Hello Kitty Online. So cute you could puke. Yes? No? That was what I went out to discover as I entered Sanrioland, created my little avatar dressed in a plain tanktop and shorts, and named her. Not too many choices in faces and hair so I quickly settled on one and braced myself to be overwhelmed by "cute."

It was. Overwhelmingly cute. What can I say? Hello Kitty and her friends-Badtz-Maru, My Melody, Purin, Pochaco, Keroppi, ad nauseum is all about cute. Their motto is "Bring Happiness to the World" and they surely try. The User Interface is simple-so simple it took me a while to figure it out-the green check icon means "Yes" dummy.... The entire game can be navigated via mouse clicks and indeed, movement is done by mouse-click.

Created by Sanrio Digital and based in Hong Kong, Hello Kitty in Asia is targeted towards the "Office Ladies"-women in their twenties to their thirties, most who have never played an MMOG in their life. In the US, the demographic that Hello Kitty appeals to shifts downwards to the younger players in their teens. Players will also find that Hello Kitty Online is not just an MMOG, but an integrated social space, with blogs and mini-games that you can access directly from the game.

Brief Description
In Hello Kitty, you do not have classes but skills to improve and there are factions as well. You start out in SanrioLand as a human male or female. Rather androgynous looking and your first quests will give you your starting equipment. The game itself is quest driven. Experience is gained by completing quests, not killing creatures and although you are required to beat on critters by some of the quests, they don't actually die but are stunned. Complete with little stars circling around their heads. They will perk up again after some time and can be re-stunned.

Boiled down to the essentials, it is a tradeskill and "collections" game. Do something often enough and your skill goes up. Then collect enough of these materials to make neat stuff. Like a better weapon or better looking weapon or a styling Red jacket, Blue suede shoes and the like. You also collect pets, grow vegetables on a farm, improve your farm, build a house, decorate your house – and it can be addictively compelling.

Newbie Experience

Like many games out there now, the newbie experience leads you gently into the game. Each quest you do introduces you to one or more aspects of game play and leads to the next. Quests when first accessed have voice-overs that narrate the quest text. Video tutorials with voice-overs are also available on the website should you need extra help or just want to refresh your memory.

Character Development & Itemization

It's all about skills. Foraging, farming, sewing, cooking, etc. The more you use the skills, the better they become, the higher level the stuff you can access, the neater the stuff you can make. I was ahead of myself in exploration and picked up several quests that asked for things I could not forage or kill (no, sorry-stun) for my skill level.

Drops from critters are used in quests or tradeskills. They are saleable as well, but vendors will give you next to nothing for them. You start off with a large "knapsack" with quite an amount of storage room, but it is unsurprising that you run out of space quickly. Do not despair, once you access your basic farm,you will find that you have additional storage there.

Most items are player made, although some are gained as quest rewards and others may be bought from vendors-such as your first animated scarecrow for your farm.

Combat and Pets

Combat is accomplished by click and auto-attack. Your only weapon is a "Magic Wand" which first manifests as a broken broom to whack critters with-and soon receive a quest to improve your weapon. My first upgrade was a microphone complete with stand. Blunt weapon? I guess. When I clicked on a critter, my character went into an overhand whacking animation and satisfying numbers floated up from the squarish blue "crab" until it was stunned and I gained whatever it dropped automatically.

The only way you can get yourself killed in this game is deliberately. Creatures are plentiful. So plentiful that they nip on your heels as you walk across the landscape. They may mob you and interrupt your mining, lumbering or harvesting, but you can always outrun them, and they do not do a lot of damage. If they out level you substantially, it may take a long time to kill them but you can still outrun them. They do not follow far. This emphasizes basically, that Hello Kitty Online isn't about combat.

There are three stats. Health, Energy and Hunger. Health is self explanatory. Energy is expanded when using your weapons or any of your trade skills. I've not figured out if hunger really does anything as I replenish that at the same time as I replenish Health and Energy by eating and drinking. Sandwiches may be bought at vendors, but player crafted foods will always replenish Health and Energy at a much better ratio per item. The higher level the item crafted, harvested, lumbered or mined, the more stamina it will require, so Players will be wise to bring some high stamina replenishing edibles such as watermelon juice out into the wilds with them.

Pets are quested and also gained by receiving "pet cards" which drop from critters that you defeat. They are summoned and dismissed by the click of an icon and these add a new layer of depth to the game as they can grow and fight with you, their stats assisted with other pet usable "cards" and assist you in your tasks. Besides they are heck-of-a cute as they follow you around town.

Tradeskills and Farming

Now we come to the meat of the game. You learn right from the start that you can lumber and harvest. Then you learn to "Mix" items – that is... to sew, to cook and to create. Recipes are received from drops, bought from vendors and rewards from quests. The more you "Mix" the better your skill, and products do not sell too badly to vendors.

Once you move out of Sanrio Harbor-the newbie area-and into Florapolis, you will have to speak to an NPC to get your farm, and another for a quest to get your starter seed. Of course you can also buy fertilizer to make the land more fertile, pesticide to kill the pests that might invade and an animated scare-crow just for the fun of it. Farming is how you really earn cash in this game, and obtain some items for crafting.

Gold sinks include such items as land and house improvements and dye pots. Gotta have that styling pink roof. That red jacket. Those blue suede shoes? The only way to get them is to make them or buy them from other players. Here is also where you face your first grind-that is if you feel you must grind. Is harvesting 50 of item A or hunting cutesy critters for 80 of item B a grind? It could certainly be. But let's read down into the next paragraph-the community.

The World

It isn't that large, but it is varied, colorful and explorers will enjoy discovering the fairy in the grove just beyond the nodding cotton bud trees that gives a quest to find a magical stardust tree-from which you have to harvest a golden pear-which you may or may not have the skill to harvest. Each area contains its own cutesy mobs-from funny looking cubical boars to walking star fish and oversized flowers and nodding trees that shrivel up when you've exhausted its resource only to plump up again a minute later.

Players will find plentiful visual clues to cue them in to what they are seeking. From a magical sparkle where a hidden crystal is to a circle on the ground and a twinkling swirl to indicate a portal to a building or to another part of the map. Throughout, you will run across Hello Kitty's friends who send you on quests across the land.

Conclusion

Hello Kitty Online attempts to "Bring Happiness to the World" in the entire experience. The game arrives in a pretty gift box tied up with a pink ribbon. The manual is in full color and video tutorials with voice-overs accessible on the game site eases the entry into the game. The only learning curve is for us die-hard gamers who keep trying to change camera view and wonder if we can kite and AE or gather quests for more efficient xp gain-it's simpler than you think. It's a fun, relaxing romp. You hang out, chat with friends, visit each other's farms and houses, assist each other in building houses, share the things you make, plant a few watermelons, harvest a few strawberries, the xp will come. Grind it and it will be painful.

Free to play but pay for what? We don't know at this time as the item mall is not functional yet, nor has there been an announcement for the price of the box. But there will likely be exclusive "bling" items not otherwise available in the game, as well as actual merchandise which could be player suggested and requested.

Do I recommend this game? For 99% of our readers? A resounding "No." You'd be bored to tears. Gaming parents with children in their tweens-let them have a go during Open Beta and your little girl or boy might think you are the bestest parents in the whole wide world. For you Hello Kitty aficionados-you know who you are.... you can't give this a miss. Do I like it? Well, I had my little pink house, my melon patch, my upgraded farm, my red jacket, my brown loafers, my sheep pet, my scorpion pet, my boar pet... Closed Beta is over when Open Beta rolls around, little Sylvene will be wielding her super microphone-of-doom magic wand again.

Originally posted by Carolyn Koh
This post has been modified on Jun 17 , 2008 08:18:00 PM by lsw666.

Thx for your sharing.

thanx for sharing. can we still get an account for hko though. i have the game downloaded but i need a username and password.... where do i get that???

thanks for sharing , i'll kill kitty !! Muhahaahhahaha

when i can start download this game?

from IGN - With all of the hullabaloo about Age of Conan recently, many gamers may have missed another MMO based on a longstanding and even more famous franchise. I am, of course, talking about Hello Kitty Online, the first game to combine the addictive, forget-to-eat gameplay of an MMO with the cloyingly cute aesthetics of the Hello Kitty universe. It's adorable, it's free to play, and I've got impressions of it from the closed beta.

Hello Kitty Online is a free online role playing game set in the Sanrio universe. It stars Hello Kitty and friends and sets the player on an adventure spanning multiple cities. It's being developed by SanrioDigital and Typhoon Games. When it's finished it will be a fairly large game, as far as free MMOs go. It looks and feels similar to other free online RPGS, such as Trickster. For the closed beta many of the game's elements were presented in small portions, like a sampler platter from Applebees. And much like the aforementioned sample platter, I made sure to get my fill of everything the game offered, and I'm throwing it up here in a mess of information and really bad analogies that go on for too long.

First thing to point out about HKO: you're human. I know, right?! I had already drawn fanart of my Dark Mage Kitty and was working on the design for a sexy Blood Elf Penguin chick, both of which are now useless. After getting over my disappointment I started to create my very own non-animal character. Right from the start HKO lets you customize your character with a few basic properties. Hair, skin color, eyes, mouth and even blood type can be customized. (I chose Type O so more people would like me.) There were only a few options in each section, so when we ended up in the game it looked like we entered Stepford. It probably didn't help that the only clothes we started out with at the beginning was an undershirt and some tiny shorts (maybe boxers?). According to Sanrio there will be more options when the game is finished, so players will be able to distinguish themselves sooner.

Hello Kitty Online starts off with a Dr. Seussian told tale of a crying Hello Kitty and sleeping Sanrio characters. According to the rhyming couplets and storybook illustrations, it seems the overarching story has something to do with Kitty missing and finding keys to rescue her friends. Since the beta was more of a sample of HKO, we didn't really get into that quest. We did however get to meet Sanrio characters right off the bat. Every single quest and dialogue is done with an NPC from the Sanrio universe and the entire world is built like a shrine to Hello Kitty herself. The deity cat has statues around the world, and there's even a lake in the shape of her head. It didn't take long to find my personal favorite Sanrio character, since he was waiting at the opening harbor town to show me the ropes. Badtzmaru, the coolest penguin ever (and quite possibly the inventor of the emo look), taught me how to fight, Hello Kitty style.


Duly noted, Mr. Hedgehog. Thanks for the heads up.

Yes, there's fighting in HKO. But don't get your bloodlust raging just yet. While players can defeat monsters, there are a few differences between this game and a normal RPG. First off, the monsters are just as cute as everything else in the game. Seriously, we had to take down some scorpions, and even those poisonous arachnids could be on Cute Overload. Thankfully, you don't actually kill them; you just beat them upside the head until they get dizzy and you can snatch up whatever loot they drop. In the HKO world you don't wield traditional weapons. We started out with a broom, then upgraded to a microphone stand. They work just like any other weapon system would and each upgrade is stronger and adds to attack, but you get the benefit of getting to defeat starfish with the power of rock, like you're an LSD-tripping musician.

Battling monsters doesn't actually earn you experience, so players can't level up by beating crabs to death for hours on end. The enemies are more of a living mine for various items. Everything in the game is an item collection station. Each enemy drops a specific (and occasionaly rare) type of item and all the quests in the beta are about bringing characters items. Occasionally a monster will drop a card. These cards can be used to recruit a monster as a pet. So if you beat up enough tiny lizards, you eventually get to adopt one and have him follow you around and watch everyone else attempt to beat him up. It seems the pets are designed to be assistants in battle, but for the beta they seemed to be purely eye candy.

Sanrio has said that the final game will have boss monsters that require multiple people to defeat (like a elephant-turtle hybrid from the concept art), but so far we've only gotten to defeat the underlings. We did get to see the enemy difficulty progression though. When I wandered into the Northern Fantasia Forest, tiny green armadillos swarmed on me and I lasted all of about eight seconds before getting my sorry butt sent back to town. Since the main way to get stronger seems to be to upgrade weapons and clothing, it becomes necessary to complete the quests before being able to proceed. If the developers keep this setup it would mean players couldn't just latch onto another player and leech off of them to get better, they'll have to play the game themselves.

After figuring out that I was no match for cute, Technicolor baby animals, I set off to complete the various quests assigned to me. They start out pretty basic. Fetch basil for a raccoon holding a giant spoon, check. Cut down wood for Keroppi the frog's dad or somebody, check. Like I said, every quest is about collecting things, but there are still different aspects. Players have different skill sets and collecting certain items raises them. Harvesting plants, chopping wood, mining for ore, making clothes, food, and weapons are all different skill sets. As the game progresses certain trees, mines, plants, etc require stronger tools to be able to use them, and stronger tools require a specific skill level.

The harvesting, wood chopping and foodmaking all go hand-in-hand since players can start a farm and grow crops from a variety of fruits and vegetables. I went all Harvest Moon on this thing and grew so many watermelons. I'm talking so many here. I had more melons than an MTV Spring Break party. The items you gain from farming can be sold at shops for mad coin, or, like in the case of the watermelons, be used for recipes. So I went ahead and made gallons upon gallons of watermelon juice, which raises my stamina bar. This comes in very handy for tasks that require a lot of stamina, like building a house.

The thing about house building in HKO is that it takes approximately an eon to complete. Imagine building a house by yourself in real life. After you get back from that your character would still be building his house in the game. Luckily, you can recruit guild members into helping you build the house, expediting the process. Since there's no way I was going to do this work myself, I quickly went out and joined the first guild I could find and conned some teenage Canadian twins into helping me build. As the third member of the "We Love Anime" guild I not only got to build my house, I got to engage in lively conversations about crossplay and anime conventions. I cannot stress enough that prospective players join a guild that actually matches their interest, lest they want to know about which Bleach characters are cute.


I built the manliest house possible.

Okay, so if you've read this far you're probably at least somewhat interested in the game. You might be thinking, "I like going on fetch quests for talking dogs that live in houses shaped like giant coffee cups as much as the next guy, but is this worth my time?"

After going through most everything the beta had to offer, including making stylish blue jeans, purchasing a Japanese garden, and getting a freaking T-rex as a pet, I can say that Hello Kitty Online is shaping up to be a pretty fun MMO for the younger, less battle hungry crowd. It's certainly not as in-depth as a major MMO is, but it provides a stylish environment with colorful characters and music that seems oddly epic for a game about cats and bunnies. While it seems like it'd be an ideal game for the younger demographic, I found plenty of adults playing it, too. HKO has the franchise appeal behind it to possibly make a hugely successful casual MMO.

The open beta should start up soon, and folks can sign up for an account at SanrioTown. It's free, you may as well check it out, right? Just don't ask me to help you build your house.

Also check below for a couple dozen screens from the game, along with concept art and maps of two of the new cities that will be added for the open beta.

nice preview of the game! Thx for telling us this information! I want to play ob too but is it really the size 1,85 GB!! THAT IS SOO BIG!
Greets, minoes1