Ok I am dropping this because I need this music out of my head or I’ll go insane.

I am so fascinated by why this exists. Who approached who to get this Netflix-subscription-exclusive officially licensed Sanrio mobile game developed by people who obviously repurposed their existing code of a previous game? How did anyone make money off of this? Who benefited?

Obviously this game was made on the cheap. Look at these bands. Some of these videos have less than 300 views??? How were they found? How were they selected? Did anyone have to sign off on these? Does anyone know they were even included? Hell, there’s a non-mainstream Vocaloid in there!

The legal documentation on how this project happened is a tantalizing dream of a video essay I will never get to watch. (Because I sure as hell ain’t makin’ it)

This game is extra fascinating because I have no idea what is or is not outside the scope of expected Hello Kitty merchandising opportunities. Like, this exists. Are there any taboo topics for Hello Kitty to be associated with? Because some of the lyrics in this rhythm game’s dance club music made me a little uncomfortable when my nephew asked if he could try. Is Hello Kitty made exclusively for adults to post-ironically like something with a childish aesthetic?

Which makes me wonder, how important is quality to the brand of Hello Kitty? The animations for this game are bare bones nothingness. No one can even blink. Is it enough for the characters to be sculpted on-model? Lacking in polish as the renders are?

At the same time, this game doesn’t feel cheap. It is very honest and earnest with how little content it has. Unless there is a secret second map if I actually stuck through it and unlocked all the characters, what you see is what there is to have. The game is structured in runs - pick a party of animals for your parade, then try to play through a series of 6 songs. In each song, animals have a health bar. Tap in time to the beat to choose which of three lanes the animal dances, avoiding fences and picking up coins and upgrade materials. If they die, they’re out for the run. Run out of animals, and you’re out early. (I actually like that the animals’ health bar is separate from your score for unlocking goodies. You can still get points for perfectly timing the beat straight into a tiger trap.)

There’s a surprising amount of depth in the different characters’ roles and abilities. My Melody is the healer, and a near necessity in every run, as is Pompompurin the tank. I never figured out the use of Hello Kitty’s friendship ability, but Pochacco and Tuxedo Sam had enough health to be filler fodder at the front lines. Swapping characters or using an ability takes a beat, which means you can’t swap lanes. Juggling how many beats to move to the right position vs trying to heal or avoid obstacles while not missing out on collectibles can get pretty hectic!

Unfortunately, as this is a rhythm game, the mediocrity of the music killed my enthusiasm to unlock Kuromi. The brutal difficulty of her final lava-filled castle was tense and fun, but the piss-easy early levels were too much of a grind between attempts. Plus the game artificially inflated its difficulty with 1-hit KO hammer traps that threw off the game balance. I might have stuck with it even with them if the camera wasn’t so inconsistent with how many beats into the future it showed at a time.

I have absolutely no idea what star rating to give this. It was “free”, but not in the evil, predatory way that other mobiles games are free*. If this was a 3DS game, it would be easy to knock as not quite worth it. But being on my phone meant it was easy enough to slot into odd moments of waiting. An absolutely surreal confluence of market forces for how art gets made.