As soon as I heard about the Animal Crossing mobile Nintendo Direct I knew that 140 characters was not going to be enough to express my thoughts and excitement. I also realised that some people would not appreciate a one hour video of me fangirling and talking about Animal Crossing either. So I decided to go for a blog post. This way I can say everything I need to say, you can read it or not and things will make a lot more sense. When I make videos when I'm excited they tend to be all over the place and I talk really fast so can be hard to understand. So here I am trying to be comprehensive and more structured.
I've decided to base this off of the way the Nintendo Direct flowed and also throw in additional comments about other things I've seen online. Like I said I have a lot of thoughts so, let's not waste any more time!
Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp
First of all - the name. It's not the best spin-off name. It kind of follows along the lines of Animal Crossing: Let's Go To The City. Very literal. It would have been nice if they had gone along the lines of New Leaf or Wild World but I don't know what else they would have called it.
Not that I can really be annoyed at something like the name. If anything everyone will probably just call it Animal Crossing Mobile anyway.
Camp Manager
In this spin-off, we are not going to be mayors. We are taking on the role of Camp Manager. Which makes sense, I mean I hardly expected them to give us a full Animal Crossing game on mobile. So when I saw the concept of decorating your own campsite I thought that would be it, kind of a watered down version of things like the Mario mobile app. And the way you decorate the campsite is the same as you would in Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer which I am already very familiar with so I thought that would be okay. Definitely something simple and easy to do for mobile phone.
But finding out that this is only part of what you can do with this app is amazing. If anything, I feel like this is the kind of thing Happy Home Designer should have been because it gives you so much more gameplay than just designing a campsite.
So I am very excited to take on my role of camp manager and to design a campsite - especially if it means it's not the only thing we get to do.
Helping Villagers
Something that every Animal Crossing player is familiar with. I like the idea of doing quests for villagers in exchange for crafting materials. I also like the new friendship level that they have added to the game. This way you know exactly how friendly you are with a villager and it's easier to see the friendship progress over time. In the other games, you kind of just guessed how close you were with a villager.
Not sure if your friendship level can decrease with a villager like it does in other games though. I mean it would be interesting if it did so you would have to keep in contact and talk to the villager to keep the friendship level up. Although I don't know how interested people would be in that feature, but I think I would like it.
Also, I noticed in the video that when the villager shook the fruit tree, it told you a time for when the trees would replenish with fruit which is interesting. In other games, normally fruit would just reappear the next day but it's good to know the waiting time is a lot less for this mobile game. Although I guess it would have to be to get those materials.
Crafting furniture
Instead of buying all our furniture from Tom Nook, we have to craft our furniture by gathering materials. Something that I think will be very time consuming, as items of furniture take time to craft. Also, I don't know how many items Cyrus can craft at a time so this is something that could be very frustrating for me.
I have never been the most patient of people, especially right now. I mean I can't contain my excitement for this mobile game. Every time I look up things about it or think about it, I just get super hyped up. So waiting for furniture to be built is going to be kind of annoying...but I guess that brings us to the next topic.
Leaf Tickets
People are very divided about this. But honestly, how can you expect a mobile app not to have in-app purchases?
I guess it does suck though because it's not something we ever had in Animal Crossing. You just paid for the price of the game and that was it. But this game, is free to download, so essentially free to play. They gotta make money somewhere...
And of course, Tom Nook is the one to be handling your real life money transactions. That was definitely on purpose. I've spent years paying off debt to Tom Nook so it makes sense he would be after real money now.
On a serious note though, I don't know how to feel about the Leaf Ticket thing. I mean you can use them to have things completed faster and everything but will they become a requirement the further you get in the game?
If so that would be a serious turn off for me. As an avid player of mobile games, I have always refused to make in-app purchases for things such as lives in Candy Crush. So I probably won't be spending money just to have something built quicker for my Animal Crossing campsite. I would rather pay an up-front price and not have to pay again.
So, as long as you can get plenty of gameplay without the purchase of leaf tickets then it's fine. But I definitely think it should be left as an optional thing. I don't like paying real money for virtual currency. It just feels wrong.
However, if they added certain features that you had to pay for it may be different. But I guess we just have to see what happens...
Villagers Move Around?
This isn't actually talked about in the Nintendo Direct but I noticed it while watching it - the villagers move around? I think this is great because it means you don't have the same five villagers around. And I was wondering how you attracted more villagers to the campsite.
I'm not sure how many villagers you can have on a campsite at one time either but I know I will be constantly checking my app to see what villagers are around.
Throw Nets and Honey
I have to admit I was pretty excited about these. Not that catching fish or bugs in Animal Crossing has ever been hard, but finding the particular one you need for a quest can be annoying. So this makes things easier, as you can catch large amounts of fish/bugs in one go.
But I'm pretty sure this is something that you have to pay for. So something I think I could probably live without.
I am excited to see if they are used in a new console version of Animal Crossing in the future though. Because not only was I watching the Nintendo Direct and getting excited about the mobile game, I was also watching and getting excited on what they could bring to Animal Crossing for the Nintendo Switch. So I think these would be cool additions to the game. But instead of paying for them you could only use them once a day or something. Would be something to think about.
Play Real Time
This is one of the reasons why I got hooked on playing Animal Crossing so much. Playing in real time means you wanna play every hour of the day to see what changes and things you can do at different times of the day. Obviously, you could just cheat and change the time of your device, but where's the fun in that? So for sure, playing in real time on mobile means I'll be playing morning, noon and night.
Not to mention HOLIDAYS! This has always been a huge thing in Animal Crossing for me. I love the holidays in Animal Crossing. They are always super cute. And it was only really with the release of the 3DS game that we got to experience the most holidays. So I am excited to see what they will be like in Pocket Camp, especially because we will get mobile app updates regularly so they can always create new things for all the events in the world.
It's just one of those extra things that makes Animal Crossing special. So I am super excited to play all year round, and basically forever...
Shopping
I would have been surprised if this was something that was left out of this mobile app. Shopping is a big thing in Animal Crossing. And dressing up your character and customising things is also a big part of it. So I am super glad we have this.
Plus the marketplace and all the camper vans are super cute so I am definitely a fan of this.
Designing Your Camper Van
I was waiting the whole video for this. I needed to know if we could decorate the camper van. It's a necessity. Like, if you're going to be driving it around all the time we have to be able to personalise it. So yes. We can. All is well.
Not only that but we have NEW characters! (Honestly surprised that Tom Nook just didn't get into the vehicle business). But yes, new characters! This is always exciting. I don't know a lot about them but they upgrade your van.
They also bring loans back into the game, something that we are familiar with because of Tom Nook. But we don't need leaf tickets for these upgrades. As far as I know, these are strictly bell loans. Which means we can pay them off by selling things in the game. Which has been something I have gotten really good at in Animal Crossing. So I am not worried about some loans if it means I can have a really fancy camper vans.
Friends!
Want to be my friend on Animal Crossing? I'm all for it.
The summer that Animal Crossing: New Leaf came out I made so many new friends. And I don't have any people in my real life that share my love for Animal Crossing so I need people like that in my life.
So yes, I am open to having all the friends on Animal Crossing and visiting people's campsites and all the other things we can do with that.
And as soon as I get the game, you can be sure I'll be posting my friend code online :)
Customising Your Character
This is something that they introduced in Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer and I am here for it. Mainly because ever since Wild World, I use the same character and it's annoying looking up face guides haha. So being able to choose whatever you want your character to look like is great.
It also means we can choose a skin tone which is also great and I approve of that very much. So no complaints here. All is well.
Amenities
I got super excited about these! Mainly because it brings us more animations of villagers interacting with items and it's super cute. Honestly, the main appeal of Animal Crossing for me is that it is super adorable.
But yes, so amenities are bigger items you can add to the campsite and take a lot longer to build. I don't know how easy it will be to swap amenities out or how many we can have but I want to be able to have all of them at least once to see the villagers use them. And again, it gets me excited to see what they could bring to Animal Crossing for the Switch.
Controls
The final thing I want to talk about, that wasn't in the videos is controls! So okay, I know it's a mobile game, so all the controls are just going to be touching the screen.
But I think this is going to be weird. Mainly because Animal Crossing has always been on console so I'm very used to using buttons for all my Animal Crossing actions. Apart from the occasional use of the DS touch screen.
It will be strange to only use touch screen with the game. Especially when the instinct will be to press A to talk/interact with anyone or anything. And also to use the joystick to move your character. So I think it'll be interesting to see how that goes. But I also think it will take away a bit of the playing experience just because tapping everything could get in the way of things. But I guess we just see what it's like. Not that something like this could ever stop me from playing this game.
That brings us to the end of all my thoughts on the Animal Crossing Nintendo Direct. (Way more than 140 characters).
As you can see 99% of this blog post was positive. I really don't think I could have said a bad thing about this mobile app if I tried. Obviously, as a lover of the Animal Crossing franchise, I was going to be all for anything new Nintendo wanted to bring out to do with it. And this mobile application is definitely worth the wait.
It doesn't even feel like it's a mobile app. This is a full Animal Crossing game in its own right. And I can't wait until I have it. I know they've released it early in Australia and it's killing me because all I want to do is download it right now.
But I will be patient. And I guess I will have to be even more patient and wait to see if they are going to be releasing a new Animal Crossing console game in the future. I just know that they can go above and beyond with Animal Crossing if they brought it to the Switch and that is what I'm really hoping for.
In the meantime, I'll probably be torturing myself by watching gameplay videos and looking at the Animal Crossing tag on Tumblr. And also playing the other Animal Crossing games to keep me satisfied until the release of the new game. They say it'll be released late November but how late in November is what I wanna know. An exact date would be ideal but I guess we just see what happens.
If you guys are interested in following me and my adventures in Animal Crossing then feel free to follow my Animal Crossing Tumblr blog! I haven't been very active recently but I will definitely be posting more when the new Animal Crossing game is released. And as always, find me on Twitter for all my real-time up-to-date fangirling.
~ Courtney x
