Review: Sumikkogurashi Create a Wonderful Sumikko Island Embraces Slow Life

Sumikkogurashi Create a Wonderful Sumikko Island is a pleasant surprise! Getting games based on the San-X characters worldwide isn’t guaranteed. And when Nippon Columbia and Imagineer brought it up, it was with very little fanfare. Which is a shame, as this is an adorable, relaxing, and soothing little sandbox that is incredibly cute and not at all demanding.

The premise of Sumikkogurashi Create a Wonderful Sumikko Island isn’t all that different from Animal Crossing: New Horizons. The mascots Neko, Penguin?, Shirokuma, Tokage, and Tonkatsu, along with other smaller characters like Ebifurai no Shippo, get an opportunity to move to a deserted island and relax there. This means placing some buildings and arranging decorations that meet everyone’s requests, including additional visitors, so everyone can live happily together. 

Sumikkogurashi Create a Wonderful Sumikko Island is a game with no pressure and challenge. We’re basically a benevolent force in the sky who listens to the requests of different characters and fulfills them. A pink Tapioca wants a pumpkin? Plant a pumpkin patch and harvest one. Penguin? wants a swing? Gather the materials, build it, and place it. All of the major Sumikko want a restaurant? Build it, plant some vegetable patches to get produce to offer there, and set it up. Zassou wants to see Neko in a new outfit? Go to the in-game store and use coins you earned to buy that cat some island wear! It’s the spring season? make sure you place themed decorations and plants that fit the season to make people happy. Do all these things and you’ll spark joy and unlock new requests, which in turn causes more characters to visit and the island space to grow larger. Telling people what you’ve done also gets you things like coins and rewards and, since characters will wait a few days for things to happen, there’s always time to help them out.

While it might be easiest to immediately suggest Sumikkogurashi Create a Wonderful Sumikko Island is an Animal Crossing type of game, it’s really more like decorative ones such as Twinkleby and Gourdlets. We don’t decorate inside the characters’ homes after placing them. We don’t talk to the characters, really. We sort of watch over them, arrange buildings and decorations to meet requests, and watch characters be cute. Maybe we dress them up and photograph them, with over 90 “challenges” coming from taking pictures of them in certain situations. It’s hands-off, but thoroughly pleasant. And since an array of items do unlock and we’re encouraged to maintain different themes for different seven-day seasons, it almost feels like a stress-relieving means of playing around with an environment and ensuring it is cute.

The only thing that frustrates me about Sumikkogurashi Create a Wonderful Sumikko Island is the gathering of materials. The only ones who can get items from designated points are Neko, Penguin?, Shirokuma, Tokage, and Tonkatsu. You can’t just tell them to do so. You can pick them up and drop them near the spots that can be harvested, chopped, gathered, or hit, but there’s no guarantee they’ll actually perform that action. And there’s no way for a player to personally tap those items to get the materials. Selecting them only shows you which potential items you could get from that source. So you basically have to drop a character, hope they decide to gather, watch until they show a prompt where you can play a very short and easy minigame to assist in gathering materials to ensure you get more than one, and keep repeating that to get what you need. Especially since it isn’t guaranteed the in-game store will sell what you need that day.

However, that lack of interactions and control, combined with the need to rearrange to suit seasons, might get a little frustrating. Days pass quite quickly in Sumikkogurashi Create a Wonderful Sumikko Island, so you probably won’t get too much gathering done. While you can get away with just shifting around flowers and trees each season to meet objectives or placing a few decorations, it does feel like there’s a sense of impermanence that keeps you from leaving things you set up on the fifth day of your first spring in place by the fourth day of your first summer. 

Still, there’s something soothing about being an observer decorating in Sumikkogurashi Create a Wonderful Sumikko Island. The San-X mascots are adorable, and it’s easy to check in the in-game index to learn about them or jump to focus on them. There are a substantial number of decorations, and we’re encouraged to use a variety due to requests. There are some frustrations here, especially when it comes to gathering or needing to suit the seasons. Still, it’s quite a pleasant, relaxing, and cozy little decorating game that I think fans of the characters or cute mascots in general will appreciate. 

Sumikkogurashi Create a Wonderful Sumikko Island is available on the Switch.