When I first heard the news of a mobile "Animal Crossing" game, called "Pocket Camp," I was skeptical. I, like countless others, had joined the stampede of "Pokémon Go" players as soon as it came out, and while I did enjoy playing, it didn’t take long for the novelty (and my phone’s battery) to wear off, leading me to eventually stop. Nintendo’s latest foray into mobile games held substantially more interest to me, as well as suspicion; "Animal Crossing" is one of my absolute favorite games, and I doubted that it could be compacted into an app that would do it justice.
If you’re not familiar with "Animal Crossing," it’s a community-based simulation game in which the player character is a human living in a town full of adorable anthropomorphized animals. There is no single objective to the game, and the player can complete a wide variety of tasks in their town (such as fishing, donating artifacts to their museum, running errands for the animals, etc). It doesn’t seem like a genre that would lend itself very well to mobile gaming.
Despite my reservations, I basically counted down the days to "Pocket Camp"’s release and downloaded it immediately when it came a day early. I was encouraged to see familiar visual motifs and sound effects immediately upon opening the game and was only delighted further as I designed my character and began to play. The premise of "Pocket Camp" is that the player character is a campground manager, tasked with decorating a campground to appeal to the various animals that camp in the surrounding area, who you can interact with and invite to hang out at your campsite.
You earn money and resources to furnish your campsite by befriending the villagers and doing them favors, such as bringing them fish or fruit that can be collected from the various areas of the game. As you play, your individual friendships and character’s levels increase, which allows you to craft more furniture and invite more animals to your campsite. Animals will only visit your campsite if you have certain furniture or decorations that they like, so the animals that visit you increase as you continue to play and level up.
The motif of camping pays homage to a recent update to the 3DS version of the game, "Animal Crossing: New Leaf," which adds a campsite that special non-player characters (NPCs) can drive their personal camper vans to so that they can visit the player’s town and sell special items. "Pocket Camp" bases the player out of their own camper van and, similar to the NPCs, allows the player to drive to different areas as they please. "Pocket Camp" is in many respects more simple than classic "Animal Crossing," but has managed to preserve most of its core elements in some capacity: collecting natural resources, befriending animals, buying and selling items with NPCs, and decorating areas with furniture and other items.
The amount of activities you can do while playing and overall level of challenge is well-suited to play in small bursts, such as while you’re on the bus, making it perfect for a mobile app. Most importantly, it maintains "Animal Crossing"’s impeccable track record of being reliably adorable and relaxing. Whether you’re new to "Animal Crossing" or a veteran from its Nintendo 64 days, "Pocket Camp" is a great (and free) way to get your daily dose of cute animated animals and a wholly pleasant way to spend your downtime.
