Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Gaming
  3. News

Nintendo’s free mobile game ‘Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp’ arrives a day early

Trevor Mogg
By
Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Digest
Attention, smartphone-owning Nintendo fans: The long-awaited Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp has finally arrived.

Following several launch delays earlier this year, the Japanese gaming giant released Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp for iOS and Android on November 21, a day earlier than its planned November 22 launch.

The game requires an internet connection to run, and the servers are a bit bogged down, so don’t be surprised to receive the occasional connection error or slowdown if you’re an early adopter.

Recommended Videos

The free game joins Super Mario Run and Fire Emblem Heroes as Nintendo tentatively expands its offerings for mobile devices.

Related

Nintendo’s newest mobile game offers a different take on the regular versions of the popular life-simulation game found on its traditional platforms, hence the term Pocket Camp in the title. In keeping with the series, the game runs in real time according to your local time, so you see day and night, as well as seasonal changes.

In the mobile version of Animal Crossing you take on the role of the manager of a campsite. To get started, choose your manager’s physical appearance, then decorate the campsite however you like and interact with visiting animals as you set about building a community.

“Your campsite can be anything you like,” Nintendo proclaims on its website, “from a traditional space that celebrates nature to a flashy fun house with concerts and rides. It’s all up to you!”

You don’t have to stick around the campsite the whole time, either. Hop in your camper and take a ride to the beach, the forest, or someplace else to collect stuff as you look around. If you sell some of what you find in exchange for Bells, you can spend them at the Market Place on other items like furniture and clothes. Help others on your travels and you’ll earn Bells and craft materials in return.

The game lets you craft lots of different items for your campsite and camper. While some are just for decoration, others are required to get animals to visit. You’ll need Bells, and in some cases Leaf Tickets — another of the game’s currencies — before you can set about crafting.

You can earn Leaf Tickets, but to get your hands on them more quickly, you’ll have to hand over some real-world money to Nintendo.

Animal Crossing has built up a loyal following over the years. The original version launched for the Nintendo 64 in Japan in 2001. After that it went global, with updated versions landing on the company’s newer consoles and handheld gaming devices over the years.

Update: Adds information about Pocket Camp’s early launch.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Trevor Mogg
Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
Animal Crossing Halloween event: costumes, items, dates, more
Animal Crossing Halloween

Just like the real world, your island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons will change with the seasons. With the change of seasons also come the major holidays, which the residents of your island are always excited to celebrate with new events, items, and special rewards that only come around during specific times of the year. With Halloween fast approaching in real life, special spooky and tasty additions are already arriving.

While this isn't the first Halloween players will experience in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, it is the first since the 2.0 update added a ton of new features and items. This makes this year's Halloween festivities the biggest yet. If you're a fan of all things creepy and spooky but always in a fun and adorable way, here are all the events, costumes, and items you can look forward to picking up during the Halloween event in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

Read more
Nintendo’s mobile games are more influential than you might think
Alear and Marth open a door in Fire Emblem Engage.

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.
More recently, Nintendo tried to recapture the success of Pokemon Go with Niantic’s Pikmin Bloom, although that game has reportedly disappointed as well. Overall, it’s understandable why some people are surprised to see only a couple of surefire mobile hits from a company with the pedigree of Nintendo and consider it a side venture that never realized its full potential. If you look closely at the console games in these series that Nintendo put out since, though, it isn’t ignoring everything learned while making mobile games.
Mobile's monumental impact
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.
As far back as 2018, Pokemon: Let’s Go! Pikachu and Eevee recognized the charm of not needing to battle a Pokemon to capture it, and incorporated that into a traditional RPG experience. More recently, items and mechanics like gardening and cooking from Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp made their way into Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was able to revive its live service offerings by repurposing the best tracks and assets from Mario Kart Tour.
Fire Emblem Engage – Announcement Trailer - Nintendo Switch
The legacy of Nintendo’s mobile games could also be felt in the September 13 Nintendo Direct. The showcase’s first announcement was Fire Emblem Engage, which is turn-based strategy game where the main gimmick is being able to summon classic Fire Emblem characters with a ring. While it doesn’t look like Fire Emblem Engage goes full gacha, it’s clear that Nintendo recognized how people liked collecting and using classic Fire Emblem characters in a new adventure, so the developers drew and expanded upon that idea for Fire Emblem Engage.
Before the announcement of Pikmin 4, Shigeru Miyamoto also took a lot of time to highlight Pikmin Bloom. While we don’t know much about Pikmin 4’s gameplay, Nintendo could find some aspects of that game’s exploratory experience, weekly challenges, or something I’m not even thinking of to freshen up the next mainline game. The same could even happen with Super Mario Run the next time Nintendo decides to make a 2D Mario game.
While watching Fire Emblem Engage’s reveal during the latest Nintendo Direct, it became clear that Nintendo’s mobile games have quietly become influential forces in the company's console games. Nintendo has slowly plucked the best ideas out of them and brought them into Switch games without extra monetization. While the future is cloudy for Nintendo's seemingly stalled mobile push, I hope the company can still find a place for its games on mobile, using the platform as a space to experiment with its beloved series.

Read more
Rocket League Sideswipe is a free mobile game worthy of your time
Cars flipping through the air hitting a ball.

Over the weekend, I found myself in desperate need of a simple game. I had just gotten my COVID-19 booster shot, which left me with a touch of fatigue. Halo Infinite and Bayonetta (the games I was playing at the time) both seemed a little too fast-paced for my brain, but there wasn’t much else on my backlog. I racked my brain for December game releases I missed and suddenly remembered Rocket League Sideswipe.

Rocket League Sideswipe Cinematic Trailer

Read more