Sanrio and Animal Crossing: It sounds so sensible once you’ve thought about it, and Sunblink seems to have studied Nintendo’s framework enough to know how to pull it off. Hello Kitty Island Adventure was a relaxing delight. In fact, it successfully mirrored several things that kept us playing New Horizons for years after its release. That’s why, in one of our newest Shacknews Awards categories this year, Hello Kitty Island Adventure won our award for Best Cozy Game of 2023.

This game lets you interact with the Sanrio cast as your very own created Sanrio character. You’re all headed to an island vacation resort together. However, when you get there, it seems that the resort side is quite lacking. The island is in full disarray. The Sanrio cast, as positive as they are, set immediately to work on fixing it up and making it more fun, and they look to you to help make it happen.

A large part of the ease and comfort of Hello Kitty Island Adventure is just how warm and fuzzy everyone is. You wander about to interact with various characters like Hello Kitty, Keroppi, My Melody, Badtz-Maru, Kuromi, Chococat, and many more to assist them in their various parts of the island. That means fishing, crafting, fixing up resort cabins, cooking, and more in the day-to-day. You also get to give gifts to the characters to earn their friendship and get them to award you with cool bonuses. Ultimately, your biggest task is exploring the island, finding missing Sanrio characters, and figuring out why the resort is lacking that vacation getaway charm.

You simply can’t do everything in Hello Kitty Island Adventure in one or two sittings. It encourages you to do as much as you want, but take breaks to come back the next day and engage in new activities. In that way, it was a delight to come back to it time and time again and see what Hello Kitty and her friends had in store for us. This is still Apple Arcade exclusive, but it might be a must-have of the program if you like Animal Crossing, Sanrio, or just chill vibes. It delivers on all of these fronts with delightful results, and that’s why it’s the Shacknews Best Cozy Game of 2023.

Be sure to read over the rest of the Shacknews Awards in our Year of the Games: 2023 feature.