Animal Crossing just wouldn’t be the same if it didn’t
allow people to visit each other. Since Wild World that connectivity has been
easy, but the options for what to do when you visit have been limited. Only in
New Leaf did those options start to expand, and so I’m going to give new life
to those options.
With New Leaf, you had the island and island tours that
hosted four players. With this new game, what if those options were brought to
the main town instead? That’s what Games Hire is for.
Above is a focused part of the map, with labels of what
everything within the shopping district is. Games Hire is just one of the
places that allows a form of connectivity previously unseen in Animal Crossing.
See, there used to be balls you could roll around in the Gamecube game, but
ever since have been missing. Games Hire brings those balls back to allow a
kickabout to be had between friends.
That’s not all Games Hire is useful for, as there are
other things available to you. Markers are available to cordon off an area to
allow smaller areas of play for those that want them. Exclusive equipable items
such as a hammer and water pistol allow games to be played that you normally
couldn’t, and you can even design mazes that fit around the town to race
through.
Destinations is where you go to explore areas outside of
the town. Kapp’n and his family run it, with Kapp’n acting as the sailor to the
islands. At first, you’ll only be getting a small island to travel to, 30x30
spaces in size. This island is an open island where you can meet anyone to
trade items with in person or just have a friendly chat. As you meet more
people [and people you invite to your town count as well] you start to unlock
more islands to explore.
These islands are larger in size, offering up varied island
shapes and rare items. These islands can be explored with people you invite –
either those at your town or directly to the island itself. Island villagers live
on these islands and offer up their own games to play. One of the islands also
has the observatory to visit, with Celeste being the owner of it.
Destinations is also where you’ll buy swimsuits, fishing
rods and bug nets. I know it makes little difference, but a bit of variation
never hurts, which is why each tool now comes in ten colours – plus the silver
and gold special variants – allowing you to add a bit of personality to your
toolset.
If you want to advertise your town without having people
visit, Favoured Fortunes is where to go. Katrina’s here, telling her fortunes
to visitors. Fortune cookies are found here, with a lot of Nintendo-related
goodies just as in New Leaf. That’s not going to advertise your town, though.
Luna has brought her dream suite services, sharing half
of the Favoured Fortunes building. Just as in New Leaf, you can set your town
up to be visited in a dream or visit other towns while dreaming yourself.
Unlike in New Leaf though, you have a second code available.
Allowing people to visit the town you manage is all well
and good, but what if you could completely build a town and all the little
things for people to visit as well? That’s what the second code is for. It
allows a more complete expression of creativity, allowing every house to be
customised and the villagers that live in them – if you choose to do so. After
all, there were some crazy things that people did just to impress people with
the Dream system, so giving complete control should allow them even more
freedom to create those weird and occasionally spooky places.
But that’s not all. After all, isn’t connectivity the fun
of Animal Crossing? You’ve got your friends and you want to explore somewhere
other than the islands or play some games, so bring them to Favoured Fortunes
and share a dream to all experience a different locale.
Codes can be added to a favourites list, with your codes
being freely available to anyone on your friends list and their codes easily
available to you. Any randoms you meet with will automatically share town pass
cards with each other – thus sharing the dream codes, giving even more dream
towns to quickly access. Any visiting friends can also use one of their codes.
The last place I’ll talk about in this post is the
arcade. Just what does the arcade allow? Access to redesigned versions of most
of those games featured in amiibo Festival. Board Game, Balloon Island, Desert
Island Escape, Card Battle, and Quiz Show are all available to play, plus the Puzzle
League game from New Leaf: Welcome amiibo.
Those are the multiplayer games, though a few can also be
played solo. One thing I want this arcade to be is a place where new styles of
play can happen. Which means sports. The villagers in your town make up the
rest of the players, allowing for a whole community to come together to play
games such as baseball, football, basketball and plenty of others.
Those four places offer a lot of things to do when
communicating, but obviously there’s going to be the usual looking around the
stores to see what’s different from a person’s other daily selection. And how
you shop around is slightly different compared to past games, as has been
hinted above.
That is for next month, where I’ll be detailing the rest
of the shopping district.
Crossing to the New Life Series