Hello Kitty Online

Combat is secondary in HKO with focus on resource collecting and crafting. Several different locales based on, and named after, cities such as Beijing, Paris, London, Tokyo, and New York City are present, as well as wholly original and explorable areas.

All players are represented by customizable human avatars. Available options during character creation include gender, hairstyle, eyes, skin tone, face and blood type.

The game tells the story of a hero (the player) helping Hello Kitty and her friends wake up from eternal slumber and defeat a "mysterious and malevolent power".

SanrioDigital hosted three phases of testing: Closed Beta, Founders' Beta, and Public stress test.

The closed beta application was announced on February 13, 2008 running through February 21, 2008. More than 50,000 applications were submitted. Due to the limited number of testing accounts available, applicants were instructed to create a video explaining why the applicant should be chosen to participate in the closed beta test. This submission process ran until March 10, 2008 with selected applications being announced on March 18, 2008.

Hello Kitty Online's Closed Beta garnered mixed, though mostly positive, reactions from the media and players. Noctalis.com called it "a cloyingly sweet pink-filled wonderland of talking animals set to a chirpy soundtrack". The game's sprite-based and isometric perspective 2.5D graphics were criticized as 10-year-old technology, and the lack of customization options for each character (e.g. dye kits or ways to change the color of the home items) was noted.

IGN's hands-on review of the Closed Beta was largely favorable, concluding: