Hello Kitty and the whole Sanrio family are on fire lately. Tons of collabs with Yu-Gu-Oh!, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, just to name a few. Plus, a great new game for cozy gamers akin to Animal Crossing with Hello Kitty Island Adventure. Now, it’s time to get the energy going and run around as your favourite characters with Hello Kitty And Friends: Freeze Tag Party. That’s right, run around small “villages” chasing or getting chased by Hello Kitty, Kuromi, Cinnamaroll, My Melody, and many more.

Why are the Sanrio characters so cute?

Freeze Tag Party, as it’ll be referred to going forward, is as simple as playing tag with your friends. It’s an interesting choice of a playground game to make into a video game, but here we are. There is a small selection of maps that have roughly the same kind of layout, complete with two hunters and six challengers. The challengers are trying to avoid getting caught, while hunters are, as you would expect, trying to catch them. The gameplay itself is very slow, outside of some characters having an ability there’s no option to run, so you’re locked to a single pace. Outside of the normal matches, there are also a bunch of missions to complete to unlock more characters and outfits. These are things like catching all the challengers in a certain amount of time, or avoiding being caught, but every seven seconds you get stunned.

While the missions can make the game more fun, once you complete them it’s unlikely you’ll play them again because there’s no reward. Another spot that I thought would be fun is with multiplayer. Regardless of if you’re playing on the same console, or on two separate Nintendo Switches, there’s a maximum of two players for the multiplayer. It is also restricted to local play, there is no online for this. You also cannot play on the same team. One has to be a hunter, and the other has to be a challenger, so if you’re playing on one console, get ready for the old school feeling of screen peaking.

Run, Cinnamaroll, run!!

As is usually expected with these kinds of games, the music is really cheery, but extremely repetitive. Even though matches can be quite quick, you’re likely to hear multiple loops of the same song each and every match. Much to the same effect, the game is really bright and vibrant with pastel colours, which can actually be a disadvantage to play any darker characters like Kuromi, but it’s also kind of ugly to look at. The textures are quite pixelated, and the buildings and boxes you have to stare at to hide are quite ugly looking.

The real prize was the friends we made along the way.

While I understand at the end of the day this is a kid’s game, the all around simplicity really shows this is a much “younger” game than a lot of previous Hello Kitty games. I had fun playing Freeze Tag Party when there were missions and challenges to do, but just playing the game as it is, isn’t exactly the most fun I have had with the Sanrio characters.

Hello Kitty And Friends: Freeze Tag Party is available now on Nintendo Switch.

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch.

A copy of Hello Kitty And Friends: Freeze Tag Party was provided by the publisher.