Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp

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Animal Crossing... in your pocket!

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is a spin-off of the Animal Crossing series, developed and published by Nintendo for iOS and Android devices. It was released worldwide on November 21, 2017 (Australia saw the game's release one month earlier).

The game places the human player character as a camp manager. Their campsite can be decorated with furniture and visited by guest animals. There are seven recreation spots outside the campsite to meet up or befriend animals, shop at, gather items, or customize the player's camper. Like in Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer, player avatar is designed up to the player's content without relying on in-game "questionnaire" and furniture placement is done using (obviously) touch controls. As usual for an Animal Crossing game, this game contains lots of characters to meet and furniture and clothing items to collect. Basically, players can build their own dream campsite featuring their favorite animals. New content and events are added periodically via updates.

The game has a Microtransaction currency (Leaf Tickets) that can be used to bypass Item Crafting or timers. They can also be obtained by completing Goals in the game.

Tropes used in Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp include:

• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Having an animal's friendship level reach level 7 will reward the player with said animal's default clothing. Most events will also reward clothing items.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Fish are attracted to the player's lure much easier compared to the main games. Not to mention, fish and bugs spawn a lot faster.
  • Furniture/Clothing items are divided by category, so players can browse for a particular furniture/clothing item by simply searching by category. Version 1.6.0 adds sorting by source, series, theme, and number owned, the latter of which makes finding duplicates easier.
  • During garden events, the player will be notified if their garden has rare creatures in it. This notification can appear regardless of where the player is currently at, even at another player's campsite.
  • When viewing a friend's profile, their garden status will be displayed, saving the trouble of making sure said friend's garden is well-watered or has empty spots to place rare creatures (garden events only).
  • Players can find out required furniture for an animal by viewing them in said animal's profile in the Contacts. Also, after obtaining those furniture, the player can choose to auto-arrange them if the player wants to invite said animal but does not want to rearrange the campsite themselves. Until version 1.6.0, the player was able to decide whether the auto-arranged furniture can be kept or switched out back to the previous layout after that (said version now automatically reverts back to the latter without player input, eliminating likely mistakes of keeping auto-arranged furniture).
  • If a player wants to request Shovelstrike Quarry help from multiple friends, the player can simply choose which ones the player wants to ask for help, though up to 10 can be selected at a time.
  • If the player does not feel like completing an animal's particular request, the player can skip it. This will not work if the request is the last one in the chain.
  • Occasionally, balloon gifts can be found on the map. Tapping them will give the player items, with the gold ones giving crafting materials and sometimes tools. This can help a lot if the player is short on items for requests.
  • At the garden, the player has a choice of planting, harvesting, and watering multiple flowers at the same time, reducing the time spent in taking care of them.
  • Some items do not count towards Catalog completion, so completionists do not have to worry about missing out on special items like the Tourney trophies. This also affects platform-exclusive items, like the rainbow event items for Android and the red-and-yellow event items for iOS, reducing the frustration for players that only play on one device or do not have the other device. The rewards from the "hard tasks" (tasks in red) that can only be done after completing all four regular tasks in garden events also do not count, basically turning them into Bragging Rights Reward.
  • Version 1.4.0:
    • The player can now see how many of a particular item (as in fruits, fish, bugs, shells) is currently in their inventory upon walking over one or picking one up, instead of having to check said inventory for it.
    • A checkmark can be seen on the Map button to let the player know if there are any requests that can be fulfilled without having to open up the Map itself.
    • This update finally automatically sorts crafting materials (starts from the common, then rare, then the event-only) instead of ordering them by when they were first obtained, saving the player the trouble of having to scroll just to sell a common crafting material.
    • The player can now obtain event-only items from certain past events (often thought to be Lost Forever) by exchanging stamp cards with Tommy at the Market Place. YMMV when it comes to how it's executed, considering that it involves Leaf Tickets.
    • The player can choose to favorite all furniture tied to a particular animal in their Contacts. This can be useful for inviting new animals, as this can save time (and taps) looking for required furniture by simply grouping them in the Favorites tab (which is the default first tab as of this update) in the Craft menu instead of checking the Contacts multiple times. The player can then clear the list by removing the Favorited tag on those furniture.
  • Version 1.6.0 finally allows the player to sort animals in the Contacts list by either theme or friendship level, not just filtering by species.
  • Every shell found on Saltwater Shores has a distinct appearance unlike in the main games. This is seen from the update that introduces the pearl-oyster shells in this game, which do not share the same overworld appearance as the scallop shells, which retain the generic pink shell look in the overworld.
  • With the addition of the first Fishing Tourney fish as regular non-event catches (albeit rare) in a later update, players who missed out on Fishing Tourneys will not need to worry about missing out on certain fish species for Catalog completion.
  • Version 1.7.0 basically streamlines everything related to the garden, even including the event-related mechanics, making garden management much quicker.
  • Flower Festival is an event that involves trading flowers for limited-time event items, though unlike the usual gardening events, no rare creatures are involved and the seasonal flowers featured there can be cross-pollinated. It was thought that it will involve a lot of luck due to the nature of cross-pollination itself, but it turns out that simply cross-pollinating the same type of seasonal flower will have a chance of producing the rarer seasonal flowers (otherwise the player will get the same flower used; no chance of failure at all), especially ones that cannot be bought from Lloid or given as request rewards.
• Anti-Poopsocking: Fruit trees will regrow new fruits three hours after it is shaken, Item Crafting takes time, planted flowers bloom after a few hours, and players can only do a certain amount of requests per cycle. Since everything runs in real-time (like the main games), this is inevitable.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Up to eight animals can be kept at a player's campsite, not counting special NPCs that appear only in events or part of their special furniture.
• Artificial Atmospheric Actions: Animals at a player's campsite will either sit, stand around, dance, chat with each other, eat/drink, or even interact with certain furniture/amenity.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory:
  • In Fishing Tourneys, the player can rent a golden rod using Leaf Tickets to always guarantee catching two event fish at once per successful fishing. This allows said player to speed up their total size progress compared to others that don't rent said rod.
  • If obtaining special Memories count as "victory", then relying on Leaf Tickets to purchase event-only fortune cookies as well as utilizing the stamps system (which requires said purchase) can be considered this.
• Cap:
  • Up to 40 furniture items can be displayed at a player's campsite.
  • A player starts out with 100 inventory limit for miscellaneous items (fruits, fish, bugs, shells), which extends up to a certain limit via level-ups, but can be extended further with Leaf Tickets. As of version 1.7.0, the max limit is 500.
  • As of version 1.8.0, up to 2,000 combined amount of clothing and furniture items can be kept in a player's inventory.
  • Crafting items come with their own max limit, ranging from the minimum 30 for essences to 9,999 bags of friend powder. Like with the inventory limit, these items' caps can be extended via level-ups, but unlike the former they cannot be extended via Leaf Tickets.
  • Relationship Values cap out depending on the thematic amenity the player has built and the animals associated with said theme, starting at 7 and, as of version 1.6.0, maxing out at 25.
  • A player can keep up to 100 friends in the friends list, counting pending requests.
  • A player can hold up 9,999 of each type of snack.
  • Up to 2,000 gift items can be kept in the player's Message box.
  • Subverted with the Bells. While the counter maxes out at 9,999,999, the plus sign (+) is added to the right of the counter to indicate that the player has more Bells than the game's counter can display.
• Collection Sidequest: Most events use this as their gimmick, ranging from request rewards in crafting events to rare creatures in garden events.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience:
  • Decorating themes are color-coded, though not all essence-tent pair share the same color (example: orange hip essence, light blue and pink tent).
  • One Google collaboration event marks the first time that obtainable furniture in one platform differs in color with the other. Android users get items with Google's color scheme of red, yellow, green, and blue (which are also the colors of the seasonal flowers), while iOS users, for obvious reasons, end up with a different color scheme (red and yellow in this case).
• Commonplace Rare: Some seemingly-common furniture like the washing machine are special request-exclusives only, requiring the very rare sparkle stones to craft them.
• Console Cameo: Players are given the Nintendo Switch (gray) furniture for free in one event. Other Nintendo console items can only be obtained via limited edition fortune cookies.
• Continuing Is Painful: Missed out on past events like Holiday 2017, Rover's event, and Lottie's event, but the player wants the featured items? Until a proper event featuring the past event items is launched, enjoy wasting Leaf Tickets (and real money) to get them via stamp cards!
• Crossover:
  • There are free item giveaway events that involve Mario. One gave away Big Bro's Hat (before it became craftable in the event mentioned below) to celebrate the 1-year anniversary of Super Mario Run, another gave away Toad Hat to celebrate Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker being ported to the Nintendo Switch and the Nintendo 3DS.
  • March 2018 introduces the Super Mario Crossover Event, a crafting event divided into three parts, all featuring Mario-themed furniture and clothing. Of course, the event materials involve mushrooms.
  • Events involving Google collaboration can also count. iOS-only users tend to get the short end of the stick because of this, though...
  • The game also has a series of Splatoon 2-themed events. It is the first crossover to incorporate event fortune cookies, though thankfully no Memory is associated with them.
• The Dev Team Thinks of Everything: Unlike Digby, Redd debuted as part of a special furniture first before appearing as a garden event host. If the player has Redd's mask emporium placed on their campsite while his event is ongoing, he can still appear next to the emporium instead of near the garden entrance.
  • With Brewster appearing as a garden event host for the first time long after his special furniture made its debut, it is safe to say that the same rule applies to all special NPCs that can appear as a garden event host.
• Double Unlock:
  • A few furniture items require a basic form of another furniture to be crafted first before the former can be made. These are never shared by the same animal, so if the player has yet to unlock a particular animal, they will be stuck with uncraftable furniture until that animal is unlocked.
  • A Memory has a specific unlock requirement. The basic ones simply require certain animals at a certain level to be present at the campsite, but unless the player has just newly joined, it will take a while to unlock those animals via level-up first before befriending them in order to invite them to the campsite and reach the required level. The special ones, meanwhile, not only require specific animals (same rule applies), but also certain event-only furniture that can only be obtained via the fortune cookie system (provided the event is still on-going).
  • Starting from the debut of Brewster's Sweet Harvest, all garden events offer additonal prizes (so far mere Palette Swaps of the regular prizes) that are not counted by the Catalog. If the player wants to get them, they have to complete the "hard tasks" (distinguishable with being color-coded red). But to even access those tasks to begin with, the player has to fully complete all four regular tasks first.
  • The overhauled Goals system turns many rewards into this, as obtaining a milestone reward from the non-Stretch Goals requires completing the required tasks first, which reward the player with item(s) upon completion as usual. If the rewards are located in a later part of a particular Goal chain, even if the player has completed the (yet to be seen) tasks to reach them, the player has to clear the current part of the chain first before proceeding to the next.
• Experience Meter: The player's level display also counts as this.
• Fast Forward Mechanic: Version 1.6.0 allows the player to speed through animal dialogue by holding down the touchscreen instead of tapping multiple times. The relationship level-up animation can also be skipped starting in this update, though this is done by simply tapping the screen.
• Game Breaking Bug:
  • While fishing at Lost Lure Creek, it is possible to get the attention of two fish at the same time, which causes the app to spontaneously close due to it not knowing what to do in such situation. Fixed in version 1.7.0.
  • Notably during the Bloomin' Booty with Kapp'n event, for some reason there is a random chance that visiting a garden (the player's or a friend's) will cause the game to softlock with the Player Character walking around in circles, necessitating a reset.
• An Interior Designer Is You: One of the main aspects of the game (and the series in general).
• Item Crafting: For the first time in Animal Crossing, the player can craft items using crafting materials. This can only be done one at a time, though, unless the player opens additional crafting slots using Leaf Tickets (up to three in total).
• Loading Screen: At least for the ones that are shown every time the player moves between recreation areas, these are peppered with either in-game tips or random quotes/thoughts from an animal depicted on the screen.
  • Version 1.6.0 now features random tips/quotes on the loading screen which the player can switch between by swiping to the left or right.
• Luck-Based Mission: Basically almost every aspect of this game is luck-based, but the most notable are as follows.
  • Fortune cookies are the bane of every completionist. It is basically this game's gacha system that grants exclusive furniture. Worst offender is the event ones, which are only available for a certain time period. If the player would rather buy cookies using Bells, the event cookies have a very low chance of appearing at the Fortune Cookie Store. As per rule regarding systems like this, drop rates can be seen by the player before they confirm a purchase just so this mechanic is possible to be implemented to begin with, but it still does not matter when the Random Number God refuses to reward the 5-star, Memory-unlocking spotlight furniture.
  • Gardening events are also notorious for being an "RNG stack", as a player's progress in this event type depends on how many rare creatures will spawn upon the seasonal flowers' bloom, how successful the captures are, and how many other players are willing to share the captures with said player.
• Microtransactions: Like many free-to-play games, this game has a premium currency shop where the player can buy Leaf Tickets with real money.
• Mythology Gag:
  • One of the rare furniture items obtainable from Timmy's fortune cookie is the board game, which is designed after the main gameplay mode in Animal Crossing: amiibo Festival.
  • Other rare furniture items from the twins' fortune cookies include the metal flagpoles (seen in front of the New Leaf's town hall), the model bus (City Folk), Nook's Homes model (as it appears in Happy Home Designer), and the sapling clock (based on New Leaf's town tree).
  • The vineyard phonograph plays K.K. Chorale, a song that has appeared in every main Animal Crossing game.
• Nerf:
  • Starting from Fishing Tourney #4, regular fishing rods have reduced chance of capturing two fish at the same time. It later gets a further nerf in the fifth tourney.
  • It appears that starting from the debut of Brewster's Sweet Harvest, rare creatures' spawn rates (particularly the less common types) have been lowered. This is on top of the increased amount of captures to complete all the tasks. On the bright side, their catch rates have been increased and the event lasts much longer than previous gardening events. This is presumably done to encourage more rare creature sharing between friends.
• Not Completely Useless: Version 1.4.0 made the "super rare" items (ex. koi, miyama stag, football fish) this, previously being pure Vendor Trash worth a lot of Bells prior to said update. One of the new types of animal request involves the animal asking for either any fish or any bug, and the player can give them said "super rare" item for a chance of obtaining snacks and even fortune cookies.
• Play Every Day: Three Daily Goals show up every day and players can claim daily rewards by logging in into the game every new day.
• Point and Click Map: How the player can navigate between recreation areas in this game.
• Random Event: Occasionally, finishing an animal's request has a random chance of showing an event related to the given item(s), like making barbecue (fruits, fish) or having said animal show off their collection (bugs, shells). This will result in a bonus crafting item (varies by animal) rewarded. Among all basic requests (not the ones denoted with a "..." in an animal's thought bubble), only the flower-related requests will always show an event.
• Random Drop: Basically, the entire rewards system (except for ones tied to certain milestones or events) is this.
• Rare Random Drop:
  • Sparkle stones have a very, very low chance of being rewarded from certain animal requests. Said animal has to be level 10+ and an invisible variable has to reach a certain amount for this drop to even be possible.
  • Gulliver's travelers have 30% chance of appearing as a bonus reward from item trading with him. Considering that most other rewards consist of bonus snacks (and that is assuming the bonus is triggered, which can be either around 50% or >98% depending on the item(s) given) and the player has to wait for 6 hours after trading for the result, it is not unheard of players spending days or even weeks trading cheap items just to meet all available travelers.
  • As the fortune cookies mechanic is basically this game's take on gacha/lootbox, naturally some of the rare items obtained from the cookies end up being this.
• Relationship Values: This game's level-up system depends on this, filling up by leveling up an animal's friendship level. Animals will gain friendship points if the player finishes their request, chats with them, changes their outfit if they ask to, finds their lost item (campsite guests only), or builds an amenity. Reaching certain friendship levels will allow inviting the animal to the campsite, changing their clothes, new requests from that animal, obtaining that animal's clothing, or even obtaining new furniture that cannot be obtained elsewhere.
• Shout-Out:
  • The Nintendo Switch and the game-exhibit monitor furniture can depict either Filbert wielding a shovel on a mountainous region (The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild), Lloid with an outstretched spring arm (ARMS), Isabelle as Mario throwing Cappy (Super Mario Odyssey), or Rosie equipped with a Splattershot (Splatoon 2).
  • One of the rare furniture items obtainable from Tommy's fortune cookie is the Isabelle Scooter.
  • Android users can get a rainbow pinwheel from a Flower Festival event. Its appearance invokes the Google Photos app icon.
    • Not to mention, the two rainbow items (pinwheel and bike) are based on the real thing.
  • Bunnie's fortune cookie items are themed after the tale of the Little Red Riding Hood.
• Socialization Bonus: Having friends in a player's list allows them to request Shovelstrike Quarry help without Leaf Tickets (though this can only be done once per day). Another benefit is that the player can view a friend's Market Box at any time without having to wait for them to appear in a random recreation area.
• Spell My Name with an "S": In the English version, one of the picture items is labeled "pic of Sprinkles"/"Sprinkles's pic". THe animal's name in that language is Sprinkle.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: After long-time frustrations regarding fortune cookie problems, it appears that Nintendo tries to alleviate it a bit by making certain event fortune cookies free rewards in certain events, starting from the Summertime Bug Catching event.
• Timed Mission: Basically every request and goal the player can do (except Stretch Goals). Animals that do not stay at the campsite will only be available for three hours before being switched out with another, while Timed Goals (including event-based ones) have their own set time limit. If the player is a completionist, then trying their best to buy/obtain all event-only items before the event duration runs out also counts.
• Virtual Paper Doll: As per usual for an Animal Crossing game, the player character can be customized with various clothing items. Guest animals' clothing can also be customized, though not every clothing item can be worn by them.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Males can wear dresses, females can wear pants and shorts.