It's a $39 game, but with no pay-per-item extras. Animal Crossing, however, isn't freemium.
In fact, it sounds like a lot of casual games.įarmville, and tons of freemium games after it, have communities that trade collectible goods and rare items. Only, in the age of mobile games, the idea doesn't seem so foreign anymore. And the 3DS version emerges with the core of the game largely unchanged: you still live in a small, cute town, building a little home, collecting money and buying furniture, going fishing and digging for treasures and fossils, and living a generally relaxed little life. Years later, the Nintendo DS version hooked my wife, who generally stays away from games (Plants vs Zombies and Ticket to Ride being the exceptions). I was hooked on it, and so were many game designer friends I knew. It almost sounded like an MMO, but it wasn't online. You live in a small town, you collect fruit, you go fishing, you pay off loans on a home, you talk to animals that live in town and send them letters. It was an odd game to explain back then in fact, not much happens.
In fact, there's a fantastic mobile game Nintendo has right now - it's just that it lives on the Nintendo 3DS.Īnimal Crossing: New Leaf is the latest in a franchise extending back to 2002 on the GameCube.
That future seems unlikely considering Nintendo's investment in Wii U and 3DS hardware, but that doesn't mean there isn't software that could be brilliant in the mobile space. In this age of cheap, ubiquitous mobile phone and tablet games, you can't help but wonder what Nintendo would make if the company were ever to enter the space.