Game: Hello Kitty and Friends Happiness Parade
Genre: Music, Rhythm, Arcade
System: Nintendo Switch (Also on Netflix)
Developer|Publisher: Dabadu Games |Rogue Games
Age Rating: EU 3+ | US Everyone
Price: US $19.99 | UK £17.59 | EU € 19,99
Release Date: October 26th, 2023
Review code used, with many thanks to Reverb Communications.
The official description of Hello Kitty and Friends Happiness Parade starts with:
“Cute? Check.
Colourful? Check.
And way cooler than you think? Triple check”
I must say I took that with a grain of salt. I mean, look at Sanrio’s characters like Hello Kitty, My Melody, Pompompurin and Pochacco…yes, very cute and colourful. But could this be cool? Really, they surprised me. Let’s see why.
Dancing to the Beat
Hello Kitty and Friends Happiness Parade is a music rhythm game, and you should know, rhythm games aren’t exactly my forté. I’m not bad at keeping to the beat, but it usually means needing fast reflexes, and that’s where I fall short.
Before you start a new game, you can choose whether to go for the full sensory load (with flashes of light and all), or sensory load safe. Nice options! After that, you must choose which of the three characters will help you dance through the levels. You start off with Hello Kitty, My Melody, Pompompurin, and it’s good to note that each has a special ability.
Hello Kitty can convert minions to friends, My Melody converts coins into hearts and Pompompurin won’t be hurt by obstacles. You can check their abilities, how long the ability lasts and what the cooldown time is. You can see them in the main menu under the button Hello Kitty & Friends.
As you start a new game, you see several levels greyed out and a choice on which one to start on: the easy level, the medium and later on, the hard ones too. These 23 levels are laid out as nodes, and they form paths to five different endings. Starting a level, you have to tap forward to the beat of the song, trying to collect as many happiness points and loot as you and avoid obstacles.
This loot can be coins, pumpkin pie (which means your ability is immediately replenished again) and cards that you need to upgrade your characters and unlock new ones.
To make the most of the circuit, you can also switch the lineup (with L-shoulder) and put either of the three up front, depending on which ability you need. You do this by pressing the R-shoulder.
Best Exercise Those Reaction Skills
When you read it above, it certainly sounds easy. Combined with Sanrio’s Hello Kitty having a kiddie image, you might jump in expecting easy fun. Now it could just be that I’m not very dexterous, but Hello Kitty and Friends Happiness Parade was not easy for me at all. And this is playing the easy route! There’s just so much going on that I could hardly keep up. After playing two or three levels, two out of my three characters would usually already be out of health.
The downside for me was that there is no way to replenish the health of your characters between levels, you can only try to have them pick up a star on the level itself. For My Melody, it’s easiest as she can turn coins into hearts. But first, using My Melody to make hearts and then changing to having Pompompurin in front of the line-up to pick them up isn’t easy. Not for me, at least, it requires quick thinking and fast reactions as enemies keep laying traps, fences sometimes move over the place and a huge hammer swings over the track to take you out.
Fun For Adults Too
Still, with all of this, I am having huge fun. This might have to do with the fact that you can play in a more relaxed way too. The standard way to play is by pressing the buttons to complete the level in the beat of the music, making it extra hectic. But you can also go for the more laid-back experience where the music is there, but you don’t have to hit the beat.
During the track, you get to do an impromptu photoshoot to earn more happiness. And at the end of a successfully finished track, there’s a chance to get more happiness in bonus time. The goal here is to acquire as much happiness as possible during your run. And if coins, happiness and upgrade cards to collect aren’t enough already, you can also try to complete special challenges. These will give rewards in return, like very cute accessories to adorn your friends with.
By the way, this Switch version is grand when you are on the move, but don’t forget that Hello Kitty and Friends Happiness Parade is available as well on mobile and as a Netflix game. Log into your Netflix environment, and there you’ll get the option to download the game to your mobile device.
K-Pop Beat
Usually, we pay attention to the soundtracks in a game. For many people they are easy to overlook, but in some games, it can make or break a game. In Hello Kitty and Friends Happiness Parade, it was the soundtrack that made me very happy indeed. You start out with a couple of songs, and while earning more happiness, you get new tracks as well.
Especially in the mode where you have to press the buttons to the beat, the K-pop songs had me tapping my foot along. Very catchy tunes and all of them are happy. Some with strange titles, like Pop Beer Sausage, but all of them heightened my enjoyment of the game. Some of them, like Zen Zen by Kico the Cyber Girl and Say It to Me With Your Mouth Shut by Marriah Eve, might even make it to my Spotify list!
The controls handle fine, you can press the buttons to move the friends, or you could use the joy-cons. As the constant tapping wreaked havoc with my wrists I tried the joy-con way, but for me, that didn’t do the trick. The button pressing was better.
Somehow, I feel there’s a missed chance to make this into a party game, as I think playing with friends or family would be loads of fun. As it is, they will have to watch me play and bop to the beat from the couch.
Conclusion
Hello Kitty and Friends Happiness Parade is a great game for young and old. Those of you who are very deft in your reaction skills might think me silly, but for me, it presented a very nice challenge. The K-pop song list added hugely to the fun, and the colourful and cute world was much to my liking.
If you don’t like Hello Kitty and the sugar sweetness, this might not be the game for you, but for me? Playing Hello Kitty and Friends Happiness Parade left me happy and sometimes frustrated, but all the while tapping my feet to the rhythm!
Final Verdict: I Like it a Lot