The sense of place this game evokes in its best moments is incredible.
I picked up my copy of Animal Crossing: New Leaf for the first time in ages this week. I bought it when I went to visit my family this last Christmas, and didn’t play it much after I got back. But I was craving playing Pokemon, charged up my 3DS, and then realized New Leaf was in the cartridge slot. So I figured I should check in on my fledgling town of Thistle and see how things had gone after a new mayor arrived to town, hung out for a few days, and then disappeared for months.
There were weeds everywhere, and the citizens basically all thought I’d gone and died, but were generally happy to see me again. I had to convince Antonio, my best honkbro, to not move. But Isabelle had kept everything running in my absence, so my strange town of animal people, one badly-placed bridge, and feral goldfish was in good shape.
I’ve been having a great time getting back into it. It’s one of the few games I’ve played recently that’s just relaxing. The closest thing to frustrating is the inventory management, and after I was taught that I could stack fruit that became much more manageable, even if it’s still annoying sometimes. I’ve just been accosting trees for their fruits, finding fossils, and spending irresponsible amounts of money on furniture and gifts for my animal buds.
Still managed this, though. If only it was this easy in our current society. DX
I think I’m most impressed by the game loop design and the sound design. The game loop is great because resources take a while in real time to regenerate. It makes it so there’s only so much you can do in a day, which was frustrating as hell when I was on vacation but is great for fitting in playing this game alongside the other stuff I’m busy doing. And the sound design makes me happy because the soundtrack is simple but always seems to fit the mood, and because they bothered to let you hear the distant sound of rain hitting the roof when you’re inside your house during a rainstorm. I’m a sucker for good rain sound design, and I definitely turned up my 3DS’s volume all the way and just sat and listened to the rain hitting the eaves for a long moment.
I’m looking forward to playing it more in the weeks ahead. Maybe someday I’ll even manage to figure out the rest of the mechanics. XD
PS: All credit goes to my friend Xyzzy on Mastodon for pointing out the intentionally-time-limiting aspect of the gameplay loop when she was discussing AC:NL months ago. Her explanation of it made me appreciate it so much!
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