What devs are saying about the design of Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp

Nintendo released Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp worldwide last month, and some devs have feelings.

It's a mobile, free-to-play spin on the company's venerable Animal Crossing franchise, one that asks players to make camp in a bucolic land and build a campsite for fellow players and in-game villagers to visit.

Players curry favor with the villager NPCs (and thereby gain levels) by chatting them up, bringing them traditional Animal Crossing collectibles (fruits, bugs, and fish), and building specific pieces of camp furniture.

Nintendo earns money on the game by selling in-game currency ("Leaf Tickets") that can be spent to speed up the game's systems, thereby allowing the player to progress more quickly. It's a common F2P monetization scheme, but many feel that it undercuts some or all of what makes Animal Crossing games meaningful.

To get a better sense of how the game is going over with devs around the industry, and what bits of Pocket Camp stand out to them (for better and for worse), Gamasutra reached out and asked: what do you think about that new, mobile Animal Crossing?

Yoko Taro (Nier: Automata) - I played the 3DS DobuMori (Animal Crossing), and you know the raccoon who makes you get a mortgage without agreeing to it? It was like the Lehman Shock (The Bankruptcy Of Lehman Brothers), so I wanted to get revenge on him in the mobile version.

I was kind of sad because there are fewer things you can do in the mobile app, compared to the 3DS version. The fact that you have less freedom, makes the Ditch-Forest seem even darker.

Let's take, for example, what the "monsters" eat. The rabbit seems to be of the normal herbivorous variety, but can be seen, in this game, grilling and eating fish. Also, in this game, pigs and cows enjoy barbecue (but you can't see what they're grilling). What is going on in this ecosystem? When you run out of things to eat, do you resort to cannibalism? Is there so much difference in the intelligence of birds and fish? If you walk on two legs and talk, does that mean you won't be hunted? Is the value of your life determined by your intelligence? There are so many interesting themes hidden in this game.

Also, I want to say something about the unreasonable shopping. You need to predict what those monsters want like an esper (human who possesses ESP), and give those things to them to get your big reward. What is this a metaphor for? Why do you have to collect things that are right next to the monsters to make them happy, like a slave? I guess this represents the divisions between people in class society.

I haven't put any furniture or anything in my camp except a kerosene tank. I started this game to get revenge on that raccoon, Tanukichi, but now I have a different purpose.

I'll enjoy playing this game until I burn that dark forest down.

Becca Bair (Arcadian Atlas) - As far as a mobile Animal Crossing title goes, I'm really enjoying it. The game is a lot more simplified than a full Animal Crossing game but there's still enough elements to keep me coming back a couple times a day to turn in errands and check on my campers. I know a lot of people are skeeved out by the pay elements, but I haven't spent any real money on it

Dave Proctor (Mighty Yell Studios) - I feel like the game is more focused than New Leaf. I played NL a lot for the grind, the daily routine, getting my fossils, cleaning the beach and then turning it off for the day. Pocket Camp is optimized for this. Breaking things into regions gives you specific goals to work around, AND funneling all the items you collect through animals instead of through Re-Tail makes you more goal oriented. Those animals want specific furniture and the game rolls it out slowly when you interact with them, where as New Leaf just says "try again tomorrow" for all the new gear.

I'm that kind of player though. I respect that this isn't your grandma's Animal Crossing.

Sean Han Tani (All Our Asias) - The always-on internet requirement means that the player is saddled with the knowledge that every simple action will require a couple of seconds of lag time as the phone communicates with the game's servers. This makes an already boring game more excruciating when nearly every action has a lag time. The corporate paranoia of losing money to cheaters and needing to verify every player action has destroyed what could be a peaceful game.

Fulfilling animal requests is hilarious. You talk to an animal. You wait. They ask you what you want. You press here you go, to hand them the item. Then the game asks you to press here you go again in order to confirm this. The game lags again. You watch your villager hand the item to the other character. You listen to the animal say the same stock phrase of thanks for the 100th time, and then the game says "request complete!"  Then the game pulls up an entire new window to show you your rewards. Sometimes you watch a friendship meter fill. If you level up, the reward window slowly appears again. Then you watch a heart fly up into your level-up bar. And if you level up? Guess what? The game plays an animation and you get to watch that reward window appear *again*, as if these three things couldn't just be done in one go.

On the UI side, the game becomes nightmarish when you obtain too many items - scrolling through what you have or what you want to craft is difficult with the tiny sliding windows for choosing items or categories. You can't even organize items by their theme.  The best part of the game, decorating, lags when you need to save your furniture arrangement with the server. Moving items around the campsite is finicky on mobile and it can be hard to judge if you've left enough room for people to walk.

Nicholas Laborde (Evangeline) - Nintendo is officially in the drug dealing business, because they've given digital cocaine to millions of people.

Animal Crossing fits really well into a mobile environment, and I'm impressed at how well the experience has translated into my pocket. AC always seemed ahead of its time in the "always on, check back frequently" aspect and it finally feels like tech has caught up to make it make the most sense.

There are a few strange things lost in translation, though, like not being able to pick weeds, and some of the mobile-specific reliance on currency/points/etc. It makes sense that some of those changes had to happen, because it's going to have microtransactions and whatnot, which is fine, that's the freemium model. But removing some random features is a bit puzzling.

What I'm really curious about is the massive, delicious amounts of data Nintendo is going to pull from this. Average time spent per player, how many logins per day, if they paid and how much, etc. It feels like a massive, free test for when our cult rituals pay off and Animal Crossing eventually arrives on our Switches.

To me, that's Nintendo's endgame from this - invading our phones for the real takeover, the Switch version. First they came for our phones, then they'll come for our homes...

Mac Monroy (Agents of Mayhem) - “I never had the chance to play any of the Animal Crossing games until New Leaf for Nintendo 3DS, which completely captured me since the opening screen. I don’t consider myself an Animal Crossing connoisseur, but I can surely say Pocket Camp is a fresh, interesting addition to the AC games.

First of all, the simplicity and well round interface design makes it very intuitive and user friendly. However, while the controllers (basically just tap and hold) are easy to memorize, the game doesn’t represent any much of a skill challenge. (Animal Crossing was never about that of course, but I remember that in New Leaf, the player needed at least a bit of skill to catch certain kind of bugs!)

All in all, I think it’s a very cute time killer game. Sure, it gets repetitive after a while and you could certainly feel a little trapped since the few places you’ve got to explore are quite small. Fortunately it is pretty easy to level up and the micro transactions are not essential (If you’re the kind of person that can wait 24 hours to get some piece of furniture built.)

My final thoughts; I think it’s a great step for the Nintendo mobile games, and I can’t wait to see what comes up next! ( Makes me wonder if  Pocket Camp is hinting we will have an Animal Crossing game for the Nintendo Switch.)

Daniel Cook (Alphabear