has to get approval from both groups, and the Sanrio teams actually work together to get us a "latest and greatest" fact/character sheet. Often times, they're making those fresh and new just for us! We use that as the basis for all the stories / quests that they're involved in, and of course we've been honored to create some of the first 3D renditions of certain characters, which all have to go through Sanrio as well (@acoustic grotto If you want to add anything on that front, feel free!). Once we've created the storylines and quests we want to use in the game, those go back through Sanrio for final approval.

(Some information that might be available on the internet is also flagged as not accurate / not for use, especially things like character birthdays.)

[deep mesa]

TBD! We'll share more as we have it!

[cold dirge]

WOW! It’s amazing the fact that sometimes they're making those fresh and new just for you! And it’s incredible all the work that there’s behind, so amazing! thanks for answering

[modest yacht]

any plans on a creator event for when the game launches?

[clear bone]

is a pc physical release a possibility 🥹 ? ik ik it hasn't been mentioned but is that something that could happen in the future?

[torpid oriole]

I have a question about the release for the Nintendo switch

[open jay]

Unfortunately we currently do not have plans for this

[verbal chasm]

Hi Devs! Are we only getting digital versions of the game or will there be physical copies (not just PC, but primarily the switch and PlayStation)

[open jay]

Hi! Thanks for your question, check out our message here #announcements message

[agile helm]

Would it be illegal/copyright or something if in HKIA, there were little South Park references? Moreso in clothing, have clothings that come in the colours that the main south park characters wear and accessories too? Im sorry i dont know how collaborations with other games/media would work^^"

[final saddle]

Are there other games in development from the team?

[dark anchor]

what does the chocolate coin say? is it an H for hello kitty? or is it a skull or smth?

[viscid iron]

Hello!!! I was wondering since the switch 2 was just announced today with backwards compatibility if Hello Kitty adventure island will work the same on that platform and if you can move save data from switch to the switch 2. I’m just trying to figure out if I’m buying for switch or pc but switch 2 will be a factor in that since I will be upgrading my switch to the switch 2.

[acoustic linden]

I’m also curious about this. I know Sunblink has a lot on their plate with the console versions coming out, but I’d love to see them put out other games. (As long as they aren’t spread too thin, of course 😁)

[stark cargo]

I think ports are done by other game dev studios.

[strong galleon]

@deep mesa Quick question. I see that for multiplayer you can only play with one other friend. Is there a possibility in the future of this being expanded to a total of 4 players (3 friends) to play the game with?

[strong galleon]

Also my 2nd question is for the Japanese version of the game will there be an option to add furigana?

[storm bough]

We have not gotten our hands on the Switch 2 so we're not sure how it'll work, but we're very excited about backwards compatibility!

[open jay]

Currently, no! Though I can see it being helpful for friends learning Japanese or otherwise!

We do support a vast range of languages in general though such as: Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Traditional Chinese

[strong galleon]

Yes it would be really helpful if there was some setting in Japanese where we can have the furigana turned on/off. Having the ability to turn it on would really help Japanese learners like myself a lot! 😻

[hardy aurora]

Will there be a seperate Deluxe Pack for those who have pre-ordered/purchased the standard edition first after it's PC/Console release?

[balmy bison]

hi devs, this may be spoilers for some new players but i had a question i wanted answered if you can! ||what was the inspiration for making big challenges such an important character/plot point in the game? my boyfriend really loves him and he wasn't very widely known until somewhat recently- i actually only knew of him from my bf mentioning a somewhat viral tumblr post despite sanrio being a huge interest of mine! i just would like to know how you all chose/decided on him for such an important role to the story! I've come to love him a whole lot due to my bf's interest in him, so I'd really like to know the story behind that if possible^^ and i'm sure i'll come to love him even more through playing this game (i already have lol)! i also think its really cute he only speaks in 'gao's 🥹|| sorry if that's already been answered and ty for your time ❤️

[clear bone]

oooohhh i’m kinda curious for the answer on this one 👀

[broken mountain]

@balmy bison @clear bone This may have been previously answered. ||Members of the team were fans before working on the game. For more information, see this post: #hkia-dev-and-design message ||

[clear bone]

oooooohhh ty meeve!

[plush venture]

Hello Devs! I just wanted to hop in here to say Thank You for incorporating a distinctive sound to signal weather events. This was a bit of feedback I posted a while back and I heard it for the first time today. It is really awesome to see suggestions from the community make it into the game.

[deep mesa]

||In addition to the prior post, I'll say that we wanted to have a nod to the 'hardcore fans' of Sanrio -- the folks who might know and appreciate the deep lore around Big Challenges. Plus, he was so cute, and his storyline of being "abandoned" was just too good not to use for the game. We're also all a big fan of humor, and having a 'joke' character as the final culmination of the first story arc made a bunch of us happy. Now we've got little 3D-printed Big Challenges all around the office, Big Challenge studio hoodies, etc, so the love for him is Very Strong at Sunblink!||

[alpine quail]

what inspired the devs to add mimmy

[storm bough]

The main cast of HKIA are Sanrio’s flagship characters and their friends and family appear as visitors. Since Mimmy is Hello Kitty’s twin sister, we of course had to include her!

[weary swallow]

Hello. In the game's launch, the Big Challenge rescue was the final mission ? Because I noticed that the main campaign continues but with a totally different stroy arc.
And, if yes, why the game does not show a credits or something like that ?

[tough abyss]

this has probably already been answered but what inspired the creation of tophat?

[hollow wolf]

This is more out of curiosity but what made y’all decide to make the minecart ride in crystal caves only one room for Nintendo switch?

I remember when I played the apple version for a bit there was a bunch of rooms.

Don’t get me wrong, I actually like having only one room because having to look up the guide every time I wanted to get fizzy crystals when I was on apple was a pain and I began to dread it lol

[deep mesa]

It's actually like this on all platforms now! We updated it because the crystal caves were almost universally loathed / super confusing. Between the minimap and camera orientations changing and the multitude of entrances/exists, even the folks who designed it had a hard time keeping it straight, not to mention players. We'd been wanting to redo it basically since launch, and the cross platform launch gave us a chance to make it better for everyone. The hope is that the minecart experience is still fun, but way shorter, less confusing, and a bit more action-packed since all the fizzy-ore was put into a single space.

[hollow wolf]

Oh yay! I would’ve felt bad if only switch/pc users were able to have the updated version! It is definitely more enjoyable and not as stressful to do since you don’t have to pull up a guide every time you want to get fizzy crystals.

There is already so much to do in the game, guides to pull up, and things to memorize so I am really grateful you guys decided to make the mine cart ride more enjoyable! The new version definitely adds value and doesn’t detract any!

[warm crypt]

Hi devs, I just wanted to say how much I appreciate the work you put into the sound design 💜 I love the details, such as echoing SFX in the caves and quieter ones underwater 💜

[cosmic willow]

Hi hi! This message is coming from a game art student (currently in my third year) and have some in depth questions! Is the game made in unity or an in house engine? If so it looks really really great! Ive played so so many cozy games and have to say that this is by far the most impressive and in depth game even though most people will just look at it as a 'cute game'. The mechanics are incredibly fun, especially the bubble wand! I like that it works on land too(even though it just makes bubbles), and would be so fun to experiment with that i can imagine! I was also wondering art wise, if you can share anything about the process from concept to game ready prop or character? I read above that you get the turnarounds from sanrio themselves but is it maya-zbrush-substance or a different pipeline? I hope my questions arent too intrusive I'm honestly just really curious about the process as I also make games and want to take something away from games that I love. One last thing! Do you have any advice on working on a 'cozy' game and something to completely stay away from? Thank you again - even though its more art/tech art related and not entirely dev its still okay to ask here

[autumn heron]

Hi beau! I'm currently one of the Environment Artists on the game so I'd be happy to give a brief overview from my perspective of prop/environment creation! I'll generally get a Sanrio approved piece of art from one of our concept artists. I personally use Maya though I know there's a member or two on our team that utilizes Blender. Occasionally I use Zbrush but with our art style being simple and clean I generally stick to a low to highpoly workflow in Maya. After that I use Substance Painter for the textures though we also utilize Designer for tiling materials utilized throughout the game. Hope that helps!

[zinc scaffold]

Is the game made in unity or an in house engine?
We do indeed use Unity! However, our engineering team has made a plethora of in-house tools that make everyone's jobs easier, so its not 100% the same as just opening a new project and tinkering around!

[dim valve]

Just wanted to drop in and say tysm for all the launch party gifts!!!

[short wharf]

Something I've always wondered as a Game Dev Hobbyist, how did the team go about deciding to work in Unity?

Was it previous experience with the engine itself, or something that Unity brought to the table for HKIA that you wanted to take advantage of?

[zinc scaffold]

Experience was definitely a factor; a good chunk of the Sunblink team actually worked together at Backflip (best known for Dragonvale 👀 ), and Unity was the engine of choice for Backflip.

[short wharf]

I feel like that's usually the answer across most Dev Enviornments. Thanks for taking the time to answer!

[median goblet]

I just wanna say thank you for all the little changes and updates y’all have added in to enhance the gameplay. I played on Apple Arcade from launch up until maybe mid-way through the first round of Merry Meadows implementation (basically up until Apple changed their price to 9.99) and one of my biggest worries with the Switch version was having to redo everything again and it feeling stale. But all the changes y’all made really made it more exciting and even though I knew generally what to expect it was really cool to see the changes. And it was really cool to see how the new stuff that what implemented on mobile as we all suggested things and the team made more updates worked into gameplay from the beginning. Although I did have a mini heart attack when I revived the Oasis and couldn’t find the Sakura blossoms anywhere. Love that they were moved to the Meadows. So just thanks again for all the hard work y’all put into the game and the changes and updates and all the new stuff ❤️

[warm crypt]

Hey devs, who told you to make Icy Peak soundtrack such a banger 😭 Literally made me cry as I was progressing the quest 🥹💜🫂

[crisp flower]

Well I'll add praise then. I have been having a great time with this game!

[magic lotus]

Hello! I wanted to know about the language in hello kitty island adventure as it is written!

I saw a sign and I am SURE this is a translatable language. I suspect the language in "Hello kitty: Super style!" Is translatable as well?? But maybe a different language more based on Japanese?

EVIDENCE

[magic lotus]

Side note:

Why is BIG CHALLENGES called "Big Challenges" and not "BIG CHALLENGES"

[deep mesa]

I have a background in linguistics, so this was mostly just a fun project I did during a hackathon. It was based entirely on the glyphs that our concept artist had come up with early on, though; I just went through and standardized it into a font, which we can now use throughout the game 🙂

[deep mesa]

This is an EXCELLENT question; only Sanrio Japan knows the answer 🤔

[magic lotus]

Wait, was he not called BIG CHALLENGES before this game? 0_0

My life is a lie

And the language thing is awesome I have gone on a feral squeeing spree to my friends about recognising consistent letters and how IT MUST BE A LANGUAGE THEY PAID ATTENTION TO

And I was right!!

And joined the decoding thread with much delight.

LOVE this detail. And thanks for taking time to reply to me!!!

[serene mist]

I just wanted to say thank you devs for all of your hard work and I hope for nothing but success and continued support for giving us such a great and well polished game. You are appreciated and we are enjoying your work and having fun with our sanrio friends! 🩷

[jovial onyx]

Are we sure BIG CHALLENGES name is in all caps normally? Or just in that one picture? If it is in all caps, could just be a mistake, like how they wrote Tuxedosam's name as Tuxedo Sam for a while

[magic lotus]

That one picture was the only thing that existed of him for nearly 40 years if I remember right 🙂

This game is the first thing with him in since the 70s which was the all caps picture.

Besides, a name like BIG CHALLENGES should perhaps be in all caps in my humble opinion haha ^^

I'll ask sanrio 🙂

[worldly shale]

Sorry if this has already been asked! I was wondering how much kinda sway Sanrio had over the game? Like I've seen that they approve art and stuff but do they generally leave you to do what you think is best when it comes to game mechanics, story lines ect?

Sorry if I haven't worded that very well!

[reef shard]

Would love to learn too. I love learning about creative processes 🙏💖

If I had to speculate, as someone in a similar industry (toy Design/game industry), I'd guess something like sanrio wanted a cozy game like animal crossing and had guidelines, but wanted the experts opinions on how to make the best game.

Licensing Clients usually have a project brief that studios pitch for, to start. Studios are allowed to be creative, and that's partially why they hire you & don't do it in house.
That being said, some clients can be very specific with what they want in any aspect of the game.

For example, maybe some requirements would be that you must make friends with this list of all-time most popular characters. Or you must have a way to introduce / cross-sell minor characters.

I'm sure they need to check and approve every change that is thought of, at the least. That's to be expected, brands are very protective of their characters which is why they become and maintain such success!

[uneven dust]

thank you devs for being so kind and responsive! thanks for your part in such a fun game!

[deep mesa]

We take the lead on mechanics, storylines, and upcoming roadmap (features, areas, characters, visitors). We try to tie in to existing Sanrio marketing moments -- like Month of Meh, or Hello Kitty's 50th --- but for the most part Sanrio's approval is more tactical, on character nuance and design, while Sunblink carries more of the overall vision for the game, if that makes sense!

[open hearth]

If it's not allowed to be answered, my apologies, but I am curious about a few things. Will there be an Android port, or do you have contractual obligations with Apple over Apple Arcade exclusivity? When porting HKIA, was the Steam Deck compatibility important (works flawlessly btw)? How complex was the porting process from iOS/MacOS to PC and Switch? Has the Steam and Switch port been a success so far?

[burnt violet]

hello game devs, idk how to make this happen, but my fiancé, who is often in the room when I play HKIA, wanted me to make sure that Phill Boucher is aware of how much his soundtrack is incredible to people who are not even playing the game. Sometimes I’ll be doing a special quest and my fiancé will say, “are you in a new area? I haven’t heard this music before” like my fiancé is so serious about this I think he is Phill Boucher’s biggest fan ever

[austere oyster]

@burnt violet So glad you're enjoying the music! I'll pass this along to Phill and the rest of our team. And there's more to come, too!

[worldly shale]

This is so interesting!! Thank you for taking the time to answer!

[wanton plaza]

where did the title name come from? did you really borrow the quote from television??

[hoary tusk]

I was just curious, but when do you think Steam and Switch versions of the game will be caught up with the Apple Arcade version? :<

[gleaming oracle]

i have this question as well ! specially because i reallyyyy love retsuko and her friends! is there any update in store regarding for example imagination island and usahana? and also any update on when gori, fenneko (please give us fenneko for steam !!! 😭) and haida? and do you plan to add any other visitors, specially for badtz-maru that have none? and what about washimi? i found it strange that only gori got added, since washimi and gori are like a duo, and i would really love to see washimi, ton shikabane, anai, tsunoda, otmgirls and retsukos parents in hkia, along with a bunch of other visitors as well! the yoga instructor would've been really funny as well, but i know that this is a lot to add and most of these won't be added anyway, but i would be so so so happy since i already love this game so much already, that i'm just putting the idea out there 😭

[sudden kraken]

Obsessed with this game. I’m definitely going to need DLC or updates for the City they have on Apple Arcade. Take my $$$

[zinc scaffold]

Once we have news to share on City Town coming to Switch/Steam, we'll let you all know! We are excited to get that content to you all but don't have any official news about it just yet!

[simple solar]

hello developers i appreciate you guys so much i love how passionate you are abt the game, will it be coming to ps5 anytime soon?

[cursive rock]

Hi! I'm a switch player who's been really enjoying the game and am so thankful to all the Devs for putting so much work into it! I was just wondering, I bought the standard edition but I'm having so much fun playing that id really like to upgrade to the deluxe version, and I was just wondering if an upgrade would come to the eshop without having to buy the whole deluxe bundle? 🩷

[barren furnace]

hi team !!
first, id just like to say, i cant stress enough how much it means that you try so hard to minimize FOMO in this game
like, seriously
i have chronic fatigue syndrome, which sometimes prevents me from even getting up out of bed for the day
there are so many games that ive dropped or just had so much anxiety around playing because of FOMO
thank you

onto my question
i was curious !! why are some fish / critters only available in the apple arcade version even though their respective regions are out on consoles? :0

[deep mesa]

We are allowed to say exactly this:

Hello Kitty Island Adventure is the perfect name for a game about adventuring on an island with Hello Kitty. We are in no way affiliated with South Park.

[deep mesa]

You should be able to do this now -- the upgrade option was delayed coming to Nintendo Europe but everyone should have access now.

[deep mesa]

Switch/PC currently have the content on Arcade up to 1.9. Anything that was released on Arcade after that isn't yet on Switch/PC, even if the region/area it's in is available.

Generally, we won't be answering questions about long-term roadmap (eg: when/what updates are coming) in this chat. We welcome questions on the game development process!

[gleaming flame]

This might be a silly question, but how did you guys choose which characters were put into this game? Were they chosen by Sanrio themselves? There are some really underrated characters in HKIA, it makes me wonder if Sanrio wants them to be more popular or if the dev team just has amazing taste lol

[rough plinth]

This is relatable, although I don't know if I have this condition. I have ADHD and suspected to have ASD as well by my doctor (need to get an assessment done for it) and because of how life is and my career, I'm chronically burnt out, depressed and super anxious. Don't want to leave my home. If you ever get money though, I recommend a steam deck. It helps me for those times where I just don't want to get out of bed. (Sorry if I'm assuming that you don't have one or is really that you don't have the energy to play).

[deep mesa]

It's a mix of characters Sanrio wanted to feature, characters that were possible for us to support, and characters that were popular with fans (we pay a lot of attention to the annual character rankings, for instance)

[cosmic bear]

I know this game was originally on the phone, but did y'all hope to bring this game to different platforms when the game first came out? I guess for each version, y'all also had to make a brand new game too right? Keep up the good work and thanks!

[cursive otter]

Not sure if this really falls under game development considering it's more on the music side of things, but does anyone know what Phil Boucher uses to compose? The music is REALLY good.

[peak bloom]

He has a contact forum on his website im sure you could ask him directly through

[deep mesa]

We planned from the beginning that the game should be more or less platform agnostic, given the broad range of devices you can play Apple Arcade on, and a desire to bring it to even more after. We use Unity, so it's definitely not like starting from scratch for each platform, but they do all have their own non-trivial overhead and nuance.

[cosmic bear]

Thank you!

[upper python]

This isn't much of a question but I wanted to thank you guys for putting my favorite Sanrio character, Wish Me Mell, in the game 🥹 I understand she's a difficult one to befriend, but I'm so happy she's getting the recognition she deserves!

[soft hearth]

im curious about the biomes, was there some kind of study to portray them minimaly accurate geographicly speaking? when you create these kind of things based on something you always have to study them a little bit so im curious about the creative process of the biomes specifically! (also the creatures chosen to live in the biome and which animals they are based of)

[hard plume]

Are there any other planned characters? I’m hoping for Kogimyun

[vagrant lake]

During testing, have any extremely weird glitches or fully unexpected but funny effects ever happened? If so, what was a memorable one?

[deep mesa]

From Phill! “Hi! Thanks so much for your question. I compose in Cubase and enjoy spending a lot of time recording myself playing various instruments in my studio. I’ll usually record some other musicians as well, either at my place or remotely, depending on what the music needs. Hope that answers your question!”

[deep mesa]

There was awhile when an animation glitch caused characters to go into Aggretsuko's T-Pose, which looks sort of a gunslinger position, so there were a ton of office memes about that. There was also a time when Badtz-maru would spontaneously grow to fill the whole screen and his hair was stretched way, way out. So lots of hilarious screenshots of that, too.

One of the weirdest ones was when the dye station UI would close out but it would still be "listening" to inputs and passing them along to the avatar, so every time you moved/switched directions, it would spam what you were wearing with different colors, basically turning you into a walking glitch rainbow.

[slate vessel]

not directly game related, but are either of the two discord bots open source?

[jolly lion]

yes 👍🏼 its best to use it in #bot-commands

[slate vessel]

thanks, i didn't see that channel at all!

[deep mesa]

HKIA Bot is just Mee6; TOPHAT we rolled ourselves

[slate vessel]

any repo for it or nah?

[deep mesa]

Nope; it's pretty minimal and has near-zero support 😅 Engineers gotta focus on the game

[slate vessel]

The latter point is part of why i ask 🙂 I like to poke through bots in servers im in sometimes out of pure curiosity, sometimes look at reported issues and consider taking one up

If any of the dev want extra hands with anything that's acceptable to be public, some sort of way to open up community contribution would be rad (and i'd love to know if that ever happens, i may poke at things)

[sleek jasper]

Are there any plans for an official guide? I know there will be updates, a binder would be fantastic

[median goblet]

Are y’all hiring? Lol but like are you?

[night wave]

Not a question. Just thank you for your effort for making this a fun game!

[inland glacier]

Hi, this game is such a comfort to me! I'm chronically ill so having something cute to do every day is really helpful

My question is what inspiration did you take from other games? Did you look at similar games while making HKIA and go yeah this works in those games or no this doesn't work in those games?

[deep mesa]

Nope! It would get out of date too quickly to be worth it. We've pondered an artbook, though!

[deep mesa]

We'll post on our socials when we are! We'll likely have a few contract engineering and technical design postings in the next week or two.

[deep mesa]

It's impossible NOT to take inspiration from other games! We loved the open world adventure aspect of games like Breath of the Wild or Shadow of the Colossus, the charming customization in games like Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley, the crafting and cooking micro mechanics in a whole variety of other titles, the ambient social joy of Sky, the impressive live service cadence of Genshin Impact. We have a ton of love for other cozy (and some not so cozy) titles and are always playing and looking for innovations.

[fossil condor]

(just wanted to say i would LOVE to see an artbook/development art in general. i love seeing how designs evolve)

[twilit patio]

I wanred to say that as a long time sky player, I really think you've hit the note on the social joy! I have such a wonderful time with my friends in this game <3

[true kiln]

will there ever be a Steam version but for Mac users?

[broken mountain]

There are no plans to make a version for Mac outside of Apple Arcade. https://discordapp.com/channels/1105575633943277629/1174000359660863569/1324418001579278467

[odd lynx]

not a question but yall rock im obsessed with this game

[outer heart]

Hi, i just want to say thank you for making this game i love it

For my question what was the hardest part or challenge when you guys were developing this game?

[leaden oracle]

Hey, obsessed with this game I’ve somehow clocked 90 hours playtime whilst holding up a full time job since switch release which is kinda mad! I was just scrolling through the Sanrio character rankings and was curious if we will ever see the more humanoid looking characters in the game or if you think they would like kinda weird with the cute animal aesthetic?

[severe crown]

the LittleTwinStars are in the game and imo they match the cute aesthetic perfectly! so I think there's totally a chance for more humanoid characters to be added! if you have any suggestions, you can put them in https://discord.com/channels/1105575633943277629/1137473638266839091 :)

[weak narwhal]

The Big Challenges story of how he ended up in the game was such a treat, I’m hoping he’ll make it into 2025’s Sanrio character rankings. Are there any other Sanrio characters that the Sunblink team would like to revive? I was particularly fond of PickeBicke and Pippo the pig.

[tranquil canyon]

Hi! Inconsequential question but what food is the Yummy Ottoman meant to represent?

[open jay]

Super fun and great question! I asked, and it was inspired by a tuna maki roll 🍣

Yummy Ottoman? Down the hatch..

[hardy reef]

Where is Sunblink based out of? Sanrio is Japanese, obvi, but are you guys in a different country?

[deep mesa]

We're headquartered in Boulder, Colorado in the US

[hardy reef]

Ah, thanks.
At least y'all are a blue state 💙

(I'm Canadian, so there are Feelings ™️ 🤣)

[storm bough]

Everyone will have a diff answer, but as the producer on the team, the hardest part is prioritization. Our backlog is a bottomless pit of new ideas and improvements, but there are limits to people/time.

[outer heart]

Interesting thanks for answering my question Niko keep up the good work

[gritty fox]

I've been watching a lot of Super Cute Adventures and it's obvious where some of the characterization evolved from in that one! Did any of you refer to any other Sanrio works too? For those who weren't inspired by their portrayals in Super Cute Adventures, how did you decide on their characterization?

[acoustic girder]

Hello dear Sunblink team! I would like to leave you a lovely message congratulating you on the beautiful story of Big Challenges, it became my favorite Sanrio character and I would like that hopefully in the future has more stories with him on the island. I think the message of Big Challenges is beautiful, as are its gifts, because it teaches us that despite life's Little and Big Challenges, friendship and with ourselves, with love, kindness, and courage, can overcome anything. I love Big Challenges so much. I hope Sanrio releases a plush toy of him soon and there are more quests with him in future. Thank you for reading✨💚

[simple mason]

The question just came up among a few (non game) developer friends whether code reviews are common in game development. Would love to hear some insights

[zenith tinsel]

Having worked in gamedev, I tend to notice some design decisions more often, even some that was not even teached to me.

The design of HKIA definitely feels like some secret magic, in ways that it's difficult to notice what is even happening, let alone putting it into words.

I'm definitely not the target audience for this game (I see some functional elements and the artstyle being designed as cutesy/kid-oriented), but that's not the full story.
I'm seeing that there are a lot of small "gamedev building blocks" that make it, so that the game can still be enjoyed by all ages, as long as they have an affinity for those activities (most quests and daily tasks seem to fall into this category).

However, I do find the use of the real time mechanic quite genius.
People time travel not just to cheat, but also due to accessibility issues (not wanting to only play the game at night when everything is closed in-game, or even only having a short play time per day, or even per week, time-bound illness, etc.).
HKIA solves this issue in an amazing way.
Having in-game day-night cycle is a "galaxy brain" move, so you can get time-bound things without all the hassles of being bound to real time, and I extremely appreciate that. Not only that, the time day and night takes seems to be skewed (whether it actually is or not, I did not measure it, as the brain tends to perceive things differently from how they actually are), so it balances those people who want no day-night cycle, with those who want to bug-collect at night, so it doesn't feel too long or too short, and I appreciate that as well.
Some may not agree with me on this one though (myself partially included), but I also appreciate the use of real time, for a different reason: I almost didn't notice it, but the game slowly eases you into continuing with your day. Intentional or not (considering other design decisions I have observed, I highly doubt this would be much accidental), but it has worked on me, so I assume this should work on children as well.
Once there is a low treshold of things to do (you have already gifted, done tasks, collected some bugs, collected resources around the island, etc.), something will click in your head to go "okay, seems like I'm done for today, I feel more relaxed now, let me go something productive, like eating, working, showering, sleeping, etc.", and close the game at your own volition.

So yeah, even though I can't work anymore, I appreciate the eye-opening experience, that real-time mechanics can be used well, but it's also quite difficult, and requires careful planning.

(note to moderators: this is technically feedback as well, but I also want to hear others' opinion, if this is a general gamedev discussion channel)

[zenith tinsel]

I worked in a small (~5-15 people) company, and all of our projects had code reviews. When stranded for time, it's possible that only very few affected people would be present, as opposed to the entire "sub-team", and only call in more people when necessary, but we always had them.
Even though sometimes they were ruthless, it's a great learning experience for everyone (assuming nobody's feelings got hurt, which happened once or twice, sadly), and can sometimes even find better ways to structure the code and such, so this is a really constructive, and - thus I think - important experience that should be held every week or two.

[strong sphinx]

My spouse is trying to learn the main theme by ear on piano. Is there any sheet music available or other useful resource for her?

[upbeat crest]

I have no idea where to ask this question, but are there plans to give other characters (eg. Retsuko and Pochacco) mermaid outfits?

[dusty notch]

I love the music for this game so much! I literally put on the music as I was taking a walk today. Would love to hear about the main considerations/inspiration for the music?

[open jay]

Great question, currently, we only have this Main Theme (Give and Gather) video you can check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRkg2e8QwaY

Thanks for the love! 🎵

[storm bough]

It is in our infinitely expanding backlog 😅

[fierce basin]

Could I ask if the game devs see the posts in the bugs channel?

[slate solstice]

With the release of switch 2, will hkia get an upgraded version? Also is there any plans to update the game for switch to make it cross device?

[deep mesa]

Bugs are posted to our slack from the Discord.

[deep mesa]

We don't answer roadmap questions in this channel, sorry! When we have announcements to make we'll make them in #heads-up or #announcements

[fierce basin]

Sorry i have no idea what slack is. I will just go ahead with emailing information regarding the issue.

[broken mountain]

Slack is a communication and project management tool. Sunblink's support regularly goes through the bugs channels, but emailing them also works and is recommended for save-specific issues (like an item going missing or loss of save files).

[rain geyser]

Dearest Devs, the newest update is incredible and I am beyond appreciative, tysm!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[open jay]

Happy to hear you're enjoying Spide!

[celest aspen]

Hi Devs and HKIA team, I just want to say thank you so much for the upcoming updates for the Switch, and the effort that you all are putting in this game. It has become my true relaxation place, and it's noticeable how much love was put into every update and feature added to the game. I stopped playing on Apple Arcade to play on the Switch, and seeing the upcoming updates brings me so much joy, because I will be able to have some friends to more of my favorite characters. You are all so amazing, and created a safe haven for a lot of people even though you might not even notice. I'll remain ever grateful for your efforts. Much love, and may the light provide. 💖

[alpine flicker]

Hello HKIA Dev. I found this game the beginning of this year in February. Currently on Apple Arcade, but planning to also buy the PlayStation version once it releases. Love the game much more than I thought I would. I can’t wait for future updates and content. I do hope a future update would let us customize the outside of the island homes and other shops, like we can Imagination Cafe.

[mortal lintel]

Not a question- just some love. I just noticed that the little characters feet shuffling when they are in the cloud transport going from island to island like a flintstone car. It’s adorable as heck!! I love that little detail! ❤️

[soft kindle]

I was wondering if there is any way I could get the full list of resources with the daily amounts, platform availability, and rarity in a csv file? If not I can work to put it together myself. I’ve just been brainstorming a way to make it easier to know fair trades based off this data. Also does the furniture that shows in the shop each day have spawn likelihood or how is that determined? I’m trying to think on how to know fair trade for those. Ideally I’d love to create a little applet that takes this into account that one could select what they want and quantity along with the resources they are wanting to trade and it would send back the fair trade amounts. Any help is appreciated.

[deep mesa]

The economy of the game is actually tuned to intentionally be 'needy' of different resources over time. What's easy to get and not required at one moment might suddenly become critical later and in high demand as players unlock new quests -- or even from update to update as new features appear (just look at the saga of Raindrops, for instance). HKIA's live service model makes it very different than some other cozy games that are static, so things that worked and were helpful for those games might not work for HKIA. For these reasons (amongst others), any time a pricing guide has surfaced, it's generated a good amount of drama and criticism -- just something to be cautious of in your endeavors!

[civic dragon]

So... I've been really curious. What do spinips theoretically taste like?

[low trellis]

well theyre a vegetable according to the recipes, i always imagined it was something like dragonfruit (even though its a fruit) because of the spikes on the outside

or some sort of radish?

[stoic temple]

Based on the name and shape, I'd guess something like a turnip. Or maybe a cross between spinach and turnip.

[hollow wolf]

Thank you to all the dev group for the switch update. Bless

[onyx dagger]

I just wanted to say how much us Switch players appreciate you pushing the update through early once you got an approval. You guys and gals are so amazing and we appreciate you all and your dedication to this amazing game.

[low trellis]

Hello! This is a question related to the intern applications- how long are they open for?

[deep mesa]

At least over the weekend! One of our core Sunblink team members had to go on an unexpected leave, so we had to whip these up quick and are also hoping to start more or less ASAP.

[deep mesa]

Crisp, refreshing, but with a hearty starchiness underlying them. Tons of fiber and iron. YUM.

[wintry vessel]

hey idk if this is the right channel, but does anyone know if an xbox port for this game is possible?

[tame surge]

I've been wondering why all of Wish Me Mell's friends have such short descriptions compared to the other visitors Did Sanrio put some kind of restriction on describing her friends? (Not feedback just curious!)

[deep mesa]

Everything related to the characters' official bios is 100% Sanrio. Often times, their focus has been on developing the characters visually, while keeping the personality mainly conveyed through images/illustration. For the game, Sanrio has actually had to flesh out characters much more than they were before, and this takes a lot of time. Sometimes, Sanrio has the time, and sometimes, they don't. In the case of Wish me mell, her friends aren't very well known, and I got the impression that perhaps updates were in progress, so the bios in game are the only things that were approved.

[inland fern]

Thank you devs so much for hitting all the perfect notes of what daily cutecore slice of life games have been trying to achieve for decades, and doing it with official Sanrio characters! Is there anything that people like me who aren't proficient in game development or programming can do to support you guys catching up on your to-do list such as suggested dialogue submissions based on previous known canon from the expanded Sanrio universe (games, shows, movies, etc.), or is what needs to be done limited to the hard coding side of things?

[zinc scaffold]

The best support is to just keep playing and loving the game! Your bugs and feedback do wonders! So keep playing, keep telling us what you like (and what you don't!), report any bugs you find, and just have a good time!

[drifting void]

Hello! Is there gonna be a Switch 2 enhancement?

[elder jetty]

i have a question, did South Park's gaming inspired episode have anything to do with the creation of HKIA? always have been curious

[hollow wolf]

Not really a question but a thank you! My daughter and I started playing this together when it came out on Apple Arcade and she wasn't able to read yet. Now she loves showing off her reading skills while playing new challenges and learning to read new words. Thank you, Sunblink team for this wonderful game ❤️

[severe crown]

this is from an older interview!

[merry ruin]

Howdy, my girlfriend has been playing and loving this game on the steam deck and as she's been playing I keep hearing these sound effects that sound SO familiar but I just cant place it. Im a dev myself and I assume maybe you guys used a sound effect Library that just so happens to be the same one from some game I've played a lot, if that's the case what sound effect Library did you use for I think its the crafting sound effect and maybe a quest sound?

Any help would be very appreciated because everyone time i hear it it just sounds so familiar like its on the tip* of my tongue and im going insane

[versed bronze]

Just some love for the devs. I really love how beginner-friendly and supportive the game aids are, and the fact that there's so much to do...You can always switch things up if you get tired of one focus. You guys are awesome 🎉

[elder jetty]

Hello. Just wanted to say well done to the devs on the new content.

[night magnet]

Hello! I wanted to ask a question here before even making a feedback thread, but if it would be better to make a thread please do let me know! I was wondering if it would be possible game dev wise to customize the color of wallpapers and floors, like furniture? If not, what makes it challenging/impossible to do so? Thank you for your time, constant efforts and amazing work ❤️ Edit: Also, what goes behind choosing which furniture is or isn't customizable? Is it the complexity of the item? Or is there more than one factor?

[storm radish]

Not really game dev, but is it possible Sanrio will ever be interested in making merch for characters introduced in HKIA, i.e. TOPHAT and Island Spirit?

p.s. bless y'all for making this game I've been in love with it since february and seeing TOPHAT gets me through the day Y'all hit it out of the park with this game

[flint badge]

Hello!! Thank you Game Devs for all of your hard work that you guys put into making this game!!! When I first saw it that this was coming out and I was so excited, and now I’m playing I absolutely adore it even more! My boyfriend absolutely fell in love with Big Challenges and I absolutely love the story that is being told with him, TopHat and the Island Spirit. You guys are absolutely amazing and I can’t wait to see what more you folks do!! :D

I do have one question and that is will be seeing more outfits for the characters in the future and my the island guest as well?
As I absolutely adore dressing them up in different outfits.

[deep mesa]

Customizability of furniture usually comes down to time and brand restrictions. Character furniture is much harder to customize because every combination has to be specific and approved.

For other furniture, we try our best to do customization when time allows. We have a limited amount of art bandwidth, and it really just comes down to how intense the other environment/asset needs are!

[deep mesa]

We've been having discussions around merch - there's a lot of factors I never even knew about that go into it, so it's a learning process for us certainly. I can't talk much about specifics, but it's something we're pushing for 🙂

[deep mesa]

I'm so glad you've been enjoying the game! Most types of content that are currently in the game are ones we hope to continue adding - clothing for characters, furniture sets for characters, bestie quests and visitors quests - always more on the horizon!

[storm radish]

OH MY GOODNESS!!! Yay!!

TOPHAT and Island Spirit will be real and rapidly approaching in 5 months (jk)

[night magnet]

Oh sorry I think I wasn’t clear about the first part of my question! I was asking about the wallpapers and floors being non customizable compared to the furniture that are! Thank you for answering my question ❤️

[deep mesa]

Floor and wallpaper customization is on the roadmap 🙂

[night magnet]

Oh okay, that answers the question whether or not it’s possible!! Thank you so much again ❤️

[crimson bolt]

hi devs, i am not sure if you are associated with the wiki (hellokittyislandadventure.wiki.gg) but would it be possible to make it multi-language?
(if you are not associated, may be give/release the language files? or give the devs of the wiki the language files?)

i just ask, because i often have the problem, that people ask what keropi item i have and i only know the name of it in my own language and i have to guess what it might be in english, which is difficult often🙈
(also filtering by name/event-name (instead of just item) would be nice too)

[storm bough]

Sorry, the wiki is run by other community members, not Sunblink

[crimson bolt]

okay, although for adding multi-language support to the wiki they would still need the data first.

[rare pike]

When will it be released for Android?

[vale rune]

So a question:
why is there currently no character ears for dogs that correspond with Cinnamoroll or Pompompurin or Poccacco?

[deep mesa]

We are not releasing on Android.

[deep mesa]

Sanrio doesn’t want players to be able to recreate their characters as avatars.

[teal nymph]

Are clothes scaled individually or according to a specific avatar size?

[merry ruin]

I am bumping this question because it still plagues me

[vale rune]

Aww that sucks! Oh well, headcanons and art will let me live out my vicarious headcanon about my avatar! I also can photoshop things lol.

[deep mesa]

Per body type (the base three are small, tall, and chunky — available for all avatars — then several Sanrio characters have unique body types that require custom versions, like Tuxedosam or Big Challenges)

[teal nymph]

Thank you for answering, it seems my original interpretation on the matter was correct.
(Also official names for the body types, lovely.)

[mental junco]

Are there any plans in the works to allow colour palette customisation for the visitor outfit? 🩷

[willow basin]

Hi devs🩷

Just a question out of curiosity, the moon music is very similar to "Holding out for a hero" by Bonnie Tyler, is it a coincidence or it was on purpose (like a sort of cover song)?

And about Gemstone Mountaina music: I cannot not think about Ennio Morricone's masterpieces when I hear it!
Were you inspired by this composer's music when you created the game?

Another funny and nosy question: does Pompurin have his trademark (the * ) under his clothes? U.U #veryimportantquestion

[teal nymph]

I wondered about this as well.

[deep mesa]

Yes, in fact! I have seen it with my own eyes!

[lusty condor]

you know I’ve always thought of the good the bad and the ugly each time in out and about in Gemstone

[faint hawk]

Good to know y’all paid attention to every detail and it looks like the animal crossing rug lol

[willow basin]

The extasy of gold 🩷🩷🩷

[stoic bay]

can we get clarification on whether this is meant to say moon beams or is in fact moon cheese? because to my knowledge it works on moon cheese unless it doesnt on apple

Characters,

TOPHAT's "Glitch" ability should work with Moon Cheese and Wormtails.

[austere oyster]

@merry ruin Hey there, and sorry for the very delayed response! Truth be told, our partners at Injected Senses Audio pull source from a vast collection of sound libraries -- about 6 TB worth, assembled for over 20 years of their members' work in the industry! The contents of these provide the "ingredients" used to build each of our sound effects, and it's a fascinating process to behold. So I'm afraid I can't point you to a single library, but we really appreciate your interest in our game's audio!

[teal nymph]

From one Eric/-k to another.

[austere oyster]

Hi @willow basin -- so glad you're enjoying our music! The track for The Moon is not a cover for anything, but it was certainly inspired by many power anthems of the 80s. Regarding Gemstone Mountain, it's hard to talk about "western" music without mentioning the iconic scores of Morricone. He was certainly one of the influences in the melting pot of music that went into that area. Thanks for your interest!

[merry ruin]

Well that's too bad but thanks! If i figure it out I'll post it here

[deep mesa]

Hi all, we don't answer questions about upcoming roadmap or planned features!

[wintry warren]

I love that sort of "whiplash" sounds that plays every so often. ☺️ There should be a version with old country style yodelling, like Slim Whitman et al, lol..

[lusty condor]

oh me too…. my character always loves to have a jump to those! oooh yodelling would be could for icy peak like the sound of music mountains….maybe in the snow village now and again!?

[slender moat]

How does the team come up with the names of the songs? they are so fun or seem like a pun lol

[mild sphinx]

Somewhat out of the blue, but will any devs be attending DEF CON this year? I am a lead organizer for AI village and would love to meet up if you’re there!

[teal nymph]

I wonder, what genres would the team of Sunblink be interested in exploring for projects?

[junior gazelle]

Will there be a PAL Gift Box edition of the Switch version of Island Adventures? Thanks

[boreal flare]

Will you provide a list of which Canadian retailers will be provided the PS5 version (also a designated platform channel, hence why I'm posting here) soon for preordering?
I'd like to order from best buy canada or amazon canada due to speed after launch but if there aren't plans on those two getting it in Canada (neither has product pages for it, only the switch versions) I guess I'd have to pick somewhere else to put in my preorder that'll take much longer to get here, glad it's finally coming though, been keeping an eye here for months \o/

[faint hawk]

Not a dev but It should get added to those soon hopefully, it’s already showing on EBGames website for preorder.

[boreal flare]

yeah EBGames unfortunately usually ships their stuff from the other side of the country like VGP and PNP which means several days wait (and shipping costs vs free shipping) - best buy ships 1 day away, same with amazon.
You'd be surprised how often Canadians are forgotten about with releases being widely available so I'll wait for something from the devs/an announcement i guess.

[faint hawk]

Oh yeah I don’t need to be surprised I’ve definitely had that happen too! We don’t usually get a Canada specific announcement but if it’s like the switch version it just will appear on Amazon one day lol

[quiet prairie]

Why does ||tophat|| only go to level 10 friendship? Why not 15+ like the other characters?

[vale rune]

I had a question

When developing HKIA, was it known that Poron was Cinnamoroll’s big sister? It’s missing from the dialogue that they are siblings and this is bothering me.

[glad orchid]

😭😭😭 I am so happy to hear this! 💖

[waxen perch]

So, what inspired Hello Kitty Island Adventure?

[carmine bone]

Reviving this but does this mean we can remove the windows from certain wallpaper? Or in the gudentama flooring...turn the egg from the point at east to north?

[ripe axle]

Love the game and have been playing it everyday since I picked it up a month or two ago. Thank you for all the work you do and how you interact with the community,

The only thing that has been irking my experience has been how friendship leveling up works with Wish Me Well.

What was the decision behind making her experience needed to be a best friend so much higher than others?

Or in other words (maybe easier to answer this) why not make the experience required per level the same across characters? It feels weird for Hello Kitty to have 25 levels that only require ~2/3rds of the XP as Wish Me Well to get to level 20.

As a player without context it made me feel like I was doing something wrong or the game was glitched to see how little xp 3 Star Gifts were for WMM when compared to others,

[teal nymph]

I wonder, has the Sunblink team ever referenced some manner of Sanrio lore that even their contacts hadn't known about or were at least surprised by?

[wheat wren]

Is the game coming to xbox? 😭

[deep mesa]

Unfortunately no, we have no plans to come to Xbox at this time.

[deep mesa]

YES! Especially as new folks join the Sanrio team. Most of them didn't know about Big Challenges, and when we go over what new characters we want to add to the game, sometimes they are like "Who?!" but of course we all love them by the end 🙂

[wheat wren]

@deep mesa 💔😭 ok

[deep mesa]

I think this is all @austere oyster and the audio team! I'll let him respond 🙂

[deep mesa]

I don't think anyone from our team went, apologies!

[teal nymph]

Ah wonderful. Always nice to bring attention to obscurer parts.

[deep mesa]

We're pretty big fans of the Cozy Adventure genre now I think we'd rather innovate in this area than switch to a different genre.

[deep mesa]

What a great question! 👀 That's so strange~

[deep mesa]

We only included information that was 100% Sanrio approved.

[deep mesa]

We knew that we wanted to make a cozy adventure game, and Hello Kitty and Friends was the perfect IP to make it happen 🙂

[storm radish]

What inspired Bestest Boy (/silly) aka TOPHAT, is there any concept art of him? How did the twins make him? Seems very complex for two youngins 👀

[deep mesa]

There are a few factors going on with Wish me mell that's making her difficult to level -- a lot comes down to when her 3 Heart Gift is available. At the end of the day, we like some characters being harder and some being easier, but the current difficulty of Wish me mell isn't ideal for us.

(Sorry it took so long to get to these, y'all! We've been super busy with Wheatflour Wonderland)

[teal nymph]

So it was you who approached Sanrio for the project?

[deep mesa]

We'd already been working with Apple on a game called HEROish -- they were talking to Sanrio and wanted to make a game for Apple Arcade. They asked us to pitch, and everyone loved the idea

[vale rune]

That’s odd considering it’s in Mysterious Journey and she reveals it to him. I will simply inform people she is his sister. It upsets me that Sanrio didn’t approve that dialogue!! They’re brother and sister and there are people who SHIP them bc they don’t know :-((

I ship poron with chiffon

[deep mesa]

I don't think most animes/shows/etc are considered canon, from what we've experienced 🙂

I would bet that Sanrio doesn't even approve lore from HKIA for other people.

[vale rune]

Mysterious journey is a comic I believe so that’s upsetting it’s not considered canon. But it’s general knowledge she is. Maybe there’s a reason? It could be revealed in the game someday? 👀

Or this is set DURING mysterious journey?

[deep mesa]

Sanrio may not consider it canon; it wasn't approved for us

[vale rune]

It’s not like we can’t have it lore among fans though. I mean I imagine my puppy character as Chiffon’s sister

[rough granite]

How do I feed back audio levels for the PS5? when obtaining an item that prompts the “lifting” animation, it’s SO loud 😭 and isn’t connected to either volume controls so it’s just like a jumpscare

[deep mesa]

I passed that to our audio team! We're working on getting the feedback / bug channels set up now 🤞

[outer vessel]

How many hours of gameplay is wheatflour wonderland? And will we be seeing more DLC in the future?

[bright coyote]

Are you able to share the game’s resolution and fps output on PS5? Switch player right now, but considering moving over to PlayStation if the tech is smoother.

[rustic mist]

Is this due to lack of users? or the process to approve things with Microsoft?

[proud snow]

This isn't really a question but thank you for making the cutest game alive 🩷

[plain comet]

So are we ever going to get feedback about our feedback? Especially the QoL stuff? It’d be at the very least polite if a dev were to pop into whatever given thread and tell us whether it’s possible, in the works, or impossible. Pretty please?

[deep mesa]

We don't have time to respond to all feedback, but we do read them all and reply from time to time

[severe crown]

hi! so happy to hear you're loving the game! for any suggestions or other feedback, you can make a post in https://discord.com/channels/1105575633943277629/1402769824169464050

[storm radish]

If this is implying more TOPHAT content in the future you have made me the happiest british orb enjoyer in the world

[tepid slate]

Does Sunblink want to make other games or focus on HKIA only?

[eager osprey]

Will there ever be a HKIA cookbook?

[tawny sand]

So are there plans to change the difficulty?

[broken mountain]

If you want to suggest/request merchandise, I recommend making a #1402769824169464050 post for it.

[strong sphinx]

Was there any inspiration for the dances and emotes chosen?

[proper zinc]

we know everyone had to jump out the plane on the island, but where was the plane originally landing? (they probably said it in the story but i might have missed it)

[ornate hamlet]

didnt my melody get an invitation to open her shop on the island? not sure if the other were going for the same reason tho, its a good question!

[stoic bay]

yeah i think they were always going there but hello kitty broke the plane? 😂

[tired girder]

The airfield is on a distant island and guests are Helicoptered to the Park, similar to other well known island-based theme parks

[twin oracle]

This makes me wonder if there will ever be dinosaurs 🦕

[gleaming meadow]

Have you guys decided on the possibility of a deluxe bundle for ps5 players?

[hallow void]

Not sure if you saw this?

[stoic bay]

i think they mean the gift edition you can get for the switch in a few months

[hallow void]

Ah, as in the physical copy?

[stoic bay]

yeah with the collectible stuff cuz its only for switch

[lunar swift]

will console and pc ever be up-to-date with apple arcade? no one i know on pc plays and i would like to play cross-platform, especially with my own apple arcade island

[craggy agate]

Did butters pick the name or was it completely a coincidence

Like surely someone on the team realized butters name dropped the game 17 years before it came out

Wait actually I think I get it

Matt and Trey are time travellers

[broken mountain]

Here's a past response to a similar question:

Please use #1402379905613959309 for bugs.

[craggy agate]

So butters isn't on the dev team 😔

[vale rune]

I wanted to ask but is there any lgbtqia members of the development team? Can say yes or no and please don’t out anyone.

[tired girder]

Yes! I myself am gay, and happily so ☺️

[drifting niche]

I’m curious about the map for the game. Did the devs know from the beginning that they wanted the particular layout they ended up with, as lots of different quests change how the map looks and how you are able to interact with it. Were those considered from the start, or further fleshed out as you were working on the game?

Similarly, how did the puzzle rooms come to be? With the setting of a theme park, they feel a bit out of context (though I definitely had a lot of fun with them).

[hoary bronze]

is the launch palette available this year ?

[leaden turret]

So when are you going to make a bandana in the game?

[tepid slate]

I noticed some color pallets when dying things on the game are different LGBTQ pride colors, is that intended?

Also are there any plans to add wall hanging furniture items?

[vale rune]

I noticed a couple things in game and wanted to ask because there’s a lot of lgbtqia coded characters, for example cappuccino and espresso have dialogue that is flirting!

[inner stump]

Also some of the color palettes are various pride flag colors! I think I’ve noticed bi, pan, and ace for sure? Always makes me so happy to see little bits of representation like that in games, cuz it’s soooo rare! I’ve only seen that kind of thing in one other game (though I only play on my phone).

[nova hedge]

The Paper Parade event is a celebration of love, individuality, and self-expression. So the colour palettes for those items in particular are definitely intentional

[vale rune]

I honestly mainly downloaded because of paper parade

[tired girder]

I can answer the puzzle room questions, since they were the majority of my work during production, after I rolled over from HEROish;

Originally, puzzles were going to be present in the open world. As the design and mechanics developed, it made more sense to isolate them specialized rooms, and there was some discussion of wanting 'BOTW shrines' anyway, so it was the perfect fit. Once we had the mechanics and components down, it just came down to coming up with puzzle ideas and putting the rooms together, almost like putting together a Lego set.

I don't remember how we ended up on the visual design for the original rooms, but lore-wise, the rooms have been here longer than the theme park, only recently uncovered by the parks 'abandonment.' That's my theory atleast 😋

[verbal charm]

Hello, I wanted to know if there is already a date for the game to come out for ps4 please

[split temple]

i heart how the puzzle rooms have alliterations for names

[lime loom]

i love themmm

[craggy agate]

Hello kitty but awesome???????

Idk how I missed the obvious parallels

Especially since it went on during pride month lol

[teal nymph]

To add to it Melody even briefly talks about how hard it can be for some people to just get to express themselves.

[drifting niche]

Thanks so much for your answer! It would’ve been super cool to come across them in the open world, but I don’t think it would be as easy to keep track of what you’d completed in the same way.

[quiet prairie]

Why does Chococat not get a mermaid tail?

[formal vessel]

much like the real life event and movement it's modeled after, origami is about the beauty in crafting something unique and original

[errant sphinx]

Hi dev team! 👋 After spending many many hours playing HKIA, I’d like to create a small, free (no ads or monetization) fan website with tools to help the players track their progress. Before I start, I want to make sure I’m following your guidelines.

Do you have a fan kit or fan content policy available?
Is there a free API for in-game item data?
Can I use icons and info from the Wiki, or should I create my own?
Is it okay to design my own UI that resembles HKIA’s style?
Would it be allowed to use game screenshots?
What’s the proper way to credit Sanrio/Sunblink?

Also, are there any other rules I should know about when making a fan website for your game? I want to make something useful for the community while respecting your work! 🌸
(And if this wasn't the right place to ask all these questions, please direct me to the correct one.)
Thanks for the info! 😊

[charred sandal]

check the wiki!

[hoary canyon]

OMG.. Thank you sooo much!! 😍🩵

[prisma spindle]

Hey, so I'm just wondering, I figure that the game has distributed on Platforms now, so why is not with Android (or Google play for specific).
As my aspect, the Publishers would want their game to reach as many players as possible, which Android are very much potential.
Is it because of the game' Target Audience, that you want to keep them on a particular, or is it because there was a deal breaker on the Terms when discussing with the platform.

[broken mountain]

Please use #1402769824169464050 to suggest new features and content.
Suggestions/questions about what may be added in the future will be deleted from this channel.

[remote pawn]

I'd Totally buy it!

[teal nymph]

Was there ever anything you were surprised Sanrio let you do?

[vale rune]

Would you guys ever consider doing a character contest and adding a fanmade character to the game?

[flint lava]

I would like another DLC in a couple years where its like jungle and vines etc region. and wish me mell gets super hyper about a rufflesia the worlds rarest flower
do you guys have plans for future DLC one day?

[quasi oracle]

hello this is my first message here im sorry i dont want to bother but i have a question

why there isnt any eyecolours, was this explained once`?

[winged oxide]

hello beautiful devs! ❤️

i hope this is the right place to ask (if not i'm sorry > <). will someone be able to gift the DLC to someone else on steam :3? for example, my husband gifting me the DLC on the 18th.

[tired girder]

Gifting purchases is fairly standard on Steam, and I would be stunned if the upcoming DLC was an exception to thay rule. So take this as a 'most likely yes!'

[stoic bay]

I think gin asked bc you cant gift the deluxe version/dlc

[serene mist]

OMG YES

[ionic dust]

Steam generally prevents deluxe and complete editions from being gifted with any game. But DLCs are fine

[stoic bay]

i know that 😄 but not sure if gin knows or not!

[ionic dust]

Ah yeah

:3

[green grove]

I was SO happy to see the ace flag that one is most often left out

[cursive kraken]

Can we give kudos here? Because WOW the devs of this game really listens to its player base and I’m just so impressed with the QOL improvements that have been made. Thank you!!!!

[old berry]

When will Denuvo be removed? I really want to play this game on my main PC, but I cannot install it because of Denuvo. I have been enjoying it on my steamdeck though. I was told never to install a game that uses Denuvo, it was a security risk for my work. Part of why I have a steam deck.

A girl can dream, I guess? Maybe one day?

[versed dragon]

came here to say exactly this 😭 sorry if this isn’t really the place to say it but there’s so many little changes in this update that just bring a huge smile to my face. they fixed so many little things that were just so irritating in just today’s update alone!! to be honest, a game with hello kitty would have done well enough on its own but it’s so beautiful to see that there is actually a genuine passion behind it thank you so much dev team

[gloomy charm]

Hi @deep mesa or @broken mountain. Will My Melody and Kuromi ever going to give us their pirate outfits.? Their outfits are blacked out in our clothing collection so that must mean they’re going to give them to us at some stage?

[lilac sierra]

Hello I'm asking this question around questions and help but can't get an answer and I would really like to know how this works, can someone from the team help me? I'll paste my question

Hello I'm having a hard time with the DLC. Here's my situation: I have 2 copies so I can play online with my kid, one physical and one digital. I bought the DLC but it will only let me load the new content to the digital copy. Does that mean one of us won't be able to have the extra content since Nintendo won't let me buy 2 DLCs?

[lofty glen]

Hi there, just to clarify the Denuvo thing. It is not a security risk, it does not install anything to your system. We don’t use any “anti cheat” kernel-level software, like you see many games do. Those are actually a security risk.

[old berry]

I have to listen to my production lead and was told that due to denuvo phoning home to servers they often rent and do not own that it is possible for it to become a security risk. Even if this is extremely unlikely to happen I have to do what they suggest. I'm an artist so it isn't in my wheelhouse to worry about this stuff.
-# my solution for denuvo games and other games with security risks like anti-cheat games was just to get a second PC like the steam deck.

[deep mesa]

They should be available through natural gameplay progression -- it just takes awhile!

[deep mesa]

We've seen this and are trying to clarify what's possible here, but don't have anything to report back yet.

[subtle grotto]

Sorry to ask, but currently available? No one has unlocked them so far on aa as far as I'm aware

[lilac sierra]

Thank you for letting me know! I got a bit desperate thinking my question was getting buried. I really appreciate it

[deep mesa]

Yeah, I had one of our devs check, but if you want to start a modmail I can get into the nitty gritty and we can see if there's something buggy!

[chrome zenith]

Hi Devs! Just wondering if there are plans for a Switch 2 update to the game? I really enjoy the game on SW2 but the stutters and frame-rate are sometimes distracting. Thanks for making such a phenomenal game experience for me!

[inner stump]

Not even a question, just big kudos and appreciation to everyone who worked on the critter transformations! I haven’t even tried the other critters yet because I’m so delighted by the Flockadoodler and its movements, the little wiggle as it floats, the extra fast paddling in water, and just generally the derpy chickenness of it 😂 I love it so much, thank you to the artists, animators, and developers!

[shadow depot]

Does the team have an estimate or timeframe for when they might release the next set of OSTs to streaming services? I absolutely adore the music in the more recent content updates, as well as Wheatflour Wonderland, and I would love to add them to my playlist of the two albums we already have!

[midnight pike]

HI Sunblink team!! Just wanted to say that the Fairy Whimsy song in the WW DLC is absolutely phenomenal! Easily my favorite track in the whole game. I love the melody that the strings play!!

[deep mesa]

We don't have anything to announce about S2 at this time!

[austere oyster]

So glad you're enjoying the music, @shadow depot! We don't have any concrete plans at the moment -- but both OST Volume 1 and 2 are 26 tracks apiece, so once we've accumulated about that many unreleased tracks, we'll likely publish Volume 3. Currently we have about 15 unreleased tracks (including Wheatflour Wonderland's music), so we're over halfway there! Thanks!

[broken mountain]

Please post avatar requests here: https://discord.com/channels/1105575633943277629/1402780464254550016
Suggestions in this chat do not generally get responses and may be deleted.

[uneven jetty]

just here to thank whoever is responsible for writing the dialogue and response options for this game. i need you to understand how important your sense of humor is to my gaming experience.

[regal tusk]

Do we know what time the dlc is coming out today for european players?

[marble halo]

Hello, after updating to CU3 and installing the new DLC. Jam Jamboree and Scholastic Celebration items have stopped showing up in stores on Switch. Has this issue already been addressed?

[deep mesa]

You can find them now in the event stores themselves -- look at the new tabs there and let us know if you have any other issues!

[deep mesa]

It should be live now! Let me know if it's not

[oak skiff]

Hi i was just wondering if the railings were purposely made to be able to walk through in wheatflour? I dont think it's a bug but was it like a choice to put no collider?

Also are you guys hiring game designers or 3d modelers any time soon 😁🫶

[teal nymph]

Say, was the story / script of Wheatflour Wonderland written by someone different from the main game? I cannot help but feel like there is a noticeable difference.

[frosty veldt]

Hello!! I have a uh.. favorite Sanrio character.. and she’s very niche, I saw cogyun and big challenges were in the game who’re also extremely niche!! Do you think.. hummingmint has a chance of making it in game?

[steep wagon]

Weird Question: What is the name of the font used in the game?

[uneven shadow]

Hi i was wondering if we would ever be able to trade or recycle wands?

[hallow phoenix]

Jumping in on this as it’s super friendly on the eyes 🩷

[quartz karma]

What were the inspirations for the Soundtrack? Some seem Pokemon, Zelda or Barbie inspired?
I cant wait to hear those City sounds on PC!

[deep mesa]

Sometimes if things are quite small or thin we don't make them collidable just to prevent difficulty/wonkiness in traversal ❤️

[deep mesa]

There have been several different writers/writing groups throughout HKIA's development, but no significant change for Wheatflour. We definitely tried to have Wheatflour feel like a unique experience, though, and took liberties with the magical girl tropes while also trying to capture Cogimyun's sweet-but-oblivious nature.

[deep mesa]

You can always make character suggestions here: #1403015162520403969 message -- who knows what's possible

[inland fern]

I have no questions, I just wanted to tell you that I love you and Cogimyun is perfect.

[deep mesa]

Omnes Bold, I believe!

[vale rune]

I like the font being known so I can make fanmade cutscenes

🥹

Insert my OCs in the game

[strong sphinx]

Is there any particular reason we use Tofu to make Meatballs ?

[deep mesa]

Sanrio doesn’t like meat consumption in game as a general rule (since the characters are animal like and the implications become odd), so under the hood just assume all meatlikes are tofu 😉

[heavy agate]

Wait that’s so cool actually! I like that about the company. I’m not vegan personally but I like that they did that for this game

[vale rune]

I like the idea of us releasing the fish too

But if that’s the case

Why do we see Cogimyon eat pizza?

[lapis edge]

I'm not sure if this is the right place or if this has already been pointed out, but should items like flecks and fairy dust have the ww tag in game? It's be nice if they were included when I filter. Loving the DLC. 🩷

[broken mountain]

Please leave feedback/suggestions like that in the #1402769824169464050 channel.

[willow basin]

I LOVE the dlc!!! You created a masterpiece, everything is so cute and Cogimyun and Cogimyon and Ebi, AAAAAW ;3; * dies of too much cuteness

Thank you for your amazing work!! 🩷🩷🩷🩷

[white fern]

Just wanted to say a big thanks to the dev and design team- I’ve worked as a software engineer on web apps but never in gaming/mobile and I’m constantly in awe of what you guys are able to accomplish with a ~3 week release cycle, on multiple platforms, while also having to deal with prob legal and other pushback from using the Sanrio IP. You guys were able to create a truly unique gaming experience and collaboratively bring something new to the existing franchise and I truly hope you guys remember that (even when we’re complaining) ❤️

[pulsar socket]

hello!!! What kinda 3d blender you guys are using to make the avatars? I been wanting to make a fan made game inspired by hkia so badly but have no idea which blender to use

and if so is it alright if I can get inspired by you guys?

[rare basalt]

How come (on switch eu) in hide n seek game with ebi fry there's a room with spooky theme (some others too) where you can find critter that is not obtainable in game? Or is it? I mean crow-like critter that I guess is crowbert from City Town

[ornate hamlet]

I stumbled upon this message accidentally #1418218511255474330 message and I just wanna say I would LOVE to see more WIP's, early designs and BTS progress on making the game!! It would be so fun to see how certain aspects of the game came to be 🫶

[elder jetty]

quick question to developers. Was sailor moon an inspiration to the outfits and sequences of transformation?

[dense trench]

I have a question about character naming conventions, why are some of the names for characters their series names? Like Kitty White being called Hello Kitty, Cinnamon being called Cinnamoroll, etc

[sleek jasper]

Do you match character personality based on regular profiles, or do you watch and take notes on the Hello Kitty and Friends YouTube Series? I always read dialog in their voices

[frigid lava]

i think they mentioned that they consulted the supercute adventures producers/team while writing the script or dialogue for the game

there's also references to the series in the dialogue too, one of the main ones being that opens her shop small gift big smile in big adventures park, and that is also the name of the shop she runs in the series too.

and yes, i too read it in their dialogue voices. for the ones that dont appear in that show or don't have a voice, i make one up (except for retsuko i just read it in her netflix series dub voice 😂 )

side note, i do think they also take a look into their dialogue and backstories as well, although they try not to retread stories already told or stories that are a product of collaboration (such as the backstory where usahana got her rainbow colours)

[elder jetty]

Still curious if sailor moon (or any magical girl anime) was an inspiration for aspects of the DLC as it’s very similar. Absolutely loving it

[deep mesa]

Crowbert is making an appearance in some of this year's Spooky Celebration theming, which is why he's included! While you won't be able to catch Crowberts outside of City Town, you might see them around~

[deep mesa]

I'll do my best to share more! Once folks are getting through the main storyline of Wheatflour Wonderland, we can do a few more peeks behind the curtain

[deep mesa]

We knew from the beginning, giving Cogimyun's desire to become an Onigiri, that we transformation was going to be a key part of the DLC. Magical Girl animes of all kinds have transformation at their heart, so that was the visual theme we chose. You can find some subtle nods to many of the more popular series within the DLC.

[deep mesa]

The names that we use in the game are the ones that Sanrio HQ explicitly wanted as their "official" names. So while we're aware of the lore on some of them, from a licensing and IP perspective, what you see in game are what Sanrio wanted/approved 🙂

[deep mesa]

We've watched a lot of the Sanrio media, and it's impossible not to have that in your mind as you plan and write and design. We try to give each character a voice that reflects their personality and has enough depth for the game. At the end of the day, every line of dialogue ultimately goes through Sanrio for approval, to make sure that things stay brand consistent.

[vale rune]

So in the future could storylines be added for siblings that were not mentioned in super cute adventures? Example: Poron being Cinnamoroll’s sister, maybe there’s a quest with just the two of them? Or something else

[nova remnant]

I wanna know this as well

[vale rune]

same I’ve been using airbrush and editing to render pumpkin

[cursive kraken]

This has probably been answered, but I couldn’t find it in a search.

Will there be updates to WW or no since it’s a DLC? I’m not familiar with how these work with other games. Would understand if once you’re done with the story/leveling up, it’s done, since it was just a one time payment thing. But thought I’d ask. I’m absolutely loving it so far and it’s so much more expansive than I imagined!

[cerulean token]

Will PC players have a chance to visit the City Town location? For example, if you buy a separate DLC that will be associated with this location

[tepid slate]

They are planning to announce more info on City Town for other platforms this month. Their goal it to have it out on PC/consoles this year. We don't know if it'll be free.

[median stream]

will we ever get character slots or the option to save our outfits? thank you! 💖

[broken mountain]

They don't answer questions about what is or is not upcoming here, but they have previously mentioned that saved outfit slots is on the roadmap.

[alpine flicker]

I’m curious how the names for the critters were made and if there’s a reason why the letter F for all the DLC critters 🤔😂

[median stream]

thanks for telling me!

[wind patrol]

For the Flour, maybe ?

[alpine flicker]

Ah. That makes sense indeed for the letter. I am just curious in general how they come up with names. I mean rockadoodler and flockadoodler. Floopy Booper. Some have names close to what they are and some a little more out there.

[formal vessel]

This might seem like a silly question, but my lore brain is prompting me to ask. Does the puppy with the green shirt and jeans from the promotional material have an official name?

[deep mesa]

“Default Dog” 🫣

(That’s what we call them internally, at least!)

[crisp lantern]

Why there’s no food with coconuts? I can’t understand (my fav food)

[balmy cargo]

Because not edible 😥

[stray nest]

I have to ask, is the Revolutionary Fairy comic series inspired by/named after Revolutionary Girl Utena? With the whole magical girl theme, I thought it might be that 🪄

[hoary canyon]

I have a question regards the ‘City Town DLC’ and correct me if I’m wrong. But isn’t City Town part of a second island? 🤔😊🩵
And if so, will the rest of the island, that lays behind the fog, be included in this DLC or will each biome on this said second island be sold separately, since the DLC is named ‘City Town DLC’ and not ‘Second Island DLC’? Just curious since I play on both AA and Switch 😄
Thank you as always for a fantastic, cozy and beautiful game!! 😊🩵

Edit: Maybe it’s to early to tell, since it is pushed to estimated Q2 next year. So it’s okay if you guys can’t give and answer to that, as things and plans can swift from day to day 😊🩵

[balmy cargo]

there are two characters whose names are ‘Coco’ and ‘Nuts’

[crisp lantern]

so thats why didnt have food from coconuts

okay

[broken mountain]

No, they were joking. The actual answer that Chelsea has given before is that originally their item system didn't let something be both a crafting material and a cooking ingredient. The system is more flexible now, she said.

[crisp lantern]

thank you, as a brazillian girl this question was in my mind (we have a LOT of food with coconuts)

[drifting seal]

are there plans for HKIA merchandise, like as in the outfits in game made into plushes. im just so in love with some of the in game outfits especially all of chococats or the jam jamboree ;-;

[strong sphinx]

The sun ( or light source) moves with the clock in game. As we can see shadows move, even inside the greenhouse! How difficult or simple was this to add, and was it ever on the cutting board of a feature since it isn't all the relevant to gameplay ?

[slow fossil]

how far in advance is the event planning etc?

[tired girder]

It can depend on the event but work is usually fully wrapped up no less than 2 months before the events start date.

[fickle jackal]

Apologies if this is supposed to go into another channel..

if City Town is a dlc.. are the city town items in the collections going to be taken away from the base game and put in a dlc collection like WWL?

[broken mountain]

It sounds like it! In the old feedback channel, this is what was said:

Any collections that may have City Town elements (eg: gudetama) will be untangled and fully separated, so no one's completion will be at risk if they don't buy DLC
(At least for gudetama, this might not mean moving everything to a City Town collection. Additional gudetama were mentioned as coming in CU4 by [this announcement](#announcements message); that might give Switch, etc. access to the gudetama ||grill and balloons||.)

[fickle jackal]

Oh nice! :D

[wheat path]

What about the eggs?

[subtle pike]

Well I guess thats a different story since eggs are animal products rather than animal meat

[open acorn]

Has it been explained in-game why TOPHAT is different than in his memories (looking more corporial / having feet / being red and black?

[indigo moon]

i have a theory
maybe he used to have a physical body, but it got destroyed somehow, and now he's just a hologram

[vale rune]

Thank you developers for || doing a new quest line based on kpop demon hunters. It’s a cultural phenomenon and I honestly love how yall did it with the cinnamoangels and llornomannic. I like the fact the so bf lyrics can be sung to the real versions (the cinnamoangels song is the same tune as golden and the lloromannic song is the same tune as your idol). Also the sly little soda pop reference.||

[broken mountain]

@vale rune I'm sure they appreciate your feedback! However, could you spoiler-tag this post or make it a post in #1108858060534988980 to avoid spoiling new content for other platforms?

[vale rune]

Spoilered

[broken mountain]

Thanks!

[bright coyote]

So excited about the new Nintendo Switch 2 Edition! The #announcements post mentions “higher framerates, smoother visuals, and improved resolution”.

Are there any further details the dev team can share on the tech specs? Is the game now running in 4K 60fps in Docked mode, for example? I’d love to hear more of the nerdy stuff personally! 🤓

[strong sphinx]

Was the $10 cost for the Switch 2 Edition upgrade set by Nintendo or was Sunblink allowed to charge whatever cost they wanted for the upgrade ?

[crisp lantern]

the heart of the island sayd that the angels saved what they could from him

[fierce basin]

Can the devs confirm what islandnparts are in the switch 2 edition? I am aware there are differences in the apple arcade to switch versions and would like to know for example are the city town and wheatfield areas included.

[wind patrol]

No it's only the base game, no added content

[civic wraith]

Hello! Will the game get cross-save in the future?

[stoic bay]

No

[civic wraith]

sorry, but arent you a booster? i dont wanna sound rude, but i meant to ask the devs, like for future plans for 2026 or something, not during the gameplay itself. i think my question came out kinda confusing too, sorry about that

[stoic bay]

its been said multiple times cross play or cross save will not be supported.. my booster role is irrelevant

[civic wraith]

ahh got it! all good then, i only asked because i joined the server not long ago and hadnt seen anything about it in the chat even tho i searched, i really didnt wanna be inconvenient. sorry!

[stoic bay]

its probably in the archived channels.. theres been a lot of rearranging!

[open acorn]

Who on the team is paid to come up with all the fish puns for Hangyodon? (and how are they translated? is it just the translater's job to come up with something equally as fishy?)

[rain shore]

Are you guys going to change mocha's name in the game to lovelymocha?

[clever rivet]

Is ||Imagination Island|| scrapped? How come we have no resolution to City Town's story and what dreams are/what's past the fog despite the fact we're so close to patch 3.0. that's like as if we spent an entire patch cycle stuck on seaside resort.

[deep mesa]

There is no indication of when 3.0 will be released. We are on update 2.12 for Apple Arcade

[ancient beacon]

will there be crossplay in the future between console versions?

[ancient beacon]

but why? i can understand AA, but steam, ps and switch are the same version or not?

even fortnite has crossplay on sw1, 2, playstation, xbox and pc...

[deep mesa]

Legal and technical limitations.

(As a reminder, this channel is not for roadmap questions, and we don’t answer them, but I did want to correct misinformation above)

[strong sphinx]

What other Punny names did the Present Pine have in development ?

[worthy hound]

Are we ever going to know what's in the Seaside Resort building?

[solar panther]

Hi! My husband and I love the new holiday opening when you load up the game and we were wondering if it was the devs in the chorus or not

[inland fern]

Don't know if this counts as a roadmap question but... HKIA merch when 👉 👈

[heady girder]

There’s some t-shirts already , but only in US I think 👀 collab with another brand iirc

Hot topic they’re called!

[open jay]

We also have two Nintendo Switch cases and Joycon grips here! Looks like they're on sale: https://www.sanrio.com/pages/search-results?q=hello kitty island adventures&page=4

Thank you for the love and enthusiasm for mechandise! I'll be relaying your lovely message to the team

[thorny orbit]

I need one. I need a new switch case tbh.

[vale rune]

please I beg for merch of just the character icons on a shirt

Like

[real jacinth]

how does sunblink decide on what visitors to add to the game? what guidelines do sanrio give, is there any kind of selection process / prioritization beyond that, requirements to join, definite no-gos? is an original visitor designed by sunblink on the table, or would this not fit the visitor system?
sorry if this is a roadmap question, or just a lot at once, was just super curious and wanted to ask!

[lime loom]

maybe someone has asked something similar, but how do you guys come up with the cultural references for different languages in the game? is there a big translation team?

[formal vessel]

I can say one thing for sure based on previous responses to questions like this one. Any characters that are collaborations between Sanrio and other people or properties will never be visitors.

[tender lily]

I was just browsing this and I thought I might give some answers if I could....
I'm NOT affiliated with Sunblink/Sanrio or anything, but I can tell you generally what happens whenever a company does any kind of product for licensing.
I've done some licensing stuff and PD (product dev) as part of my job in corporate for like 10yrs, so I know a little about how this stuff works.

||Generally, a company will be like "hey we have this idea and we'd like to use your company to develop it" or use the other company's license. It will usually have restrictions on PMS colors that can (and sometimes cannot) be used for each character or item. (PMS colors are basically every shade of every color, and every character or logo or anything else have specific pantone shade numbers, and they'll say like HK's bow is PMS# __, HK's skintone is PMS# ______ and Kuromi's skull is PMS# but that may not be in a contract, it's usually in a style guide)
They will have certain restrictions like they may call out specifically no adult items such as xyz (I'm not going to list any here, but they usually have some detail).
It's all usually written in the contracts, and unfortunately for most physical items they normally have like an annual contract that they renew so that the game/item can be sold still (they can no longer sell it once their contract is up).

Every company's contracts and style guides are unique, and if Sunblink wanted to redline things because MAYBE LET'S SAY Sanrio was like "because this character hates this type of thing, we don't want like coconuts in there" on the contract (they don't typically give reasoning in contracts ofc). If Sunblink was like "no, that doesn't fit what we want, we want coconuts around the island" they could redline the contract to be like "Sunblink is allowed to use items such as xyz, including coconuts as needed" and as long as Sanrio allows that in all subsequent redlines of the contract, Sunblink can have it in the game.||

[tender lily]

Again, I'm not affiliated with Sanrio/Sunblink, but I have worked in corporate for 10yrs doing licensing stuff, so I hope this helps give some explanation.

||Generally that requires approval from all parties involved if it was a collab. Ex: the HK/Tokidoki characters, they'd have to maintain written permission from Tokidoki and maintain it on file/keep it active PLUS if Tokidoki's contract with Sanrio or Sunblink ended, that may muddy the waters for new HKIA players that may not be able to obtain certain visitors anymore. Usually from what I've seen in video games if a contract ends, that content may be no longer available as new content in a game if you haven't already unlocked it while they had the contract. A great example of what I believe this is the case for is if you've ever seen the Call of Duty ads for redeeming Mtn Dew codes.

I can also tell you some companies are VERY strict on their requirements and what they allow according to their contracts. Even some retailers are strict about it.||

[tender lily]

Not affiliated with Sanrio/Sunblink, but I can probably give some general info on this. Again, may not be exactly the scenario, but this is what my experience is with how this works...

||Most companies these days outsource to a translating service. They say "here's the verbiage we have, we need it converted to this other language". If the company does have someone that speaks the language and is within the peripheral of the [likely operations team], they sometimes may ask those individuals to help. The translating services generally charge based on how many words are translated if I recall (it's been a while since I've had to work on translations in corporate).

It's also possible that Sanrio has dictated a specific translation service.||

[lime loom]

thanks for answering! it’s so cool that you know all this stuff :))

[slow fossil]

just want to say devs you have outdone yourself again with this aurora furniture! the spooky witch set, the mushroom furniture, that sci-fi stuff, now this?? wOW! some real bangers this year seriously. this year's colourblaze was CHEF KISS, the 1920s friendship festival was so cohesive and fantastic, the moon stuff, wheatflower stuff, it's all so good. it seems like the themes are getting tighter and more uniquu and i'm so impressed! how do you choose the themes? is there a large group brainstorming? how do you decide?

[deep mesa]

Some of them were inspired by the community! Awhile back we asked about furniture and event themes, and the mushroom one was pretty frequently requested. We also work with a fantastic studio that’s responsible for most of the ones you listed— they’ve been helping from the very beginning of the project and at this point have the style down to a science and are really pushing the boundaries with design and what’s technically possible. The Aurora floor, for instance, was a big collaboration between art, effects, and tech!

[vale rune]

I love the aurora furniture! Poron’s future cabin is mainly Aurora mixed with her dreamy and her clothing!!

[graceful salmon]

I've noticed while playing the game that it contains a lot of pop culture references - eg, the Nirvana album cover with Hangydon, a dialogue line where Kuromi asks us "What are you doing in my swamp?" and I think Hangydon also asks us "What is a fire and why does it burn?"

Also pretty sure the Chocolate Balls recipe is a South Park reference lol

How do you decide what references are suitable for the game and what are not?

[lime loom]

i think about this a lot! these references are so much fun

[broken mountain]

Hi! Please use #1327458062499582025 for any suggestions. This channel is for asking questions related to game design/development (but not roadmap or planned content questions).
As a side note, we can't discuss any external communities here because the devs cannot acknowledge unofficial communities. (This is the only official community.)

[vale rune]

me too the fact they threw together a kpop demon hunters inspired storyline with the cinnamoangels

[main cradle]

Thank you! I’ve deleted it, moved it, and edited it to fit guidelines. 😊

[lime loom]

and they also make different references for different countries, i think that's the coolest part

[brazen path]

I mean the game title is probably a south park reference based on a butters quote „I don‘t play world of warcraft I play Hello Kitty Adventure island“

[copper cosmos]

how did the developers decide how to blend the different island themes together? like moving from the swamp to the resort to the reef etc. Is there any concept art of areas that will ever be shown?

[inland fern]

When did you guys know you were going to add ||Moppu|| as a resident? Were you in any way influenced by my nonstop yapping about his potential? 🤣

[deep mesa]

We've wanted him for a very long time, but everyone's love definitely influenced priority and timing!

[brazen path]

I was wondering whether there is a reason why the apple arcade get certain updates earlier but also kinda unfinished? Like the current update. It sometimes feels like the apple arcade people are the tryout pancake

[deep mesa]

We're on a contractual six week update cadence, so every six weeks Apple Arcade gets an update with new things. Larger features take much longer than six weeks to make, however, so often times we release things in parts. This also lets us be a bit more responsive and adjust things as we go.

[deep mesa]

Sanrio's vision is 'One World, Connecting Smiles' --- so for Sunblink, we want to make sure the world of the game feels connected to the real world, and our players's real lives, every so often. It makes everything a little bit richer, it tends to give people a tiny smile or grin if they recognize the connection, and we think that while it may seem like a small thing, it makes a big difference.

At the same time, things that would be too obvious, direct, or glaring can break immersion, so it's important that these stay somewhat ambiguous and subtle.

And, of course, I'm obligated to say that we have no association with South Park

[deep mesa]

Sorry this took a bit, I was consulting with the art folks. We believe this is the earliest known concept work for the island, from the original pitch for the game -- so you can see just how drastically it changed! It came down to what mechanics and characters we wanted to include, and trying to integrate the themes of healing and restoration that you see in reviving the spooky swamp, reactivating the volcano, and bringing back the oasis.

[teal nymph]

I could not help myself sorry.

[inland fern]

Thank you for scrapping the appropriation of Polynesian sacred ritual masks, I can already see the absolute cow people would have had over that 😭

[copper cosmos]

WOWWW what an answer!! thank you so much for taking the time to look into it, this is so cool!! 🥺🩵

[brazen path]

Wow that sounds quit stressfull and annoying for you guys

I have another question if that‘s okay. Why are there no micro transactions in this game? I always felt like you guys could make alot of money with just selling in game items like bouquets for money 😅

[deep mesa]

There are no microtransactions in any Apple Arcade game - so that requirement was a fundamental part of the game design. (Though, yes, I do occasionally, longingly wonder what we could do if we just offered bouquets for $.99 😂 )

[brazen path]

I would have bought over 50 already 😂

[teal nymph]

A dark yet prosperous world.

[analog spear]

Thank you for not letting that intrusive thought take over.

[peak pecan]

For me personally, the lack of micro transactions is one of the big difference makers for HKIA and other, similar games.

This genre is just so full of them, I'm quite glad there's a space that's not so, demanding I guess?

I was describing this game to a friend once, and when they heard "Live-service" they instantly thought it was micro-transaction heavy, which it thankfully isn't.

[peak pecan]

On a similar note, WW being 15 USD as opposed to a Sims 4 or DDV standard price adds a lot to my gratitude. 😭

[raw jewel]

I wonder, was there a specific moment that inspired the team to give this AC-adjacent cozy game more movement options like jumping and climbing?