Hello Kitty Online (HKO), produced by Sanrio Digital, is an upcoming Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) based on the famous Sanrio characters. Hello Kitty Online will allow players to explore and adventure in Sanrio’s fantasy world, a magical land bursting with cuteness but also fraught with many dangers. Hello Kitty Online will launch in the second half of 2008.

Work is also ongoing on the game’s first expansion pack, to be titled “Island Adventure” and scheduled for release in 2009.

Island Adventure will be the first expansion pack in gaming history that will reduce rather than expand an existing game world. The premise is the crash-landing (without casualties) on a mysterious island in the South Pacific of Hello Kitty Air flight 337, which had been carrying Hello Kitty and friends to the 5^th Cuteness World Symposium in Perth, Australia.

Our heroes – including Hello Kitty, Dear Daniel, Keroppi, Badtz-Maru and many others – find themselves marooned on the nameless island along with a couple hundred fellow passengers, whose roles will be filled by end-users. Soon the survivors discover that the island is inhabited by a community of squat, foul-mouthed, inferiorly-animated characters whose only intention is to send the newcomers packing by any means possible.

As tensions with the island’s original inhabitants rise to a boil, a crisis of leadership is brooding within the ranks of our cuddly friends. Will Hello Kitty manage to hold together the band of survivors using her trademark cuteness and amiability? Or will Badtz-Maru rise to power, arguing that survival on the island requires ruthlessly doing unto others before they do unto you? Who will you follow?

Players will embark on missions to explore the island, find out more about the natives, and gather resources necessary for the survival of the group. Can you save Hello Kitty and friends and help them get off the island and back to Sanrio Land?

Island Adventure will include many improvements, refinements, and additions to the basic game. Confirmed in the expansion are the following:

• Increased level and skill cap

• Raids

• PvP

• Hello Kitty and Badtz-Maru player sessions – take control of one of these powerful characters for up to one hour in times of crisis

• New skills and abilities: dessert-making, dual-wield (lollipops, wands), summon Twin Stars, and many more

• Cross-franchise mayhem