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Animal Crossing Pocket Camp brings Nintendo’s life sim to mobile devices

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Digest
During an evening Nintendo Direct, the video game company finally revealed details on the long-awaited Animal Crossing mobile game. As the next Nintendo franchise to receive the mobile treatment, Animal Crossing Pocket Camp appears to be the closest yet to the mainline entries. Players can do a little bit of everything in a more bite-sized area.

Just like the console Animal Crossing games, players can interact with a variety of animal characters, decorate their home, and create a community. Instead of designing a house and acting as mayor, things have been scaled back to a mobile home and acting as the campsite manager. Before the game begins, players can customize their manager’s gender, hair, eyes, and skin color.

For the first time ever in the series, Animal Crossing Pocket Camp has a crafting system. After gathering resources like fruit and wood, items can be crafted for the campsite. These items range from couches and benches to baskets and plants. By decorating the campsite, various animals might comes to visit. Chatting with animals, fulfilling their requests, or decorating with their favorite items will increase the friendship level with them.

Aside from the campsite, players can travel in their camper to the beach, the forest, the river, or the island. Players can collect bugs, fish, minerals, and more as they explore these areas. After selling these items for money, players can head over to Market Place to buy furniture and clothing. Money can also be spent to modify and improve the camper.

During regular play, players can earn a secondary currency called Leaf Tickets. These can be used in a variety of ways such as shortening the time needed to craft items, acquire materials more easily, or to purchase unique camper exterior designs. For those who want to receive Leaf Tickets faster, they can also be purchased using real money.

As a mainstay of the series, time passes in Animal Crossing Pocket Camp at the same rate as real life. Depending on the time of day or night, the scenery and animals change. Different seasonal events will also offer limited-time furniture and outfit options.

Animal Crossing Pocket Camp releases in late November as a free-to-play mobile game. For more information or to pre-register for the game, check out the official Pocket Camp website.

Garrett Hulfish
Garrett is the kind of guy who tells you about all the tech you haven't heard of yet. He also knows too much about other…
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Nintendo’s mobile games don’t get enough credit. While Nintendo had some undeniable hits like Pokémon Go and Fire Emblem Heroes, many consider the rest of its mobile efforts fairly underwhelming and even somewhat disappointing for a video game company of Nintendo’s stature. While nothing ever quite reached the high bar Pokémon Go set in 2016, Nintendo’s mobile games are a bit more influential than they get credit for.
Over the past few years, games like Pokémon: Let’s Go! Pikachu and Eevee, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe have built upon their mobile counterparts. Then, during the September 13 Nintendo Direct, Fire Emblem Engage’s announcement and main gimmick cemented that Nintendo isn’t just viewing mobile games as a mostly failed side experiment. While they might not be the most successful games out there, their DNA is creeping into the Nintendo Switch’s bestselling titles.
Mediocre mobile returns
Nintendo’s mobile gaming efforts kicked off in the mid-2010s. Niantic created the AR game Pokemon Go, which quickly became a smashing success in 2016. In the six years since, the game has generated around 678 million installs and $6 billion in player spending, according to data from Sensor Tower.
While working with Niantic proved fruitful for The Pokemon Company, Nintendo partnered with DeNA for most of its initial mobile games. Unfortunately, none of these quite reached the heights analysts and Nintendo expected. Super Mario Run was a smash hit at launch but failed to sustain much interest and consistent revenue, so it’s considered a disappointment by Nintendo.
Meanwhile, other games like Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, Mario Kart Tour, Dr. Mario World, and Dragalia Lost launched, and while they’ve still made lots of money for Nintendo, most haven't matched the success of the most popular mobile titles. The biggest exception to this is Fire Emblem Heroes, a gacha game where players can summon classic Fire Emblem characters. It’s had over $1 billion in player spending alone as of June 2022 and is Nintendo’s “flagship title on the [mobile} platform,” according to Sensor Tower.
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Nintendo has the masterful ability to find the strongest elements of an idea, draw those out, and then expand upon them to create something uniquely memorable. We’ve seen it do this time and time again with subsequent entries of its flagship series, but it’s a mindset it has applied to its mobile games upon closer inspection.
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