Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp for mobile out next month
55 years ago
Animal Crossing’s first mobile game, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, will launch in late November, Nintendo announced during a Direct presentation about the project. Pre-registration for the game is available on both iOS and Android now.
In Pocket Camp, players manage their own campsite. They can personalize and build up both their character and their campsite, which they decorate with a variety of buildings and furniture.
Furniture can be crafted through collectibles. This system works by visiting nearby “recreation sites,” doing favors for the animal inhabitants and collecting rewards. After that, players head on over to alpaca blacksmith Cyrus with their new crafting materials to create furniture.
Different animals have different furniture preferences, so creating and decorating the campsite with their ideal pieces will entice them to come visit the campsite and increase players’ “friendship level” with them. That’s a new feature for the series, and players can now keep an eye on how much an animal likes them.
Cyrus can also be commissioned to build different amenities, like pools and new places to check out. These take some time for him to build, so no rush there.
Although players can go seek out materials on their own by visiting beaches and islands, the free-to-play game also has microtransactions. Leaf Tickets can be traded for materials or to speed up the time it takes to build an amenity, and players can either earn them in-game or buy them with real money from the shop.A more familiar feature in Pocket Camp is fishing, which now has a nice addition: Players can use a net to catch a whole bunch of fish at one time. Fish can be used as crafting materials as well. There are other Animal Crossing mainstays, too: The game runs in real time, Timmy and Tommy Nook run the Nookling Global shop and Able Sisters to Go is a fast-fashion version of the classic clothing store. Kicks, the shoe store, is also back. There will be seasonal events spread throughout the year that offer limited-time decorations and outfits too.
And best of all? Players have their own camper that they can customize and upgrade, inside and out. But they’ve still got a mortgage to pay off, although instead of owing Tom Nook, they’ll owe thousands of bells to a trio of penguin brothers.
A multiplayer feature lets players exchange ID numbers to visit each others’ campsites. They can make friends or even offer up some kudos if their campsite is especially inspiring.
First announced in spring 2016, Nintendo originally planned to release the Animal Crossing game for smartphones sometime before that year was up. The release of Super Mario Run that fall, however, caused the company to move the rest of its schedule around.
While Fire Emblem Heroes arrived before March 2017 — the initial launch window for Nintendo’s first mobile game trio — Animal Crossing’s smartphone debut was delayed twice over.
Prior to this, the franchise’s most recent installment was Animal Crossing: amiibo Festival for Wii U. The party game wasn’t exactly well-received; neither was the spinoff that directly preceded it, the Nintendo 3DS game Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer.
A full-fledged Animal Crossing game for Switch, meanwhile, remains but a dream.
A more familiar feature in Pocket Camp is fishing, which now has a nice addition: Players can use a net to catch a whole bunch of fish at one time. Fish can be used as crafting materials as well. There are other Animal Crossing mainstays, too: The game runs in real time, Timmy and Tommy Nook run the Nookling Global shop and Able Sisters to Go is a fast-fashion version of the classic clothing store. Kicks, the shoe store, is also back. There will be seasonal events spread throughout the year that offer limited-time decorations and outfits too.
