Hello Kitty Island Adventure arrived this week as the newest and cutest in the genre of 'games where you're stuck on an island with those licensed property characters you love' but hold your darn Turfys just a minute. HKIA has kicked off its PC launch with a warning that bringing your cheater-pants system date changing strats to this game could muck up your save file. So don't do it!
If you check the "Sunblink mail" section of your in-game menu for notices from the developer, you'll spot one ominously titled "time manipulation breaks the game."
That will sound familiar to a lot of Animal Crossing players who are familiar with a cheat involving changing their Nintendo hardware's device time for a date in the future. Since Animal Crossing—and lots of games of a similar style like HKIA—involve tracking real-world time to control growth of plants, in-game seasons, or other time-gated content, players can often unlock those things early or just make progress faster by cheating their games into believing extra time has passed. The warning mail for HKIA reads:
"Many players may be used to time manipulation or 'time travel' from other cozy games, but in Hello Kitty Island Adventure, it can permanently compromise your save file. Here's what to know: You will lose access to multiplayer. Time-based functionality (daily items spawning, flowers growing, and events progressing) will not work retroactively. There is nothing we can do to restore a save file once it is in this state."
A week after launch, Sunblink has reiterated to PC Gamer that time-travelling can cause irreversible game breaking bugs and cause you to miss out on seasonal content. Here's what it said:
- Players will not be able to play with friends or complete multiplayer quests, even if the other players have also time-skipped
- Players will be unable to trade with other players
- No access to friend cabins
- Exclusion from future seasonal events and/or limited-time content, even if you engage with them in the future (such as birthdays or holidays), because their content is not yet released/implemented
- Resetting of event calendars when moving between years
"Note that these effects are per save file and kick in when the save file is accessed," Sunblink adds. "Normal travel through time zones and across the dateline should not trigger any of these. Adjusting the clock when the game is closed, as long as it is reset to real time, should not trigger any of these."
Although you can get away with this cheaty stuff in Animal Crossing: New Horizons—I had multiple friends who raced ahead to summer season within the week of its March launch back in 2020—doing so in Hello Kitty Island Adventure is clearly a big no-no. Losing an entire save file to corruption is not something you'll want to deal with.
So if you're jumping in thanks to the new PC release, make sure to try out some Hello Kitty Island Aventure multiplayer with pals and maybe cheat just a little bit by referencing our Hello Kitty Island Adventure gifts guide. But don't go time travelling: Or you won't be coming back.
