Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp – Review (iOS)
It's good, but does it meet Animal Crossing expectations?
Fishing. Bug catching. Picking fruit. Interior decorating. Making decisions for your townspeople with little regard for their feelings. Forgetting to play for days at a time and becoming as annoyed at the grass growing in the game as you would in real life.
These Animal Crossing experiences seem quintessential to a game in the series, and create high standards for avid fans. With the announcement of a mobile Animal Crossing game, there was a palpable excitement paired with a concerned hesitancy among fans—how would this game live up to expectations?
As K.K. Slider greets us in the beginning of the game, a deep nostalgia and a metaphorical tear eases us into the world of Animal Crossing. To create the character, there is no round about questionnaire to decide physical attributes, just a typical character creation screen. Aside from missing the joy of riding a train into town, this begins our adventure with joyful memories, positively impacted by more certainty in our identity.
Once introduced into the Animal Crossing world, Isabelle greets us to show us around our campsite explains the basics. She presents goals to achieve, places to visit, and is always present to make life easier on the road. She explains we are now the manager of a campsite that we should make to suit other animals who may want to visit.
Each animal in the game can be given gifts which, like in previous games, are procured by finding or buying them in the world or from other players. These gifts then raise your friendship level with each animal. After a few levels, you can invite the animals to your campsite. They are always ecstatic to come but are extremely picky guests, desiring the campsite to be entirely built around their interests. This creates a scenario where you buy or craft furniture through Cyrus to meet their standards. After increasing your friendship, you receive clothing from your animal friends, as well as bells and materials to build more furniture. If you reach a friendship level of 20 with any of your animal friends, they will give you a picture of themselves – the ultimate achievement in any friendship.
In addition to a campsite you can decorate for your visitors, there is also a camper which can be expanded and decorated internally and externally similar to the housing development in any previous Animal Crossing game. Your animal guests allow you privacy and don’t visit your camper, so you are able to decorate this to your specific likings and desires.
The actual gameplay of Pocket Camp is similar to New Leaf—tap and click to make an action, try on clothes, and complete tasks to better your campsite and friendships. These actions do become repetitive, but with only so much to do at once in the game, it is not boring.
Yes, there are micro-transactions in this game. No, they are not noticeable or necessary. Though there is a small bar at the top of the screen advertising fun things you can buy with leaf tickets (the micro transaction currency), there is no necessity to use it. As you achieve goals, gain friendship, level up, and experience more of the game, you are gifted these tickets gratuitously, in that the only reason you would need to buy tickets would be if you are impatient or really want to buy them. Throughout the game, there are small options to speed up production or produce more fish, bugs, or fruit. By ignoring these prompts, the mobile game borders more on a short term, sporadic play, versus the blackhole of gameplay in previous Animal Crossing games.
The beauty of this Animal Crossing game keeps its roots in the aesthetic and nostalgia of previous games in the series, but with a mobile twist. The game itself is themed on this mobile idea, and provides fulfillment for a short-term desire to play Animal Crossing. With multiple areas to visit, it creates a sense of the previous games without the time commitment. Compared to other mobile takes on longer games, such as Fallout Shelter, Pocket Camp holds its own, if not breaking ahead of the pack. With the recent update and inclusion of Christmas clothes and furniture, Nintendo continues to spark intrigue into their world of Animal Crossing.
Recommendation: Long time fans and new converts alike will find Pocket Camp enjoyable, but more importantly they will find it kindling a desire to play a longer iteration of Animal Crossing, as it just whets our tongue for what Nintendo has in store for us in the future.
