Parent's Guide: Hello Kitty and the Apron of Magic: Rhythm Cooking - Age rating, mature content and difficulty

What is Hello Kitty and the Apron of Magic: Rhythm Cooking?

Hello Kitty and the Apron of Magic: Rhythm Cooking is a musical cookery game for the 3DS, where players join Kitty and friends in making all sorts of dishes to the beat of a song. By tapping, swiping and swirling in time with the music, you'll slice, dice and sauté your way to victory, earning more points the more on-beat your movements are. And the more you cook, the more Sanrio characters will come to live in Apron Town, bringing new recipes for you to try when they move in. Interacting with other characters around town will kick-start 'quizzes', which are mostly just variations on spot the differences, perhaps asking you to match silhouettes, memorise differences between pictures or spot the object that's changing in an image.

How do you play Hello Kitty and the Apron of Magic: Rhythm Cooking?

The bulk of the game is it's rhythm cooking aspect though, where players need to tap and swipe across the pink circles that appear over the various ingredients, frying pans and chopping boards on the Touch Screen. During a song, a gauge around each tap mark fills up, and once full, the pink dot turns green, indicating the optimum time to make your moves. The top screen meanwhile shows a timeline for the song, to give you an indication of what's coming up and more precise timings for your taps - although to be honest, it's pretty much redundant, as you can get good scores purely by focusing on the bottom screen.

How easy is Hello Kitty and the Apron of Magic: Rhythm Cooking to pick up and play?

Arguably the biggest stumbling block to Apron of Magic is it's slightly haphazard approach to reading - some segments are voiced, notably the narrator or instructions prior to mini-games, but talking to characters in town is not, being done entirely through text instead. As such it's hard to recommend the game to kids who can't read very well, despite little ones arguably being it's biggest audience. Signposting can also be an issue - when character's first moved in, it makes it very obvious you should pay a visit to their house, but once you've cooked one dish with them, there's no indication that you need to play the cooking games five more times before the next person moves in. It is fairly forgiving within the rhythm cooking sections though, as you can miss every single note and not get a game over, still coming out with 100 points and a stamp for your trouble.

Sample Sentences:

• "It's so much fun cooking with you. I hope you will get even better next time!"
• "My dad is an inventor. That's why I love inventions. I can create many kinds of things."
• "Thanks for coming to my house today. It's interesting there are lots of kinds of vegetable, isn't it!"

Like Hello Kitty's cute and innocent image, Hello Kitty and the Apron of Magic: Rhythm Cooking is as squeaky clean as they come - it's a game about cooking dishes with friends to music, and has no gore, swearing or violence whatsoever. About as dodgy as it gets is preparing a prawn for a tempura, chopping off it's head and peeling off its skin.

Age Ratings

Format Reviewed: Nintendo 3DS