It’s weird to think back now to that period of time in the mid-2010s where the Nintendo 3DS was slowing down, the Wii U was clearly not going to recover, and the shape of Nintendo’s future remained uncertain. With the mighty power of hindsight, we all know how things turned out. At the time, even Nintendo itself appeared to be hedging its bets, announcing that it would be entering the mobile market with games based on its popular brands. Several franchises were talked about, some saw releases, and a few of those were quite successful.
Flash forward to today, and Nintendo’s enthusiasm for its mobile endeavors has almost completely dried up. Some games, like Dragalia Lost, have been shuttered. Mario Kart Tour is essentially in maintenance mode. Talks of which Nintendo series will get the mobile treatment next are long in the past; the answer appears to be “none”. The remaining handful of games saw one of its number picked off with the announcement that Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp would wind down in late 2024. While it was certainly a simplified take on the concept, it still had plenty of fans who logged in daily to forge friendships and craft the latest seasonal goodies.
Fortunately, Nintendo offered a solution for those who wanted to keep playing. As the original app went offline, a new fully-paid version would be released. Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete is a modified version of Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp that removes some elements tied to the previous monetization system while adding some new things. You can even bring your save file over from the original, so you don’t have to start over again. I’ll say right away that I wish more free-to-play games would take this route when they close down. Dragalia Lost did not deserve to be, well, lost. But that’s a topic for another day. Let’s talk about Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete.
It’s probably best to take this from the top. Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is a spin-off of Nintendo’s wildly popular series of cozy games. While the gameplay of the mainline series would have fit well enough on mobile, Nintendo aimed to create a more streamlined experience. At its launch the game was very slight, but more features and mechanics were added as time went on. The core loop involves visiting four different locations where visiting villagers will rotate in and out every few hours. They’ll request certain items that you can gather from the different locations by fishing, bug-catching, or shaking down trees.
Meet those requests and you’ll strengthen your friendships, which will get you some goodies that you can then use for crafting clothes and decorations. At certain friendship thresholds, you can even invite the villagers to come and hang out at your campsite in a more permanent fashion. The campsite is one of the two spaces you’re able to decorate as you see fit. You can also dress up your camper, and it works a lot like your house in the normal games. That goes all the way down to the loans you’ll have to take to expand its size. Outside of these two locations, the placement of things is outside of your control. What’s there is what’s there, and that’s that.
You can also designate one villager as your caretaker, and they’ll follow you around in most locations after that. They’ll complete requests for you and gather various items while the app is closed, providing you with some goodies every few hours. You can also talk to them whenever you want. Your relationship with your chosen caretaker villager will boost very quickly, so if you’re the min-maxing sort you can swap them out regularly to take advantage of that. You can also opt to not have them follow you around if that proves to be annoying. It’s just another way to have a favorite villager around in a less temporary capacity.
That’s more or less the gist of it, though there are a lot of other side activities to engage in. Most of them are tied to their own locations. Unlike in standard Animal Crossing games, these locations aren’t set in one continuous world you can walk around in. Instead, you select them from a map. It’s efficient, but this is one aspect of the game that makes it come off as slimmed down as it does. That feeling of escaping reality and chilling out in another place, done so well in the other Animal Crossing games, is absent in Pocket Camp.
With that said, the game has its own appeal that works for it. The conversations with the villagers are as amusing as ever thanks to their quirky personalities and the sharp writing. There is a constant rotation of events, and they’re enjoyable to participate in whether you fully complete them or not. Pocket Camp nicely fits the mobile need for something you can play for a few minutes when you don’t want to get particularly invested in anything. Indeed, by design there is only so much you can do in it at any given time.
Other aspects of Animal Crossing are well-represented in the game. It’s still enjoyable to collect items and use them to decorate your spaces and customize your character. The Happy Home Academy is here, and they’ve got some of their usual decorating challenges waiting for you. Fishing and bug-catching are made easier here thanks to more generous timing windows, but there’s still a certain relaxation to these activities. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that while Pocket Camp does not do everything the other games do, it carries a lot of the same spirit with it. As such, it’s a nice companion to the main events.
So far all of this is true of both Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp and Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete. I think if you enjoyed the free-to-play version of the game, you’re going to enjoy the new version as well. There are differences that I will go into from here, but I want to emphasize that I think just about everything good about the original app has made it into the new one, with plenty of new additions and balance changes that make for an even better experience.
The original Pocket Camp, being a free-to-play game, had various mechanisms to help it monetize. The economy ran around the paid currency of Leaf Tickets which, as in any free-to-play mobile game worth its salt, could be used for a variety of purposes. Initially, you were mainly paying to remove annoyances like inventory limits, timers, and so on. When that proved insufficient, the game added a system where players could earn time-limited sets of items via fortune cookies. If you were an easy-going player, it never felt like the game was pinching you that hard. Those trying to collect full sets on a regular basis, however, likely would have had to pay.
Pocket Camp Complete ditches Leaf Tickets for Leaf Tokens, and these cannot be bought with real money. You can instead earn them by completing various goals and achievements, as rewards for engaging in certain activities, increasing your level, or by exchanging Bells on a monthly basis. The game’s thirst for these Tokens is nowhere near that of its predecessor’s for Tickets, though the balance is such that you can’t really spend them willy-nilly either.
This is always a tricky balancing act when games go from free to paid. A careless approach can lead to either the game still feeling balanced around in-app purchases you can no longer make, or everything coming too easily. Pocket Camp Complete does things the right way with this. Helping to support this changed-up system is the new Complete Ticket, a reward that can be earned from playing events. You can exchange these for a wide array of fortune cookies containing special items from past and present events, or use them to directly get your hands on any limited-time items that you might have missed. This means that even if you can’t get enough Leaf Tokens together during an event to fill out your collection, all is not lost.
The other big difference in Pocket Camp Complete comes in how it handles its social elements. In the original game, other players’ characters would pop up in various locations. You could befriend other players, which enabled you to do things like buy and sell from each other, send items, or support each other in certain events. Pocket Camp Complete fully does away with all of that, and I’m not sure if I like its new system better or not.
In Pocket Camp Complete, you will have to create and share your customized Camper Card. Once you’ve exchanged cards with another player, they’ll show up in a new location called Whistle Pass. K.K. Slider will hold concerts here on a regular schedule, and you’ll be able to enjoy them with the avatars of your friends hanging about. Sometimes they’ll give you presents, sometimes they’ll offer to help you enter the Quarry location to earn some loot, and sometimes they’ll just emote. You’ll have to exchange cards via QR code scans, and that means you’ll either need to find a community somewhere on the internet or rely on people you already know. The official website offers up several cards for those who aren’t interested in going through all of that.
The removal of the marketplace is a small loss, as I always enjoyed poking around and seeing what others were selling. I also miss having random campers show up at the different sites. It was interesting to see what kinds of fashions random people were wearing, and that’s one aspect that is simply missing in Pocket Camp Complete. The multiplayer elements are now so thin that they seem largely pointless. I know the aim was to have this app work offline as much as possible, but for how much it still has to check in I feel there could have been more done with this part of the game.
While I may have my gripes, I’m generally very happy with Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete. On a conceptual level alone, I’m always thrilled to see a free-to-play game live on in a premium format after its shutdown. I mean, why not just let players have at it at that point? I’m also glad that this new version had some thought put into how it would work when detached from its monetization model. It’s well-balanced and enjoyable to play. A bit of a trifle when compared to the real thing, to be sure, but that’s by design. I hope a similar fate awaits other Nintendo mobile games when their time finally comes.
Animal Crossing Pocket Camp Complete is available for mobile devices.
As a campsite manager, it's up to you to build a fun campsite. While working as the manager, you can also fish, catch bugs, chat with animals, and collect your favorite furniture. You can also change into your favorite outfit, make lots of detours, and enjoy your relaxing camp life! iOS version reviewed.
How well can a free-to-play game make the jump to a normal paid model? Here's our review of Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete.
- A nice bite-sized take on Animal Crossing.
- It's been well balanced as a premium release.
Published: Dec 31, 2024 12:00 pm