Need a chill game to kill time while you're waiting in line? Animal Crossing Pocket Camp is a mobile game that lets you run your own campsite with animal campers, and is the first mobile game in the Animal Crossing series. Many of the previous Animal Crossing games had you live in a town full of animal villagers and provided a home you could decorate. But while in Pocket Camp you are given a personal RV that travels around with you.
Pocket Camp is fairly extensive for a mobile app. There are many different aspects of the game that you can play through. After customizing your avatar, the game starts you with setting up your campsite. You can move your avatar around by moving your finger across the screen. To interact with a character, you can tap on them, and tap again to progress the dialogue forward.
Based off of the type of campsite you choose in the introduction you are given starter furniture of a certain type, along with your first animal campsite visitor. To get more visitors, you have to go to the map. The map contains different areas with shops, mini games, and places where animals have set up different camps. When you meet an animal who's camping, you can convince them to visit your campsite by raising their friendship level and by building their favorite furniture.
To raise an animal's friendship level, you have to complete various tasks for them, and collect items such as fruit, bugs or fish. Animals are given an initial maximum friendship level. To increase the max friendship level of your animal friends you have to build different types of amenities at your campsite. Cool animals get cool amenities and cute animals get cute amenities, etc. Once you build an amenity, animals in your camp can hang out there. If you talk to animals while they're hanging out at an amenity sometimes it can lead to special dialogues.
In addition to increasing friendship levels, you have to craft furniture for campsite visitors. To build furniture and clothing you need to acquire material such as wood, cotton and metal. Crafting materials and bells are given as rewards for completing tasks for animals. Bells are the in-game currency. There is a second in game currency called Leaf Tickets that can be used to buy special items, increase the likelihood of catching a rare bug in your garden, speed up the time it takes to build furniture, or make up for missing craft items when building furniture.
Animal Crossing Pocket Camp is a fun mobile app, especially if you use the feature to add your friends. It's great to play when you only have small amounts of time. However, some of the requests from various animals can get repetitive. Also, the game limits how far you can progress in one session by setting the time it takes to craft an item, and the number of items you can build at once. You can get past these barriers by paying money for Leaf Tickets, however this adds up quickly and in most cases it's better to just wait. True to most games in the series, Animal Crossing Pocket Camp is best played over time.
Animal Crossing Pocket Camp (Android, Android Tablet)
Animal Crossing Pocket Camp (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad)
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