Hello Kitty Seasons is a Wii game in which you control your human character as the Deputy Mayor of Sanrio Town.  Your job is to help the Hello Kitty characters created the finest city they can, and the game takes place throughout the changes of the four seasons.

The primary mechanism for game interaction is pointing the Wii-mote and screen and hitting the A button.  This is how you’ll move your character around and interact with the Hello Kitty characters that live in the town.  Many games also require players to point at the screen, and some use a combination of the d-pad and performing an action such as scooping  with or flicking the Wii-mote.

All the game’s instructions are presented as text-only, so kids will need to be strong readers to understand what is going on, unless they have a grown-up or older sibling playing alongside them reading everything to them.   Combined with the need for a steady hand in the game’s control system and the difficulty of some of the mini-games, Hello Kitty Season is probably not the best choice for toddlers.

When you first start playing, you are given a series of quests which introduce you to many of the game’s gameplay elements, such as gardening, turning fruit into jam or pies and selling them, playing mini-games at the elementary school, laundry and more.  As soon as you finish a task, Hello Kitty is there to take you to the next one until you’ve learned all the basics of living in Sanrio Town.

After you learn the basics, you’ll soon be transported into a different season, and see how the town and the actions of its citizens changes.  In springtime, lots of folks are cleaning up.  In summer, there’s lots of outdoor and fun activities, including selling ice cream.  The ice cream is mini-game is actually a good example of why this game is too difficult for toddlers.  You’re asked to fulfill customer’s orders after getting a half-second glimpse of the type of cone they want.  It’s just too difficult for toddlers, and even though the game doesn’t punish players for mistakes too much, it still is hard for them to be successful and could lead to frustration.

However, Hello Kitty Season is packed with fun activities, mini-games, and other activities.  Players can spend a n entire gameplay session decorating their house, or spend time gathering stones and wood to build objects, run around and help Sanrio Town occupants with quests, or just play their favorite mini-games over and over. 

Although the day-to-day quest game is a single-player mode, the game also features a multiplayer mode from the main menu which allows up to four players to take part in the different seasonal mini-games.  Each player is assigned a Hello Kitty character by default, there is no chance for players to select who they want to be.  Player 1 is always Kitty, Player 2 is always Badtz-Maru, Player 3 is always Cinnamon and Player 4 is always Melody.

This multiplayer mode is a nice way to enjoy some quick, fun multiplayer activites, and there is a nice variety of mini-games which are good for all skill levels.

Hello Kitty Seasons is jammed with easy-to-play gameplay activities, and can provide hours of enjoyment for kids who are old enough to read and control the game.   We definitely recommend this for families with kids, but some of the activities require just a bit too much coordination and quick thinking for toddlers to have much consistent success.