Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp

Impressions on my first week camping with Nintendo’s newest phone game #

As a huge fan of the Animal Crossing series I’ve been waiting patiently for Nintendo’s mobile iteration to finally come out. My biggest question was: how close will Pocket Camp be to the other games in the series?

Impressions #

I got the game last Tuesday when it came out, so I’ve been playing for six days so far, and it’s actually much closer to normal Animal Crossing than I was expecting. But something about the game feels less wholesome than playing New Leaf or Wild World.

Firstly, I love the art style and graphics. The Animal Crossing art style looks stunning on my iPhone 7’s retina display. Everything is just so crisp and cartoony. Animal Crossing has always played best on handhelds because of the game’s casual pick up and play nature, so it’s nice to play it on a screen that actually has decent resolution for the first time.¹

The game has very pick up and play vibes – even more than the regular games – because of how the game’s world is split up into 8 separate tiny levels. There’s an ocean level for saltwater fishing, a river level for freshwater fishing, a tropical island for bug catching, a forest level for harvesting fruit, and a few other levels for purchasing upgrades for your camper, and shopping for new outfits and furniture.

So as you’re making the rounds to all these different levels, there’s different animals that you will see hanging out / camping in each level. The animals will request that you bring them resources like bugs, fruit, and fish so that they can reward you with currency² and raw resources³ so that you can craft new furniture and accessories for both your camper and camp site.

Pocket Camp is also the first game in the series where you can put furniture and other items outside of your character’s dwelling.⁴ Which is really weird to me. Outside your camper you can decorate your site however you choose. Honestly it feels really bizarre putting like real furniture just outside on the ground. Lol, it’s just like, would you ever do that in real life?

Anyway, the benefit of decorating your camp site with furniture and stuff is to attract animals to hang out at your camp site. By engaging in this process you can level up your friendships, and (I think) get certain items from them as your friendship level gets higher.

There’s also lots of multiplayer functions in the game.⁵ It’s fun seeing other players around the camp grounds, and you can even visit their camp site to see how they have decorated their site.

Complaints #

Though overall the game is actually a lot of fun, and I’m really enjoying it for the time being, I do have some complaints about it.

It is a freemium phone game, with that in mind it has some of the tropes you will be familiar with if you have played other games of this type. Anytime you craft a piece of furniture, there’s a wait time between a few minutes to a few days that must be endured. Don’t want to wait? Just use Leaf Tickets to speed up the process. How do you get more Leaf Tickets? By paying real money of course!⁶

I personally haven’t had the need to pay any real money yet. Just playing the game a little each day is enough to be able to save up to get what you want. But overall, the way the game is monetized gives me a bad feeling while playing the game. It just feels more microtransaction-y and less wholesome overall than playing one of the main Animal Crossing games.

Conclusion #

Honestly, my favourite part of having Animal Crossing on my phone is that in times when I feel like using my phone, it gives me something to do other than just check social media.

I think that Nintendo did a great job with this game, and I’m now convinced that their mobile game division is doing some pretty great things! I really loved Super Mario Run and Pokemon Go. And I like Animal Crossing Pocket Camp too. It’s a bit of a shame that Nintendo has to resort to scummy monetization practices, but it kind of comes with the territory of being actually profitable on the App Store. Apparently they weren’t happy with the amount of money that Super Mario Run made, so they’re trying to create more profitable mobile games by doing microtransactions instead.

I would really like to see Nintendo add more content to the game to keep it interesting. It’s always fun playing Animal Crossing on Christmas and other holidays to see what kind of things going on in their little animal world.

I can’t see myself sticking with Animal Crossing for a long amount of time. But for now I’m having fun with it. My friend Colette tweeted today that she’s deleting the game and going back to New Leaf. I do not blame her one bit.

One thing is for certain, Pocket Camp will bring a lot of new fans to the series, and that’s only a good thing because when the new Switch version finally comes out, the game will ultimately sell more copies than it would if Pocket Camp was never made. And that’s a good thing, because this series has brought me lots of happiness over the years. And if it can effect other people in the same ways it’s effected me then that’s a good thing.