Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp

soulless and miserable MTs

 Mainline Animal Crossing [どうぶつの森] games tend do a very good job of taking several disparate gameplay mechanics and using them to create a cohesive, alive world for players to engage in. Wildlife can be captured and sold for Bells, used as decoration, traded with villagers, donated to a museum that tracks and shows off a player's progress. Fruit can also be sold, or asked for by villagers as a favor. Trees can be cultivated, shaken to receive rewards, and used to spruce (haha) up the village. While players are able to grind any of these gameplay elements, part of what makes Animal Crossing so immersive is its spontaneity—the moment-to-moment choices players make based on what's immediately in front of them. A player catches a fish because there happened to be one in the river that moment, or they go on a fruit hunt because one of their villagers got hungry suddenly. One of the series's most notable assets is its laid-back attitude, lack of significant deadlines, and its encouragement of players to play at their own pace.

 Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp trades all of this in for time-sensitive events and disconnected mechanics that only serve the game's primary goal: for players to collect as much furniture as possible to decorate their camp with, for showing off to other players. The game presses limited edition clothing and furniture from special events pretty hard, which can be bought with Leaf Tickets—the game's premium currency—or earned in the form of grinding a watered-down version of fishing, gardening, or bug catching. Obtaining a full set of limited edition furniture by grinding is possible, but the steep prices are clearly meant to encourage players to purchase Leaf Tickets with real money—which Nintendo desperately, desperately wants. Special events are always happening, and there never seems to be a shortage of hot new furniture that you've gotta save up for. In-game notifications will never let you miss a single special occasion, and NPCs will always be sure to remind you of all the neat goings-on. Of course, all of this is optional. A player could entirely decide to avoid the ever-present special events and just play the game. But what's the game without these events? If players don't want the limited edition furniture, there's practically no reason to play, because Pocket Camp's gameplay mechanics only serve the purpose of keeping players hooked on a never-ending stream of time-based goals, in hope that its players eventually discover the futility of trying to collect rare sets through grinding-based means and purchase premium currency. Pocket Camp defies the spirit of Animal Crossing by instilling in players the exact opposite feeling as the core games of the series. The game fails to present its players with a relaxed escapist fantasy, instead offering players constant deadlines to meet with no time in-between for breathers. Players are always in a hurry to reach these goals, and if they aren't making the deadlines, they aren't playing the game.

 Despite the inescapable presence of horrid microtransactions and gameplay that's structured entirely around them, the things Pocket Camp got right are worth mentioning. A lot of the furniture is incredibly interactive, making campsites and cabins feel truly alive and lived-in when villagers are enjoying their stuff. Villagers have little unlockable scenes that hint at them having a bit more personality than in the mainline games, which have villagers stuck in very limited personality groups (this almost makes up for the soulless acquisition method used to get these villagers into your camp in the first place). The constant events mean a constant stream of new furniture and clothing—though I just condemned the game for churning this stuff out too quickly and taking advantage of people's FOMO, the stuff itself is really good. As a side-note, it's quite funny that furniture interactivity and character liveliness are the things that Pocket Camp nailed, given the next mainline game, New Horizons, would flub these very same elements.