After Super Mario Run and Fire Emblem Heroes, you can now make yourself at home in the endearing Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. In our review you can read whether the step from game console to smartphone is a success again.
Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp review
Nintendo effortlessly molds its well-known brands into different smartphone shapes. Mario is jumping around in an auto runner and Fire Emblem is doing well as a gatcha game. For Animal Crossing, a free-to-play model was chosen, as we are now used to on iOS. In the free game you have to wait for several meters, but by paying some money everything goes faster. Fortunately, the game can also be played without paying.
In Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, you create a character and become the leader of a new camp. Your goal is then to get to know different animals from the neighborhood and to invite them. You also have to decorate your camp with furniture, plants and other objects. You cannot win and you cannot get a score.
Animal friends with wishes
In practice, you mainly do assignments for the animals in the area. These bugs are quite demanding. Friendship is everything, but this friendship is built entirely on presents. You set out to find what the animals want. For example, one person would like a certain type of fish, the other fruit and the other a few beautiful butterflies. You can find these things in various places on the map by throwing your fishing rod into the water, shaking a tree or waving a safety net.
Every time you do something kind to an animal, your friendship level rises. You can quickly invite your new animal lover to your camp. But that is not easy either. You first have to have exactly the right furniture. You have to make them with the materials you get from your animal friends. Is there finally a new animal on your couch? Then another new potential friend shows up and the whole story starts all over again.
Free to play
Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is an adorable game. Everything is colorful and cute and you also want to keep playing to get new clothes or a nice tent, for example. This would almost make you forget that it is a free-to-play game. For the most part you also have nothing to do with this payment model. With real money you buy ‘leaf tickets’ to speed up processes, but it takes quite a long time until the timers get in the way.
When you arrive at roughly animal lover number twelve, it takes a lot longer for furniture to be made. If this takes about three minutes per piece of furniture for the first animals, it quickly takes hours later. You also need more and more materials to make the furniture. Nintendo hopes of course that you are already so invested that you also want to put some money in. But if you have patience and don’t want to play constantly, you don’t have to pay a cent.
In the long-term
Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is one such game that can go on for a long time, provided new things are added. Think of more animals, furniture and clothing. If the creators are smart, they will add special events just like the game console editions of Animal Crossing. Think of a Christmas atmosphere around Christmas, or fireworks around New Year’s Eve. You already notice that the animals say different things in the morning or in the evening.
So it is entirely up to the makers whether we still play Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp in a month or a year. In any case, everyone can enjoy it, because there is no time pressure and you do not need any agility. But watch out, because before you know it, the game will consume all your time. The duck needs three squids, the cat wants a butterfly and in a few hours the red stool with white dots will be ready. We will still be busy for the time being.
→ Download Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp from the App Store (free)
Also read: Super Mario Run review: Mario’s jump to the iPhone is a huge success
Also interesting: Fire Emblem Heroes confirms Nintendo gets smartphone games