Video Game / Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp

Animal Crossing: Now on mobile

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp (どうぶつの森　ポケットキャンプ, Animal Forest: Pocket Camp in Japan), released globally on November 22, 2017, is a spinoff title of Nintendo's Animal Crossing series. It is the first title in the series to be released on a non-Nintendo handheld, more specifically on mobile platforms.

In contrast to the main series where you are a villager or mayor managing a village, in Pocket Camp you are in charge of a campsite. Similar to the main games, you can customize your character, decorate the campgrounds, fish, and interact with camp visitors. The game takes note from Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer with such features as being able to choose your character's skin tone and placing furniture using touch controls (a feature that was also implemented into the Welcome amiibo update of Animal Crossing: New Leaf).

Since version 4.0.0, the game's selling point is "bringing Animal Crossing into real life" courtesy of AR Mode, which allows the player to use the device's camera to take photos of animal friends overlaid the real world space or have a personal tour in the Cabin in first-person.

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Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp contains examples of:

• Achievement System: Stretch Goals, a list of tasks that send items to your mailbox when completed.
• Adaptation Distillation: Multiple features have been cut down in order to condense the game into a mobile format (such as the lack of a museum). Also, what determines some of an animal's dialogue is overhauled; while the personality types remain from the previous games, each animal is assigned one several preferred decorating styles, which affects far more factors. They still do not have personalized dialogue; each personality type has its own phrases if one looks closely, though it may look otherwise with the way some of the animals' Catch Phrases come off.^note for example, Carrie's use of "little one," more obtrusive than Goldie's use of "woof," can make it look like she behaves especially affectionate and motherly.
• Affectionate Nickname: Some animals' Catch Phrases come off as this more than they did in previous games (e.g. my dear, little one, lil' dude). Others sound just as much like Verbal Tics as they always did.
• Allegedly Free Game: The app is free, but you can buy Leaf Tickets with real money. Leaf Tickets are used to speed up crafting furniture, buying fortune cookies needed to obtain certain furniture and amenities as well as obtaining items like Throw Nets and Honey (which makes catching fish and bugs easier), or items used in crafting. You can also obtain Leaf Tickets and certain items by accomplishing various tasks so it is possible to get by without paying a single real-world dime, though more difficult if a player wants certain items.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes:
  • Some events literally reward you with clothing items if you completed certain tasks.
  • Reaching friendship level 7 with an animal will reward you with that animal's clothing.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • It's far easier to get fish attracted to your lure than in most Animal Crossing games.
  • Every last item has been categorized into types of items (from the standard tables, beds, and chairs, to the very specific fences and sinks). When crafting, you can filter out items by category.
  • Campers require certain furniture to be present before they'll move into your campground. Said furniture can be viewed from a camper's profile in the Contacts list.
    • Want to have a camper over, but you don't like the furniture they like? No problem, they'll stay even if their favorite furniture is removed. Similarly, the effects of any Amenities built persist if they are swapped out.
    • What's more, when inviting a camper over, the game gives you the option to automatically place and remove the furniture they want so you don't have to go through the hassle of doing so.
    • In fact, you don't have to place the furniture at all; you just have to have crafted it. When you invite the camper, it'll show them interacting with the new furniture in the cutscene, whether you've placed it or not, and then your campsite will return to normal.
  • Version 1.1.0 introduced the garden to your campsite. Thought that it would be a complete hassle of taking care of flowers in this game because you thought that they would easily die from neglect? Not in this game! If a flower wilts, it'll simply pause its growth timer. Just watering it again will instantly unwilt it, thus resuming its timer. Also, random players, including registered friends, might show up at your campsite and water your garden, benefiting both parties (one doesn't have to worry about delayed flower growth, the other will be rewarded with Friend Powder).
  • Building event-exclusive amenities takes noticeably less time compared to the minimum of half a day for basic-level amenities (not counting upgrades between amenity levels other than going for its maximum), allowing you more time to finish the event featuring them.
  • One update added a feature where the player will be notified if a friend needs watering or (in events only) has empty spots for sharing rare creatures when the player checks said friend's info.
  • Starting from version 1.2.0:
    • You can request help from multiple players at once (but only 10 at a time) when trying to go to Shovelstrike Quarry, normally a task that requires a lot of taps and multiple loading screens.
    • Now you can skip an animal's request if you feel like unable to finish it within the current cycle! The last request in the chain (without Request Tickets) cannot be skipped, though.
    • Occasionally, you can find balloon gifts from animals floating on the map. Tapping them will give you items. This can be useful if you happen to be missing certain items to complete a request. You can also obtain tools like throw nets this way.
  • Starting from version 1.3.0:
    • The player can plant, harvest, and water multiple flowers at the same time, much like the "Capture Many" option only available during garden events.
    • The player can view all items in a friend's Market Box, reducing the frustration compared to previous versions.
  • February 2019 came the addition of two big new features: a more streamlined Garden Event experience (sharing creatures and watering plants is now done through the Friends menu instead of physically visiting friends' gardens), and Pete's delivery services which allow you to complete animals' requests without having to go to their current spots (provided you have met them already).
  • Trophies (like the ones from the Fishing Tourney) aren't counted for the catalog, so completionists can relax. Because of this, it doesn't matter what trophy you got (wood, bronze, silver, gold), it won't count towards 100% Completion, so no intentional failing at such event anymore!
• April Fools' Day: For 2018, the game rewards all players with free Leaf Tickets. Novelty Leaf Tickets. Which aren't added to your actual Leaf Ticket count. That's right, this bundle of tickets is actually a furniture item!
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: A maximum of eight animals can stay at the campsite and the cabin at any time, not counting special NPCs.
• Artificial Atmospheric Actions: Campers that stay at your campsite will interact with placed furniture. This can range from the believable (sitting in chairs, reading books, sleeping) to stuff that looks very odd, like repeatedly turning a lamp on and off.
• Artistic License – Biology: In the main series games, the Walking Stick simply disappears if the player spooks it, as most stick bugs (including the one featured in the series proper) are incapable of flight. In Pocket Camp, the Walking Stick flies away with a loud buzzing sound when startled, despite not showing any wings or other change to its appearance when startled.
• Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: Inverted. The Choco-Mint Gyroidite event used Carmen (a brown and mint green bunny villager) as the representative for the corresponding Happy Homeroom missions.
• Auto-Save: The game handles the player's progress this way and for a while, it was the only Animal Crossing game to do this until Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory:
  • During the Fishing Tourney, you can use Leaf Tickets to rent a golden rod for the event's duration, allowing you to always catch two event fish at once, thus allowing you to progress quicker compared to other players who don't have it.
  • During Happy Homeroom tests, if you're just short of hitting a medal target, Lottie will give you a piece of furniture that will guarantee you the next medal, for a few Leaf Tickets.
  • Pocket Camp Club offers several subscription plans that provide significant conveniences. In addition to shortened crafting times, special reaction stamps and the Pocket Camp Club Journal, the plans provide the following—
    • The Happy Helper Plan lets you designate one animal as your camp caretaker, who will complete requests and gather event items for you, and provides a monthly stipend of 60 Leaf Tickets.
    • The Furniture & Fashion Plan lets you pick five cookies out of a selection of almost every cookie ever released every month, save layouts that were created for your campiste and cabin as Saved Sets, save 20 more outfits and buy discounted items from traveling merchants.
    • The Merry Memories Plan lets you purchase planner designs, buy stickers from the sticker shop, place a step count sticker in the planner, get increased seasonal event rewards, and provides a monthly stipend of 20 Leaf Tickets.
• But Thou Must!:
  • Most of the dialogue choices in the tutorial are just rephrases of each other.
  • Finding a lost item. The animal will tell you about it even if you say 'Do I have a choice?'.
• Cap:
  • The player starts out being able to hold up to 100 miscellaneous items (fruits, fish, insects, and shells), which is much more than the standard Animal Crossing games allow for, but will still fill up fairly quickly. The capacity is increased at certain level-ups and with Leaf Ticket purchases.
  • Each material type has a specific capacity, ranging from 9,999 for Friend Powder to just 30 for the various Essences. It's a good idea to check your inventory for your stock before accepting too many materials from the mailbox. These caps increase with certain level-ups as well, but they can't be bought with Leaf Tickets.
  • Relationship Values cap out at certain levels, with an initial cap of 7. The caps can be increased for animals of each style type by building/upgrading an amenity of that type.
  • A player's friend list is capped at 100, including pending friend requests.
  • There is a cap on the amount of furniture a player can have, which is increased in certain updates.
• Camping Episode: The game is a spinoff title that takes place on a camp ground.
• Carnivore Confusion: As usual for the series, this is avoided, with fish being the only meat that anyone is shown eating. Although some of the craftable food items fall into this, such as the turkey... requested by a chicken character, and the Cowhide Rug.
  • Some food names are carefully worded to suggest they are or might be vegetarian. Patty the cow's special item was originally called a burger, but an update changed the name to specify that it was a veggie burger. Similarly, Truffles the pig's item is translated as a vague "savory ramen", but a closer look at its contents and its original name shows it's supposed to be tonkotsu ramen, which is pork-based.
• Character Customization: You can customize your hair, skin tone, and eye color at the start of the game. There are also many clothing items, some only available for certain periods.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome:
  • Nat the Chameleon, who was the mainline games host for the Bug Off during the months of June, July, August, and September, is completely absent from this game, leaving Chip (and later, C.J.) free to host fishing tournaments all year 'round.
  • Franklin the Turkey. His chance to host a Garden Event is usurped by Isabelle's Anniversary Garden Events every November. He did get to make a surprise return on October 30, 2021 to host the Harvest Festival Garden Event.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: You can tell which animal belongs to which style by their tent color (only seen on recreation spots). For example, animals belonging to the "cool" style have blue tents.
• Cool Car: You can customize your personal RV inside and out at O.K. Motors, run by the new characters Giovanni, Beppe, and Carlo.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Starting from version 1.3.0, the chat response buttons have become thinner and thus placed even closer together. This can easily throw off players who are used to tap on a certain position for a certain response (especially when done quickly) prior to this update.
• A Day in the Limelight:
  • Fortune cookie furniture sets are usually based around one animal.
  • The memories focus on a certain set of animals for a segment.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • K. K. Slider shows up when the app is first loaded, but otherwise doesn't appear as an NPC unless the "K. K. Slider's chair" special item is placed in the campground. Likewise with Tom Nook; while you technically buy Leaf Tickets from him, he doesn't appear in the flesh unless you buy his special chair furniture.
  • Isabelle isn't a permanent assistant to the player in this game, and she leaves the campground after the tutorial. She can still be found in the Market Place afterwards, but it's never necessary to talk to her again unless you need to check the guidebook.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • Animals that are at your campsite may lose an item somewhere on the map and ask you to find it. If you happen to find the lost item before going to your campsite and talking to the animal that lost it, they will immediately approach you when you enter camp to ask for it back, sometimes commenting on how you managed to find the item before they even realized they lost it.
  • Calling Cards are a tool used to invite an animal to one of the recreation spots, if they aren't currently at one of the other ones or in your campsite. If you use one to invite an animal you've yet to formally meet, they will acknowledge they don't know you yet but thank you all the same for telling them of the place.
• Dualvertisement:
  • March 2018 saw a cross-promotion with the Super Mario Bros. series, tasking players with collecting mushrooms to craft various Mario Bros.-themed furniture and clothing.
  • September 2018 had a Splatoon 2 event, where you could collect blitz clams to craft Splatoon 2 clothing and eat fortune cookies to get furniture based on objects and weapons from the game.
  • October 2018 saw an event in honor of Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!, where Poké Balls were collected and used to craft Eevee-themed clothing and furniture.
  • July and August 2019 had various events with Sanrio's franchises, with a Gyroidite collection event and multiple fortune cookies to get clothing and furniture based on their characters.
• Dub Name Change: Some of the new elements added to this game have different names compared to the Japanese version.
  • Wonder why the "hip" style consists of whimsical-looking items, not something that's actually, well, hip? Wonder why it has a mushroom as its icon? It's because in the original Japanese, it's known as the "pop" style, as in, the whimsical side of J-Pop (think Kyary Pamyu Pamyu) known for colorful (almost trippy) imagery.
  • Some players are confused why the seasonal gothic roses look "too shiny". It's because they're originally named "glass roses" in Japanese.
• Elegant Gothic Lolita: Lottie dresses in such an outfit as part of February 2018's Lottie's Gothic Rose Event. The player can also earn a gothic lolita dress and other wearables if the capture enough bats during the event.
• Fetch Quest: The main way to make friends with animals is by giving them items you gather. Animals will have three item requests per three-hour cycle, and using a Request Ticket adds another three. Requests also get tougher as friendship levels increase, with animals wanting more or rarer items. Fetch Quests are also your main source for materials.
• Frothy Mugs of Water: The "vacation juice" item looks an awful lot like a cocktail, and the implications of a special juice you only drink on vacation speak for themselves.
• Game-Breaking Bug:
  • In the beta version, the "Leaf" character bug, which affects player avatars. This is caused by the player's name not loading properly. From a player's point of view, the affected visitor(s) (including the player's in-game friends) ended up turning into a placeholder, barefooted female camper wearing nothing but basic clothes (only seen if a camper has "no clothing" at all) and had their name changed into "Leaf". Players thought it was funny, until the impact showed: Visitors/Friends who were turned into Leafs can't be "interacted" with, as the affected avatar ended up having everything set to zero (empty campsite and Market Box) even though from the other player's end (the one whose avatar was shown as a Leaf by others) nothing wrong happened to him/her. Thankfully, a later update fixed this bug.
  • The crafting mechanic apparently had some bugs, which had only become noticeable later. One bug could cause you to craft duplicates when you were trying to craft 2-3 different furniture (only possible if you've unlocked the extra slots), while another, related to the Timed Goals mechanic, could cause the crafted furniture to fail to be registered by said mechanic (while the cause isn't clear as of this writing, one player claims it has something to do with the in-game clock). While these might seem to be mere annoyances (at least the duplicates can be sold if unneeded), they proved to ruin player experience in the special events, thanks to the event-exclusive materials required, which require a lot of grinding if a player managed to run out of them. It's even worse with the latter bug, as this means, assuming you've used up all the materials that were obtained as event rewards, you would not only waste more time grinding for the event-exclusive materials again (and risk running out of time), but also hope that the next time you're trying to craft the required furniture again it'll register as intended, allowing you to claim your Timed Goal rewards. Thankfully, this has been resolved since version 1.1.0, with compensation for players specifically affected by the Timed Goals-related bug.
  • Rarely, a completed amenity won't go away from your crafting list when you tap on the completed one even after watching through the whole unveiling cutscene. The good news is that you basically can get easy Relationship Values boost, but the bad news is that you won't be able to craft a new amenity, locking you out from further relationship progress.
  • Another rare one. No clear reason is given, but somehow your garden might end up thinking it's in "event" mode and will immediately "end" it whenever you try to do anything to it, kicking you back to the campsite. Seeds can also be randomly lost when this happens.
  • Changing clothes might crash the game for some reason. Fixed in the version 1.1.1 update.
  • Host the Most events tended to become Unwinnable for some players due to a bug that makes invited animals fail to be registered by the Timed Goals' counter. Instead of risking more situations like this regarding this event, the Host the Most goals system (the event mechanic itself still works as intended, though, including the introduction of new animals) was axed during the introduction of Ava, Sprinkle, Boots, and Static. The goal system was restored when the first six "hip" animals were introduced in a later update.
  • Version 1.2.0 might as well be a Game-Breaking Patch. Some users reported that they're unable to log in since the update because the game constantly crashes for some reason. It might have something to do with broken localizations, as one solution suggests changing language options, but it doesn't work for all people.
  • Players have reported that Lost Lure Creek has the tendency to crash at random. This only affects certain iPhone and iPad models.
• Give Me Your Inventory Item:
  • At the end of every gardening event, the NPC host will either ask for or blatantly demand the special flowers and any Rare Creatures you still have on hand. Afterwards, they repay you in a small payout of bells.
  • Catch enough fish during the Fishing Tourney without cashing them in to Chip (or whoever else is hosting the tournament) and they will eventually force-take your current haul of Tourney fish to cash in. The first successful catch you make is always cashed in immediately to obtain the Wood Trophy.
• Gotta Catch Them All: Actually averted this time around, at least regarding bugs and fish. There is no Museum in this game so the bugs and fish you may catch are solely for making money and completing animal requests. There are also fewer species that can be obtained than in other games in the series.
• Hostile Show Takeover: Well, "hostile" may be pushing it too far, but Jack, the Halloween mascot, has done this on a few occasions.
  • In 2018, after wrapping up the Gardening event of October, he hijacks Chip's fishing tournament a few days later to host his own, complete with candy fish. He would return to hijack 2019's October fishing tournament with undead fish skeletons.
  • When late September 2019 rolled around and everyone was wrapping up collecting Truffles, he wasted no time in hijacking the app and filling it with Halloween imagery. The initial load screen has his face and several spooky objects plastered on it, the Friends list was decorated with a dark and spooky interference (no other event has ever given the friends menu such a treatment), and the Events tab shows and is introduced by Jack instead of Isabelle. The push notifications are also re-written as if they were stated by Jack himself, complete with pumpkin emoji.
• An Interior Designer Is You: As in the previous games, interior and exterior design is a major aspect. The in-series reason for this is that you are the camp's manager.
• Idle Animation: All the animal characters and your avatar continuously bobble their heads back and forth while bouncing on their toes. While this adds life to the scene, if you have a bunch of animal characters seated in a line, you'll notice they all do this in sync.
• Item Crafting:
  • For the first time in Animal Crossing, ordering furniture items from Cyrus will also require certain crafting materials such as cotton or logs, which you can get by doing quests for animals and completing in-game goals. (Leaf Tickets can also be substituted for any materials you don't have.)
  • A later update added clothes crafting, using the same system as above, but replace Cyrus with either Labelle (accessories), Mabel (shirt, dress, pants, skirt), or Kicks (footwear).
• Loot Boxes: Fortune cookies contain themed furniture and clothing sets. You get one piece of the set for each fortune cookie you eat.
• Luck-Based Mission:
  • The garden event is notorious for this, despite being split into two parts (Part 1 is the first four days, part 2 is the last six) to avoid overwhelming players during the event launch. First of all, to attract rare creatures (required to claim rewards) you have to plant seasonal flowers, the seeds of which appearing as Randomly Drops from completing animal requests (only one among the available seasonal seeds can be bought, but it's a common request reward anyway). Nope, you can't cross-pollinate to obtain them. Next, once the seasonal flowers bloom, which can take from 3-4 hours depending on the flower type, there's still a chance that a creature won't spawn on a newly-bloomed flower, with rarer ones having lower spawn rate. Now we come to the catching part, which has a chance to fail, with higher failure rate on the rarer creatures (go figure). Having active friends share their captured creatures with you can help with the creature availability problem (as long as you keep your garden filled with flowers), but nothing can fix the catch rate problem except paying 10 Leaf Tickets to guarantee you catch one, which can become costly if you use it to catch too many. It's even worse on the second half of the event where the final two creatures share the same flower type, so you can only hope that the 3-star rare creature shows up during flower bloom, even if it's just one. Thankfully, the harder a creature type can be obtained, the lower the requirement to claim all the rewards associated with the specified creature, but you still need a whopping 80 or 90 of each of the three-star creatures caught within six days to get everything the event has to offer. If you want all the rewards, good luck. You'll need it.
  • Getting villagers through Gulliver. Gulliver has 23 unique villagers he can bring back, three in physical form and twenty in the form of Villager maps that then must be played with Blathers. However, in order to get said villager/map, Gulliver has to give you a bonus, which may or may not happen depending on which items you give him or due to sheer luck.
  • The Flower Festival event. The method of obtaining seeds is definitely changed— cross-pollinating is finally allowed— but it's also the only way to get the rarer kinds of seeds, and trading in the flowers is the only way to get the items rather than catching rare creatures. The mission then becomes to both budget your seeds so you have enough flowers to trade for the items, then hope the flowers you don't save create the rare seed you need when you cross-pollinate.
• Microtransactions: There are many opportunities to pay money for conveniences, like speeding up furniture and amenity production, increasing inventory space, and catching a large number of bugs or fish at once. The game also has no shame in advertising special items and Fortune Cookies available only with Leaf Tickets.
• Mistaken for Special Guest: Similar to New Leaf's protagonist being appointed as mayor unexpectedly, the player character of Pocket Camp becomes the campground manager in spite of them insisting they aren't the intended manager.
• Money Sink:
  • Treasure maps can lead you to big rewards like rare materials, lots of Bells, or even new animals to meet. However, the higher-end maps require a substantial amount of resources to advance, like Bells for the material maps, and Friendship Powder for the Bell maps.
  • Completing Happy Homeroom tests earns you materials that you can use to craft golden furniture. However, they require quite a lot of rare materials and 990,000 Bells to make.
  • Gulliver works as an item sink. In his first iteration, you could give him furniture and clothing in exchange for treats and chances at new animals to meet. After a September 2019 revamp, he now requires specific items, which can include items crafted using high-end materials.
• Nerf:
  • The fishing and bug catching mechanics are much easier than in the mainline Animal Crossing games one way or another. When fishing, fish will never tap the lure more than twice before biting, and they are much quicker and smarter at targeting the player's lure. Insects, meanwhile, no longer require aiming the net as the player's character will aim automatically- the only command requiring the player's input is when to swing.
  • In earlier versions of the game, sometime before mid-2018, Daily Goals had fewer overall daily goals, but contained more powerful items such as material and friend powder. Since then, they've been altered to only give out Bells, two of a random Essence, and one Silver Treat per day.
  • In May 2020's Garden event and every garden event since, the middle tier of flower types were removed from the event entirely, allowing you to focus on solely obtaining and growing the first tier for the first four days, then using the resulting harvests to trade for the highest tier of flowers afterwards.
• No Cartoon Fish: Fish are depicted realistically and eaten by both the player and the camp visitors. Averted with some of the fish seen in Fishing Tourneys, which range from palette swaps of existing fish species to outright fictional fish.
• No Fair Cheating: The game can't be played on custom phone ROMs and rooted phones to prevent unwanted game modifications, like Leaf Ticket hacks.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: Selecting a gender only affects what hairstyle choices are available. Like previous games, both genders can wear all clothes.
• Play Every Day: Daily rewards in the form of items are given to players that log in every new day. There's also a set of three Timed Goals to be fulfilled every day for some bells, Essence, and extra treats to give to the villagers.
• Pooled Funds: The icon used for purchasing 1200 Leaf Tickets (at the cost of $39.99 US) is Tom Nook in a bathtub filled with Leaf Tickets.
• Put on a Bus: After having three of his 2020 Fishing Tourneys hijacked by Tom Nook, Zipper, and Jack, Chip would no longer appear to host Fishing tourneys after September. His son C.J became the new non-Event host of fishing tourneys from November 2020 onwards.
• Rare Random Drop: Like one of the hints said, you can get "the rarest of crafting materials" (sparkle stones) from a "simple" request, but it has a very, very low chance of it happening (datamine shows that it's 0.02%). Even then it requires a level 10+ animal and only certain requests from them can make it possible. To make it even more of a Guide Dang It!, there's a hidden variable that, by reaching a certain amount, allows this to even possible to happen to begin with! (appropriately, said variable is named "PAIN")
• Relationship Values: Doing quests or chatting with animals will up your relationship with them; each animal requires that a certain friendship level be reached before you can invite them to the camp, and they'll give you exclusive items at specific levels. This was always a feature in the series, but this is the first time that there's actually a meter telling you how high your friendship is.
• Retraux: The new villagers from Animal Crossing: New Horizons were added to the game as part of the cross-promotional for their debut game. Unlike the fish and bugs that also debuted in New Horizons, which appeared as temporary event catches with their New Horizons renders, the villagers were given designs to make them fit in with the other, New Leaf modeled animals. This is most noticeable with Dom, who wears his shirt as a scarf in Pocket Camp, as opposed to New Horizons where sheep have begun wearing their shirts the regular way.
• Socialization Bonus: Having in-game friends can help you access Shovelstrike Quarry (provided they agree to help), which costs Leaf Tickets per entry otherwise, though this method only works once per day. You can also access friend's Market Boxes at any time by visiting their camps; otherwise, you have to see if randomly visiting players have boxes with the items you need in them.
• Temporary Online Content: The Catalog feature is a completionist's nightmare due to including limited-time items, fortune cookie items, limited-time fortune cookie items, and event-exclusive stuff, but those problems are somewhat mitigated by the newly-introduced reissue events ("somewhat" because those are still time-limited). Adding onto this, two of the unique OK Motors clothing items are only available through the MyNintendo Points system, which requires linking the game to a Nintendo account. Still not too bad, since the link is required for data backups/transfer... but if the account is accidentally unlinked after purchasing those items, then not only will you reset the progress, you will never be able to get these items again unless you link a different account, rendering the Catalog permanently uncompletable. It's also possible to sell limited items to Gulliver.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Usually, every time players end up unable to do something or obtain gifts properly due to a bug, the game will gift the affected players as compensation a bit later. Notable example goes to the Holiday Event Timed Goals bug which prevented them from registering as completed, for which the affected players were compensated with Leaf Tickets and Request Tickets after a major update fixed the bug.
• Timed Mission:
  • So far, the special events have this as their gimmick. For example, during the Christmas event, you're given additional Timed Goals on top of your usual dailies, marked as Event Challenges, where you can obtain special rewards exclusive to said event by completing them. These goals will disappear from your list if the event's timer runs out, unlike the regular Timed Goals that will only reset each new day.
  • For an entire month, there is a large event split off into three lesser events:
    • First, a garden event hosted by an NPC- lasting for an entire ten days, taking place in two halves- the first lasting four days and the second lasting the remaining six. The events involve attracting "rare creatures" to your garden (typically exotic insects themed after the event, or the occasional Waddling Head) by using special seasonal flowers and catching them. As a reward, the NPC gives out bonus items, furniture, and clothing. Doing extra nets you recolors of previously earned prizes.
    • After the garden event comes the Gyroidite Scavenger Hunt, which lasts between six to twelve days. Gyroidites spawn at the various locations and you have to scoop up as many of them as you can and craft limited-time furniture using them. Rarely, the Gyroidites are replaced with other objects, such as clams, mushrooms, eggs, or candy.
    • Finally, for five days to one week, Chip sets up shop at one of the game's two fishing spots and invites the player to participate in his Fishing Tournament.
    • In-between these bigger events are "Goals" events, which under most circumstances will introduce a limited-time fish or insect to catch that are part of a series of goals. Finish all three tiers of goals in the three-day time limit and you get a free Fortune Cookie that was recently released.
• Underground Monkey: Fishing Tourneys normally feature real-life fish and the one-off fictional creature (such as during the Super Mario crossover event). Some Fishing Tourneys, however, feature normal fish retrofitted with unnatural palette swaps such as the Gold Horse Mackerel (November 2018), the Platinum Black Bass (November 2019), the Honey Sea Horse (February 2020), and the White Butterfly Koi (June 2020). Other times, the Fishing Tourney is based around one type of fish (June 2019's Moon Jellyfish, October 2019's Bonefish, December 2019's Starfish, April 2020's Eggler Fish, and February 2021's Chocolate Fish) available in three different sizes and each size represented with a different colorization.
• Undesirable Prize:
  • When talking to animals at the campsite, one or two of them may decide to give the player a gift. One of these is a stash of materials and event items (fish and Gyroidites should the player talk to them during the respective events), including the hard to obtain Essences, the other is a shockingly low number of Bells (either 500 or 2,500). With Bells being easy to obtain through playing the game normally, that second reward can feel worthless if you've played for long enough and stockpiled thousands if not millions of Bells, especially with many other elements in the game that result in bigger payouts of Bells present and accounted for.
  • After a Garden event, the host takes all the flowers and Creatures associated with said event and sends you a "gift" in your Mailbox. Said gift is a very small sum of Bells (usually no more than 10,000 bells) regardless of how far you made it through the event or how many creatures/flowers you acquired/shared.
• Virtual Paper Doll:
  • Applied to your Player Character as per usual, considering this is an Animal Crossing game.
  • The 1.2.0 update allowed you to dress up your guest animals. This requires reaching a certain level (varies by animal), however. Also, not every clothing item is compatible with animals.
• Violation of Common Sense: The garden events. The garden event's host tells you to plant a certain type of seasonal flower in your garden, and those flowers attract "rare creatures" which the host wants for a certain purpose (typically a simple party). Simple enough. But you never actually give them any creatures; instead, you give the creatures to your friends, which makes even less sense because the creatures still have a chance to flee when your friends attempt to catch them. And the hosts themselves gives you rewards for giving creatures to your friends instead of them.
• Welcome to Corneria: Chip, the host of the monthly fishing tournaments, suffers a horrible case of this. Apart from the rare times a crossover (Mario or Splatoon themed, for example) is the theme of the tournament, his dialogue never changes- remaining the same since the implementation of Fishing Tourneys. You can also go and talk to him the day after the last day of the tournament, and he will always give the same response every time.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: The clothing options are the same as they are in New Leaf, so males can wear dresses and skirts and females can wear pants and shorts, among other things. An update in March 2021 also made hairstyles non-gender-specific.

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