Here are some games to tide over avid Animal Crossing fans until the release of Pocket Camp.

✨ Enchanted Folk and the School of Wizardry (Magician’s Quest: Mysterious Times in US) ✨

This game is a must-play for fans of Animal Crossing. Animal Crossing meets Hogwarts, this game has all the favourite attributes of animal crossing such as animal residents, cute graphics (which are visually similar to animal Crossing), having your own room to decorate, fishing, bug catching and a variety of shops to browse. However, in this game there are unique perks such as: Being able to attend classes at the Magic school, being able to play instruments, being able to perform spells (such as invisibility, which is useful for eavesdropping) and the ability to date the other residents (which is alarming if you think about it, considering you’re a human and they’re animals/aliens/fruit, etc).

? Harvest Moon: The Tale of Two Towns ?

This game is a great addition to the Harvest Moon series. The story is of two towns (Bluebell and Konohana) that used to have a connecting tunnel between the two towns and were friendly with one another. But as years went on, they fell out and become more and more isolated from one another, with the tunnel eventually becoming blocked, meaning a long trek is necessary to travel from one town to the other. You can choose which town you want to inhabit at the beginning of the game. Your character’s aim is to restore peace between the two towns. You can choose to fall in love with one of the residents from your own town, or from the other town. In addition to this, there are all the Harvest Moon perks that we all know and love, such as Animal farming (Bluebell) and Plant farming (Konohana), shopping, horse riding, gathering etc., as well as regular food festivals held by the goddess at the hill between the two towns. As your character participates in more competitions, the friendship between the two towns will increase.

Psst! There’s also rumours of a remake called Harvest Moon: Tale of Two Towns +

? Fantasy Life ?

Fantasy life is a game brought to us by Level 5, the company that created the infamous Professor Layton series. The beautiful unique graphics and music are a good indicator of this. In this game, after creating your character you get to choose a ‘life’ (basically what career you want). The 12 life classes to choose from are: Alchemist; Angler; Blacksmith; Carpenter; Cook; Hunter; Magician; Mercenary; Miner; Paladin; Tailor; and Woodcutter. After you have mastered one life, you can choose another. In each life, you learn a new skill and can make/obtain new items (dishes as a chef, clothes as a tailor, ore as a miner etc.), meaning once you’ve mastered all 12 lives, you are saving a lot of Dosh (the currency) and resources. Like in Animal Crossing, you can decorate your houses, engage with locals, as well as being able to take on quests, slay dragons, and complete the exciting storyline.

This game also has a sequel that will soon be released for mobile! You can check out a first Fantasy Online gameplay video right here.

? My Sims Kingdom ?

This was one of the first DS games I played and therefore sticks in my memory. I vividly remember retrieving it out of my stocking from Santa and spending Christmas day curled up on the sofa being even more anti-social than normal (if that’s possible?!). So good was this game that my mum decided to steal it (along with my DS console), create a save file of her own, and play it whilst I was in school. This game basically consists of following a storyline where the King gives your character the task of solving the mystery around who’s been stealing public works projects and houses from the Kingdom and causing chaos?! Alongside following the story, you get to decorate your houses (you get multiple), go shopping, play mini-games, complete mini quests (such as finding all the escaped zoo animals), create public works projects and place new houses.

? Stardew Valley ?

I haven’t actually played Stardew Valley in depth, but I’ve heard very good things and definitely want to put aside some time to play it properly. Stardew Valley is a Harvest Moon like, farming RPG game developed by ConcernedApe. Your character inherits a farm plot from your grandfather and your job is to create a successful farm and a thriving community. It has been well received and has been given a 10/10 rating by Steam! Nintendo have also released a version of it for Switch. 🙂

?️ The Sims 3 ?️

The Sims 3 is great fun. Don’t get me wrong, I like The Sims 4, but there is very little space for development in your town, EA received a lot of backlash for not including pools and toddlers (amongst other things) in their initial release of the game, which forced them to include them in updates, and it has more of a mobile Sims game feel than the PC Sims games I’ve grown up with.

The Sims 3 has better graphics than The Sims 2 whilst also having super cool expansion packs such as The Sims 3: Supernatural (you can create and meet fairies, plant people, vampires etc.) and The Sims 3: Island Paradise where you can create and run your own resorts. In addition to this, The Sims 3: University Life offers a more realistic University life for your Sims (perhaps too realistic for some, the stress of getting them through university is unreal).