While Hello Kitty and her friends have always been something I’ve been passively aware of, I never really followed the franchise until my oldest daughter got hooked on them. While she’s over 20, she still loves Pompompurin in particular, and is fond of a number of their other characters as well. After the pleasant surprise that was Hello Kitty Island Adventure I was curious to see how this one would turn out. While it absolutely has some issues with how narrow a scope they’ve chosen in this case, I can’t fault them for not trying to squeeze every ounce they can out of the concept.

Overall, there isn’t much to know. Everything revolves in some way around the game of Freeze Tag, and you’ll either be playing as the Hunters or the Challengers. If you’re on the hunting side, your objective will simply be to capture all of the challengers before time runs out. This is trickier than it sounds though since you won’t typically have much time to do it, and any Challenger who still hasn’t been frozen will have the opportunity to un-freeze their friends, and if anyone hasn’t been frozen when time runs out you’ll lose. Obviously when you’re on the other side of the coin, your objectives will be the opposite. You’ll want to try to move around as sneakily as you can manage, avoiding being frozen and then trying to free up anyone who has been captured. It isn’t rocket science, but the game does include each character having a special ability, which will vary quite a bit, as well as the chance to level up your favorites to help them be a little more formidable.

As a 2-player competitive game it can be a little bit of fun, pitting each of you against each other, and there’s no doubt that whoever is able to win will get the honor of some bragging rights. That said, the play isn’t terribly deep once you’ve played a few rounds, especially if your opponent is looking at your side of the split screen to cheat, so aside from playing with kids it may have limited shelf life. If you don’t mind the objectives still being pretty well the same over and over, there is actually an attempt to create some variety and challenge in the single-player mode, with your reward being currency for unlocking different Sanrio characters, some costumes for them, and pieces to help upgrade them, making them at least a little more effective. In particular, the challenges can be interesting as you up the difficulty, with you being unable to see the mini map, or turn the camera, helping to make a limited challenge into something at least a bit more fun.

In the end, because of the very limited focus of gameplay, this likely won’t be for everyone, outside of families looking for something that’s a lighthearted challenge, or people who’ll enjoy unlocking and playing as their favorite Sanrio characters. The license unfortunately ups the game’s base price, but if you’re a true fan at least you’ll get some longevity out of the developer’s creative ways to stretch out the content as far as they’ve been able.