Game Mechanics
This page covers some of the basic game mechanics of Hello Kitty Island Adventure. New players may also want to refer to the "Getting Started" page.
Movement Mechanics
Movement in the game is fairly straightforward.
- A player character can walk or run depending on how the touch controls on the left side of the screen or the left joystick on a controller are moved.
- A player character can jump if the right side of the screen is touched or if the jump button on a controller is pressed.
- Holding down the jump control causes the player's avatar to deploy their
Balloons and float if the difference in height from the player's position is large enough. The player can still move and control their direction and speed while floating.
Players do not start out with the ability to swim or dive in water. Swimming is unlocked by Flippers, and diving is unlocked by the
Snorkel.
- Diving gives the player the ability to control their depth in large bodies of water using the right side of the screen (with an up/down control) or the right joystick of a controller.
- Speed and direction in water or underwater is controlled with the left side as with walking/running.
- With Retsuko as a companion at a high enough level, players are able to swim in lava thanks to her companion ability.
Time Mechanics
Both real-life time and in-game time are used by the game. The time of day in-game is not tied directly to real time.
Real-Life Time
The real-life time system is based off the internal system clock of the device. The entire game, including the in-game Events, depends on the real-life time system to properly advance. For example, after certain quests, the Dance Hall in
Gemstone Mountain and
Comedy Club in
Rainbow Reef have many of the characters gather there only on Fridays and Saturdays in real time.
There are also Seasons according to real time, though Seasons currently have no effect outside of determining if certain Visitors are currently traveling. The seasons are:
Spring: March 1 to May 31.
Summer: June 1 to August 31.
Fall: September 1 to November 30.
Winter: December 1 to February 28/29.
Warning: Date Manipulation Causes Problems!
The developers strongly advise against attempting to "time travel" forward or back by manipulating their device's date. Either, but particularly traveling backwards, may break the game in various ways. Items may stop reappearing, Daily Rewards calendars may be erased, Events may be disabled, and so on. The developers cannot fix save issues caused by time-traveling. If the game believes that the date has been manipulated, then multiplayer is disabled as well.
Reset
A full real-life time cycle resets everyday at 7:00 AM GMT (6:00 AM GMT during Daylight Savings Time), which is 12:00 AM Mountain Time in the United States. This time of day is referred to as reset.
Each day at reset, changes such as the following occur:
- Collectable materials and items such as Music Discs and Comic Books reappear (respawn).
- The Island Residents' daily gift limit resets.
- Island Visitors who are not residents may leave, and new ones may visit.
- Daily Rewards advance - Each day,
My Melody will gift the player a daily reward which can be materials, dye pouches, etc.
Daily Quests refresh.
- Time-locked quests may become available.
Note: Time format is in Hours:Minutes:Seconds.
In-Game Time
The in-game time system has four periods: morning,
daytime,
evening, and
night. A full in-game time cycle is approximately 60 minutes.
Icon | Time of Day | Time (minutes) |
---|---|---|
Morning/Dawn | ~ 10 minutes | |
Daytime | ~ 25 minutes | |
Evening | ~ 10 minutes | |
Nighttime | ~ 15 minutes |
The in-game time determines when certain critters, fish, quests, and other things are available. The activities of Island Residents and Island Visitors may also change at different parts of the day.
The in-game time can be changed by the player when interacting with a bed in a cabin. Also,
Pekkle's
Dance All Night Ability that can change the time while he is your companion, once the ability is unlocked.
Story Advancement
Quests
Story progress is done mainly through quests. Most quests also require you to have a certain level of friendship with specific characters.
Quests are tasks and stories that you can gain access to as you befriend more Island Residents and become better and better friends with them. Through them, you can gain new tools, make new friends, find new places, and slowly unravel the mysteries of Friendship Island.
The Daily Quests and Weekly Quests do not contribute to the story, but they do help you raise friendship with characters or have other benefits, like giving Event currency during certain events.
Exploration
While some quests give you access to new things, not everything you need to do to progress is in a quest! Sometimes, you need to act on your own initiative to find your way forward. For example, the areas where Pekkle,
Pompompurin, and
Retsuko end up only need a determined explorer to be reached.
If stamina is a limiting factor, you can try to find places that are easier to climb or have places where they can rest during their ascent. You can also repair ziplines to help you reach certain areas of Friendship Island.
Some side content like puzzles and Treasure Chests may not be required by quests and so will not be found without exploring the world.
Friends
The Island Residents are originally comprised only of the people who arrived at Friendship Island with you on the plane. You can befriend every one of them. Increasing your friendship can unlock new quests, Companion Abilities, recipes, furniture, and more. Once a friend has a Companion Ability unlocked, asking them to accompany you will give you access to that ability while they are with you.
Friendship Levels and Gifting
In order to level up your friendship level with the Island Residents, you can give the Island Residents gifts (Gifting)! There are 5 friendship statuses the player can have with an Island Resident: New Friend, Friend, Good Friend, Close Friend, and Best Friend. Gifts can be materials or craftable items but not items like furniture or clothing.
All items can have up to four tags that define their item type. Giftable items can also have one of four rarities, but the rarity has no influence on how well a gift performs with a character. Only tags matter for gifts.
Rarities | Heart Levels | |
---|---|---|
Green - Common | ![]() | |
Blue - Uncommon | ![]() ![]() | |
Purple - Rare | ![]() ![]() ![]() | |
Yellow - Legendary |
Friendship can be increased by completing certain quests for your friend, but the main way of raising friendship is to give them gifts. You can give each of your friends 3 gifts per day (with an additional 3 gifts only if you use a Friendship Bouquet or Friendship Blossom). In return, they give you their unique return gift, a useful material of some type. How many return gifts you get is the best indicator of how effective your gift was at raising their friendship!
In order to gift an Island Resident the player must walk up to them and select the gift icon. Once they do so, the gifting menu will pop-up and all of the giftable items will be shown. The background color indicates an item's rarity and the number of hearts correlates with the Island Resident's liked tags (three liked tags maximum). The player can only gift an Island Resident three times per day, unless they use an
Friendship Blossom or
Friendship Bouquet, or if another character's
Daily Quest specifically ask for that specific Island Resident to be given a gift.
What makes a good gift can be more complicated than it looks. Check the Character Gift Guide for more details and also for gift recommendations for every character at different levels of progress in the game.
The player can also see which Island Residents they have not gifted yet by opening the "Friends" application via the
Menu Tablet on the upper right corner of the screen.
A player standing by My Melody with the Gift icon in the lower right side of the screen.
The player can see which Island Residents they haven't gifted yet that day via the "Friends" application using the Menu Tablet.
Item Mechanics
Materials
Some materials are only obtainable by gifting friends, but many can be found around the island.
Gathering materials around the island each day is important if for gifting and for completing quests. Usually, the basic materials make very poor gifts, but they can be crafted or cooked into better gifts.
Each major region has 50 of a currency material, often required for purchasing clothing and furniture, and smaller amounts of other materials. Currency materials may also be required for crafting certain items. Many items do spawn in the same spots daily, but others have multiple potential spawn points and will not spawn in all of them daily. There is a maximum number of each item that will appear on your island at once. Once collected, most items are only refreshed by reset or by using an Island Bouquet.
(The one major exception is Trash in the
Rainbow Reef, which respawns throughout the day.)
After a certain point in the game, you will be able to unlock the Collection Box and ask a specific NPC (Non-Player Character) to gather one material for you daily. Any materials gathered will immediately disappear from the island and not be able to be collected from the box until the next reset. As you get more Best Friends, you can also ask them to gather materials for the
Collection Box.
Crafting and Cooking
Most items are not very useful as gifts or for quests until they are processed into other items.
The main Crafting Table is by
Chococat's tent. (At higher friendship levels,
Chococat also gives a crafting bonus as a companion.) To craft an item, you must first find its
Crafting Plans, which may be hidden around the island or require reaching certain friendship levels with specific characters. Every crafting plan has different requirements, and some items have more than one crafting plan that can make it.
There are also Cooking Stations all around the island. Cooking usually requires a specific base ingredient for that station and 1 or 2 other ingredients, with using 2 other ingredients locked behind an upgrade to the station. ( Hello Kitty as a companion can help to make extra food.) While recipes can be unlocked through gameplay, you can also learn the recipe in-game simply by combining the correct items.
Most foods cannot be eaten by the player at this time, with the exception of Potions, which provide different temporary boosts when consumed through the inventory menu.
Critters and Fish
There are many critters and fish around the island. Each one appears in specific locations at certain times of day. While the main point of them is completing collections, some critters and any fish can also be used to obtain specific furniture sets later in the game.
Critters can be caught with the Net or, much later in the game,
Bubble Wand. They will try to run away if they spot you, but
Keroppi can help make catching them easier.
Fish can only be caught with the Fishing Rod. Fishing involves a short activity where you have to balance your reeling in of the fish against how it is pulling.
Badtz-maru can encourage fish to bite, while
Hangyodon makes rarer fish more likely to appear.
Furniture
Furniture pieces are the main way to decorate Visitor Cabins, though materials and other items can also be placed in cabins. Some furniture is automatically available in Small Gift Big Smile, but many pieces have to be obtained elsewhere in the game to make them part of the shop's regular item rotation. There are also special furniture pieces usually only available during events.
In cabins, most furniture pieces can be freely stacked on top of each other. Certain furniture pieces can also be customized in specific ways, once that option is unlocked.
Clothes
Clothing can be equipped by using a mirror or through the inventory. You can wear up to one piece from each category of clothing at a time. Most clothing is entirely cosmetic, but certain mermaid items do help with swimming and diving. Other items may be required for quests or certain Island Visitors. Later in the game, the ability to dye certain clothing can be unlocked.
Event clothing can only be obtained during events. All clothing is very hard to trade in multiplayer because it requires a pair of players to have reached a high friendship level by completing multiplayer tasks together for many weeks.
Flowers
The flower system can be complicated and is only accessible after reaching a certain point in the story. There are many flowers available, available either through quests with specific characters or by having access to flowers during certain events, and each can have 27 different colors and, often, a multitude of possible patterns obtainable by crossbreeding.
Some quests do require specific flowers. However, gardening is largely an optional activity. The "Flowers" page goes into the specifics of breeding for different results.
Miscellaneous
Events
The game usually has one or two seasonal events running at any one time. Many events feature unique mechanics, but all distribute event clothing and most also distribute event furniture. New clothing is distributed through Daily Rewards, while new furniture is earned through participating in the event.
While some Island Visitors do require event clothing and/or furniture, the main story is not influenced by events or by any visitors that require event items. Events do return annually, and the items from previous events are always obtainable in some way.
Multiplayer
Multiplayer is not required for the main story. It does have some benefits, such as the possibility of acquiring past event items with Friendship Beads and a way to earn an extra
Strawberry Crate weekly, but it does not affect the main story.
Each pair of players can build up their multiplayer friendship by completing weekly tasks together. Reaching certain levels unlocks extra boosts that are accessible only while you are playing with that multiplayer friend.