When I played (and praised) Hello Kitty Island Adventure at its PC launch in January, I quickly noted that it would be a wasted opportunity to not add new areas with more Sanrio characters, on top of the core cast Friendship Island was already home to. After all, there are so many characters in Sanrio's wheelhouse that deserve a place in the game and that so many people already love.
However, the announcement of the game's first DLC, Wheatflour Wonderland, still surprised me. It wasn't until I got into the magical new realm that I realised DLCs like this open up a whole new set of possibilities for Hello Kitty Island Adventure, and frankly I am shocked it's taken Sunblink this long to make one.
Wheatflour Wonderland not only introduces Cogimyun, an incredibly underrated character in Sanrio's roster, but an entire new significantly sized area for you to explore, filled with new critters, ingredients, and puzzles to solve.
On top of that, Wheatflour Wonderland comes with its own story involving the friends you've made, in an adventure ripped straight from Sailor Moon which would make my pink-frilled, six-year-old self sing. There's a whole lot more here than I was expecting, which is always a pleasant surprise and helps to make the adventure seem worthwhile.
As you make your way through Cogimyun's friendship quests, all the other characters you've met before on Friendship Island go through their own 'magical girl' transformation. Which, yes, means exactly what you think it does. There are plenty of glittery sparkles and twirling, alongside a brand new frilly outfit for each character and even some magical powers. Literally everyone has a place in Wonderland, including you, and that becomes more clear the further you delve into Cogimyun's story. But this does mean you need to have already developed a well-established friendship with Hello Kitty and her friends, so the DLC isn't ideal for brand-new players.
But having already spent more time than I like to admit with all the inhabitants of Island Adventure, I expected Cogimyun's friendship quests to fly by, but the DLC follows the exact same pacing as the base game. It helps to make the add-on feel a lot heftier than it would be if you could just breeze through one challenge after another. You only unlock them by levelling up her friendship, and even if you go in well-stocked with friendship flowers and bouquets—to reset how many gifts you can give Cogimyun in a day—you still won't be able to blast through the story of Wheatflour Wonderland in one sitting.
Don't get me wrong, the quests aren't by any means challenging, given you've already made significant headway in the base game. It's a lot of the same thing you've seen before, like crafting certain items and making meals for characters. But, there are some twists on this classic format which make it feel new and exciting for the DLC, and I'd love to see similar things implemented into future DLCs too, should we get them.
For example, Wheatflour Wonderland introduces magic wands as one of its main features. These can be used for numerous things, depending on which ones you craft, such as breaking down forcefields, or turning yourself into a critter and getting to run around.
Each one is fairly basic, and it's really unlikely that you'll use them outside of their allocated quests, but it's still a fun craft to discover and supports the level of whimsy the DLC as a whole presents. That sort of goofy fun which may, or most likely may not, help you while you run around doing your daily quests is what made me love Hello Kitty Island Adventure so much in the first place.
However, this taste of Wheatflour Wonderland has made me realise that DLCs like this could be, and frankly should be, the future of our time on Friendship Island, and that's a change I would happily embrace. They are a fantastic way to introduce new characters and realms as standalone units rather than tying them into the base game, and it would surprise me if this wasn't the way Sunblink went on to roll out its significant updates in the future.
There are so many characters we could make our way through, and I know fans of Sanrio in general would happily argue which character should come next until the end of time. Even if more characters are rolled into the same realms but given another unique set of friendship quests, I'd just love for these new worlds to have a lifespan longer than a single DLC, and I'm really hopeful that Wheatflour Wonderland has set a bar that Sunblink continues to meet in its future releases.
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