Video Game / Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp

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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.

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp ended services on November 28, 2024, with one final event as a send-off. An offline version titled Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete took its place on December 3, 2024, albeit with functions such as visiting friends' campsites removed, and Pocket Camp Club benefits being retooled for the offline version. The overview trailer for Complete can be viewed here.

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp contains examples of:

• 100% Completion:
  • The catalog keeps track of most items collected by the player, with a cleared category having a different button color and a crown mark. In Complete, a crown mark is placed on an event fortune cookie on the Complete Cookie Catalog whose set has been fully collected.
  • The game also keeps track of animals the player has met via the Contacts menu. A filter setting for animals the player has not met yet is an indicator for progress, as meeting all the animals will remove this filter.
• 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.
• Addressing the Player: The characters will refer the player by his/her inputted name like in the mainline Animal Crossing games.
• 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. Negated in Pocket Camp Complete, which is a paid app with no microtransactions at all.
• 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.
• And Your Reward Is Interior Decorating: As typical for Animal Crossing, the player can be rewarded furniture from various sources like events and fortune cookies, some in fact only usable for the player's camper and cabin, like all the wallpapers and flooring.
• Animal Motifs: Most event fortune cookie items incorporate the associated animal's species design. For example, Filbert's cookie has the rocket-pilot helmet which includes ears more suitable for a squirrel.
• Animation Bump: Whistle Pass, a location exclusive to the Complete version, has a notably more detailed design compared to the rest of the recreational spots and utilizes different lighting entirely instead of the cel shading-esque look the game mainly uses.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • In general, fish and bug spawns use a weighting system that allows them to spawn easier should the player have a request but lacking that fish/bug.
  • 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!
  • A Happy Homeroom class can still accept items that are a variation of the requested one, so for example, the player can still use the pink exercise ball and get a Flawless even if the class requested the blue variation.
  • The Complete version's game mechanics have been reworked to justify the game being a paid app with no Microtransactions:
    • Most perks from the Pocket Camp Club subscription are available to all players, meaning less hassle in completing requests while away from the game and permanent reduction of crafting times.
    • All new players are given three crafting spots from the get-go instead of starting with one and having to unlock the rest with premium currency.
    • Watering flowers gives significant boost to growth, meaning flowers will bloom sooner if they are watered every hour. This is significant for garden events since online sharing has been cut from this version.
    • Speaking of garden events, rare creatures have significantly higher spawn rate upon flower bloom for the same reason as the above. The amount requirements for the tasks have been significantly lowered as well, meaning less pressure for participating. Top it off with creatures given by the camp helper for less frustration.
    • Event flower seeds for the second half of a gardening event can be bought from Lloid instead of only obtainable as random rewards from animals/friends.
    • Rarer materials like sparkle stones and timed materials (formerly reissue materials) are easier to get thanks to events rewarding them. The latter material is also available as a possible reward from Shovelstrike Quarry, which has been buffed to allow two free visits per day due to the reworked social mechanic.
    • Crafting reissued items no longer requires HH material to compensate for said material being much rarer in Complete. Only the Golden Collection and Series items as well as the golden package require it. Not to mention, prices for crafting non-LT reissued items have been significantly toned down to make them more doable and to go with its lack of microtransactions, with highest tier reissues being priced at 60,000 Bells compared to the obscenely high 350,000.
    • Cyrus may randomly offer items otherwise only obtainable from event fortune cookies. These are also crafted similarly to non-premium event items, meaning the player only needs the materials and Bells to craft one.
    • Gulliver's Ship's free refresh replenishes every 24 hours instead of the online version's 48, allowing players to save up Bells if they happen to clear the islands quicker or just want to wait for said free refresh.
    • Gulliver's Ship no longer imposes load limit per item, allowing players to load as much of an item as they wish to fill up the export gauge.
• 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!
  • For 2019, the gag gift is a tanuki statue, whose design is heavily themed after Tom Nook.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit:
  • A maximum of eight animals can stay at the campsite and the cabin at any time, not counting special NPCs. A later update raised this for the former to 16 once the player reaches level 20.
  • Up to 8 friends show up every day at Whistle Pass.
• The Artifact:
  • The Market Place has little reason to exist in the game at its current state. This recreation spot came with the game's initial launch as an adaptation of the main games' shops, with offered items that can be interacted by the player directly instead of going through a typical shop menu. This served as an additional way to get items, specifically ones not available through crafting. However, as features began to be gradually added in, the Market Place remains the same outside of the addition of the Fortune Cookie Shop, and it became even more irrelevant as most new items end up "sold" through the crafting menu anyway (especially after the addition of the "wandering merchant" mechanic) and the Fortune Cookie Shop eventually became its own standalone map location. It also does not help that its catalogue pales in comparison to the newer, better designed items. The only reasons players still bother with it are for fulfilling Happy Homeroom requirements, whose certain classes may ask for items only exclusive to the Market Place, or to sell furniture or clothing items they have (when the more worthwhile Gulliver's Ship already exists).
  • The amenities in Complete. In this version, animals no longer have level locks and furniture placement has covered a wider range including the amenities' spots (carried over from the online version), meaning the only reason to craft them is for some friendship boost for multiple campsite animals or aesthetic reasons.
  • The Together! events remain in Complete despite there being no counter for score accumulated from all participants due to the game being offline.
  • Trying to export Mario's tee through Gulliver's Ship, even in Complete, will warn the player similarly to other event items despite it still being obtainable from certain animals and one of the Isle of Style islands. This was a leftover from it being one of the collab items, which are typically tagged as event items. The same warning also applies to the kimono and the mummy shirt, which while non-collab were originally obtainable only through events before the corresponding animals that wear them by default became available (and thus the clothes became farmable through Gulliver's Ship).
  • The anniversary events reissued every November in Complete retain the respective Milestone Celebration years they debuted, which creates Continuity Lock-Out for new players. This also extends to the seasonal materials which still use the same number graphic as they originally appeared.
  • One of the Loading Screen tips promotes the warehouse feature. The statement that it is "free for all players to use" is a remnant from when it was a Pocket Camp Club perk only to be made free later in the online version. Thus, the Complete version, being a paid-once app with most perks usable by all players, renders this bit irrelevant.
• 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, playing instruments) 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.
• Artistic License – Ornithology: The chickadees (at least in the English localization) from Papi's winter-bird cookie are actually shima-enaga, also known as the Japanese long-tailed tit, a far cry from what they are called in-game.
• 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.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Many players managed to pull off intricate campsite/cabin/camper designs to show off to other players before realizing how tedious navigating around it is, especially with the inability to shimmy through narrow spaces, not to mention trying to interact with the visiting animals if they are obscured by large items.
  • The cargo items. They are commonly recommended for Gulliver's Ship and they add up decent export points when loaded, but they cost friend powder to craft them, especially in Complete where friend powder are harder to come by. The golden packages embody this trope even more. If recommended, one load of it will always completely fill up the export gauge, but crafting one requires sparkle stones and the even rarer HH material.
• 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.
• Bad Luck Mitigation Mechanic: Purchasing a fortune cookie gets you a stamp, and a pack of five gets you six stamps. Every ten stamps completes a stamp card, which you can trade in for items from currently available fortune cookies.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Crafting items costing the least possible Bells and/or materials while taking the least amount of time per crafting are the easiest way to prepare cargo for Gulliver's Ship. The giant dharma^note Requires 6 wood, which is the second most common material, costs 220 Bells, and takes 1 minute to craft. was the most popular during the online game's run, which was reflected on the game's 1st anniversary announcing said item as the most commonly crafted at the time.
  • As of the game's later years and Complete, milk became a closer competition. While it is more expensive to craft than the giant dharma (milk's 640 vs. giant dharma's 220), it only requires 1 preserves (least common regular material but not many items require those) and 1 steel (most common material).
• 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?'.
• Canon Immigrant: The Isabelle scooter, a rare fortune cookie item, actually originated from Mario Kart 8, under the name City Tripper.
• Cap:
  • Bells and Leaf Tickets/Tokens appear to be maxed out at 9,999,999 and 99,999 respectively, but a "+" is added at the end to indicate the player holding more than what the game can display. However, as the currencies are stored as 32-bit unsigned integer each, the max amount is 4,294,967,295.
  • 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. As of Complete, this maxes out at 1,500 without the extra ones bought with Leaf Tickets if the player carried over the online version's save.
  • 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. This no longer applies in the Complete version, with the end level cap for all animals at 100.
  • As a result of the above, player level is capped at 1,000. Even if there are surplus level-ups (like, say, from befriending the bonus Sanrio animals), the Experience Meter will not be filled once the player reaches that point.
  • A player's friend list is capped at 100, including pending friend requests. Similarly, a player can only keep up to 100 Camper Cards in Complete.
  • There is a cap on the amount of furniture a player can have, which is increased in certain updates. As of Complete, this amount is capped at 4,300 each for furniture and clothing categories. The warehouse is available to store additional furniture/clothing, with each warehouse (up to 16) having its own cap of 99 items.
  • As of Complete, the player can display up to 100 items (not counting amenities) on the campsite and up to 60 items in a cabin floor.
  • The player can only store up to 40 custom designs in total (20 for clothing, 20 for decoration).
• 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 Goose (a chicken villager), 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. He did get to make a return on July 29th, 2023 to host the Nat's Jungle Exploration Garden Event, as well as appear in a special themed furniture, Nat's Buggy Base.
  • 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 Franklin's Farm-to-Table 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 while those with the "cute" style have pink.
• Console Cameo: The player can obtain a few Nintendo consoles and peripherals in the game through limited events. This is the premise for Hopkins' cookie, whose 5-star furniture (and Memory) was used to promote the Nintendo Switch.
• 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.
  • The Complete version comes with rerun events, including rerun gardening events, which many of them ran with the 3-flower format. Players that had gotten used to the 2-flower format in the online version's lategame and Jingle's Candlelit Toy Day (the first new playable event in Complete) were in for a surprise over why they were missing one of the creature types, which is exclusive to the other flower, or why there were two seed types already available.
• 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. K.K. Slider, however, eventually becomes the focus character for the new location Whistle Pass in the Complete version, where he holds a concert every 7 PM.
  • 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:
  • The player character's starting outfit variation also depends on the current season, meaning short-sleeved shirts if started on spring/summer or long-sleeved if started on autumn/winter.
  • 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.
  • If a frog or an alligator camper wears a hat consisting of a pair of birds (for example, the actual-chickadee hat), each bird will be perched separately on top of each eye instead of close together on the head like with other wearers.
  • 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.
  • The inventory search function uses a more unique tagging system for certain items, meaning typing "hello kitty" for example will return all Sanrio-themed items the player currently has, even if they do not have Hello Kitty's name.
  • If a task asks for a certain fish caught, catching the extremely rare "king" variation of that fish (if applicable) also counts for the task.
  • If multiple friends share the same camp caretaker on their Camper Cards and they all spawn at Whistle Pass, only one of them will appear with the caretaker, the other(s) will appear solo. This also applies if the player him/herself also has his/her current caretaker the same as those friends and the caretaker is set to follow the player.
  • If a player still has the seeds for a rerun gardening event, attempting to plant the ones meant for the second half before said part begins will have the game warn the player that the seeds are only meant for the second half of the event and thus will not spawn any rare creatures if they bloom.
• 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. This was later reissued on spring 2021 while also adding other items based on other characters like Aggretsuko and Gudetama. The collaboration was then reissued for the final time on winter 2023.
  • Also doubling as Product Placement, late summer 2020 featured collaboration with the Japanese textile design brand SOU • SOU in the form of premium collections of clothing and furniture based on the brand's designs.
• 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.
  • Episodes became Memories in the English localization.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Various aspects in the game differ greatly from how the game is run today, as of Complete:
  • The earlier the game version, the slower the gameplay felt in retrospect. Interactions used to lack a Skip toggle, there was no way to skip animal invite cutscenes, gardening event sharing required having to visit another player's garden (and there were no bulk sharing back then as well), etc. On the bright side, there were more player animations at that time, which puts the skipped animations later in the game's years and Complete into Later-Installment Weirdness.
  • The game initially launched with no garden, among other features that would become the game's mainstay like Happy Homeroom, fortune cookies, and Gulliver's Ship.
  • Until the Gyroid Scavenger Hunts were introduced, the equivalent was crafting limited-time items using unique material that is only obtainable from clearing requests and goals, never as an overworld collectible.
  • The first gardening events introduced in the game had flowers that require 4 hours to grow, meaning it is possible to have wilted event flowers if the player or his/her friend did not water them within the 3-hour window.
  • Fortune cookies were only released a few months later after the online game's initial launch. And speaking of fortune cookies, the event ones used to have simpler designs compared to the later ones – the latter tended to also have huge designs to go with the updated campsite arrangement size – and there were even recolored versions of existing cookies (if not other events) and event cookies without Memories until the non-collab ones got them in a later update. The initial launch of the fortune cookies also appeared to be experimental, as Hopkins' cookie was once datamined to cost 80 Leaf Tickets before it was made the normal 50 upon release.
  • Somewhat related to the above, Stamp Cards from the Fortune Cookie Shop used to be exchangeable for past event items before reissue/timed materials became the standard.
  • Gulliver was much simpler in that the player only had to send 10 furniture/clothes and then wait for a fixed amount of hours for his return, with the only rewards being mainly snacks and the rare chance of an animal coming along before maps became a standard (thus, Rowan, O'Hare, and Plucky stood out among the exclusive animals for a while). However, this also meant that only one trip could be made at a time, and there was no way to finish it earlier with Leaf Tickets/Tokens. This early mechanic also meant that at that time, the player would be able to see Gulliver's ship in the distance when viewed from Sunburst Island while the trip was nearing finish.
  • Events in general were more unpredictable, with some being more gimmicky and relevant within that event's timeframe (like Host the Most being tie-ins to new animals, the collaboration events, etc.). It took until the introduction of the Seasonal Events mechanic for the event format to be fixed.
  • Dresses used to cover only actual dresses like in previous Animal Crossing games before more clothes consisting of a full outfit set (including shirts-and-pants combo; different from the actual "outfits" category which is exclusively human-compatible) have been released, turning the very dresses category into The Artifact. Not to mention, certain dresses that expose more skin were released incompatible for animals (for example, the colorful palace dress from Julia's cookie). Even after later similar clothes were released and made compatible by compensating the transparent parts into a solid color, the older dresses stay as they are.
• Elegant Gothic Lolita: Lottie dresses in such an outfit as part of February 2018's Lottie's Gothic Rose Festival Garden 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.
  • Players have reported that the Complete version has a tendency to crash during certain moments, some as soon as on the title screen, rendering the game unplayable in this case. Nintendo has acknowledged this, as post-launch fixes were released, but it is never clear what they exactly did fix.
• 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.
• Glitch Entity: If a fortune cookie is not generated properly (like through save editing), it will always reward the player with a rocking chair (white) when eaten regardless of the cookie theme.
• 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.
• Grandfather Clause:
  • Despite collab items no longer legitimately obtainable in Complete, Mario's tee remains obtainable from Alfonso/Louie or Gulliver's Ship due to the two animals wearing the shirt by default. Similarly, the Toad tee also remains obtainable in Complete due to Carrie wearing it by default.
  • Prior to a later Complete update, one Happy Homeroom class featured a red & yellow bicycle, a collab item exclusive to the iOS version, as one of the background decor items. Since the update, it was replaced with a mountain bike, averting this trope.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Cross-pollination, like the mainline games, requires following through a guide to get certain flowers easier. This is more relevant in Complete where players can not visit other players' gardens. It does not help that the seeds sold by Lloid are already mixed genes to begin with, so starting the hybrid chain off is not exactly straightforward. As an additional frustration, the player has no choice of which exact seed to plant, since they are stacked by flower color and thus there is no telling which ones are pure and which ones are mixed (and of what genes).
  • While Video Game Caring Potential otherwise, animals' furniture/clothing preference during certain conversations are not necessarily tied to their preferred theme. Instead, they are categorized into groups. This is more noticeable for modern animals, as the selection pool has no modern furniture to pull up.
  • Some of the required furniture in Happy Homeroom classes provide no hints to how to obtain them. They are, in fact, exclusive to the flower exchange at the garden, which may involve cross pollination (see the first point). At least a Flawless rating does not require the exact same variation.
  • Lottie's challenge classes hide the required items on the class preview, leaving only the item category to go off from. Granted, most are obvious answers by just looking at the layout (for example, a partition-type item placed right next to an existing partition will always be the exact same item as the latter), though some require more thinking (for example, the correct items match another just across the room in a layout not being immediately obvious this is the case) or understanding of the layout theme (for example, a surfboard on a beach-themed layout where there are no nearby matching items to reference from).
  • For people not bothering with social media, every important info surrounding the online version's shutdown and the different save data mechanics for Complete feels like this, as much of this is only known through online channels and by the time the grace window for the save transfer ends, they ended up having no idea why they could not use their old file anymore, especially if said player came from a long hiatus.
• 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.
• 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.
  • If the player has a camp caretaker following him/her and stays still in place, the helper may either yawn, sing, dance, etc.
• 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.
• 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).
• Loads and Loads of Loading: While the loading occasions are standard fare for this game, the Complete version notably suffers from this on the camp caretaker report. This was not a problem on the online version as the report was generated server-side, but the Complete version being offline means that the report generation will take longer the more cycles (max 8) the player waits until interacting with the caretaker because it is now dependent on the device's hardware. At max cycle count, even the fastest phone will have the player wait for a minute or so for the report to be displayed, making players think that the game was freezing.
• 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 animals through Gulliver. Gulliver has hundreds of unique animals he can bring back in the form of animal maps that then must be played with Blathers. However, in order to get said animal/map (prior to September 2019), Gulliver has to give the player a bonus, which may or may not happen depending on which items you gave him or due to sheer luck. Since September 2019, the player has to be lucky to get an island that has the wanted animal in it, then send off some items, and after waiting (or using premium currency to speed it up), the player has to pick a souvenir that they think contains the map, otherwise premium currency is needed to take the rest in the current round. Even then, the wanted map may not be among them either, requiring another round of sending items.
  • 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. Negated in the Complete version, which is a paid app and thus has no in-app purchases.
• 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.
  • In Complete, the Sticker Shop is this for sparkle stones, as the planner stickers that would cost Leaf Tickets in the online version end up costing said material here, the only instance the sparkle stones are used outside of crafting and Gulliver's Ship.
• 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 June 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.
  • As generous as the Complete version is, some features have been affected negatively from the offline rework:
    • The loss of real-time online interaction means friend rewards are given out relatively slower, as only one Whistle Pass friend will gift the player every day, and this includes non-native fruits and friend powder. The loss of Market Boxes also means players have no way to sell items at a higher value or search for items they do not have, especially if they are lazy with collecting stuff from recreational spots.
    • All terrain parts cost Leaf Tokens in this version when certain cheaper ones would cost Bells or even wood in the online version.
    • Shovelstrike Quarry has been nerfed further so only one type of reward is offered every day. On the bright side, the player is allowed up to two free visits and the rare timed materials have been added to the pool.
    • Log-in bonuses have been axed, thus less reward sources.
    • Discounted prices are absent from the wandering merchants to compensate for how cheaper and easier to get the Leaf Tokens are compared to the Leaf Tickets.
    • Animals no longer guarantee rewarding the player event seeds upon clearing their requests while a gardening event is ongoing. Second half seeds have an even lower chance to be given away, but the game compensates for this by allowing the player to buy them with Bells like most other seeds.
    • Subverted with the Fishing Tourney, which in this version spawns a fixed amount of 5 fish per cycle instead of the latest online version's 5-8. However, the rate of getting double fish without the golden rod (which costs a cheaper 30 Leaf Tokens instead of the 80 Leaf Tickets) is higher. Even after further nerfing by no longer allowing players to use Leaf Tokens for tourney nets, the game gives new players 3 nets and 1 lg. one through Stretch Goals and every Fishing Tourney has one Challenge that rewards a lg. tourney net when cleared.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The announcement for Complete promoted its offline play as its selling point, and it does play like an offline game would outside the occasional post-launch updates, cloud save backups, and custom design downloads, but it did not say anything about the game requiring monthly online reauthentication just to keep playing the game.
• 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.
  • The Complete version warns players against changing their device's time which can cause events to not work properly. To be specific, a player may time travel forward (but not past the current month) and play the events happening during that date, but this will freeze all manner of time-based mechanics, from crafting to daily refreshes, until the device catches up to the real date the player time traveled to. The player can not go backwards either. The game will also try to "phone home" (to go with its DRM, even if the player does not time travel), and thus prevent the game from being played if the game detects that it has not been connected to the server for about a month.
  • There is a limit to how many times an online save backup can be downloaded, so Save Scumming with it will eventually prevent the player from downloading it anymore. This, however, does not apply to players manually copy-pasting their local save.
• Permanently Missable Content: As of Complete, if the player missed out on certain past events (most of them from the game's early years), then there is no legitimate way to obtain certain seasonal or Scavenger Hunt collectibles as not every event gets rerun in Complete. This is before taking account of certain non-Catalog furniture/clothing unobtainable in Complete, especially collab ones.
• Play Every Day: Daily rewards in the form of items were given to players that log in every new day in the online game. There's also a set of Timed Goals to be fulfilled every day for some bells, tools, 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.
• Product Placement: Late summer 2020 featured collaboration with the Japanese textile design brand SOU • SOU in the form of premium collections of clothing and furniture based on the brand's designs.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: Selecting a gender only affects what hairstyle choices are available. Like previous games, both genders can wear all clothes.
• 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.
• Save-Game Limits: One per device, though the online version supported crossplay between Android and iOS. The Complete version retains this without the crossplay aspect but allows the player to make an online backup of their latest save every few days, with the backup staying up to 7 days, though there is nothing stopping the player from copying the save files themselves if they know what they are doing.
• Snow Means Death: During the online game's last day, which happened at the end of autumn, snow fell on most recreational spots on the final cycle (specifically during the hours leading to the time that Bell fortune cookies would refresh) prior to the shutdown.
• 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.
  • The Complete version, being offline, has reworked this through Camper Cards, which allow the players depicted to appear on Whistle Pass as random NPCs. They can give the player items, be asked for quarry help, or even "share" rare creatures on open flowers during garden events.
• 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.
  • The Complete version of the app was made as a one-time purchase and (mostly) offline version of the game, meaning Leaf Tickets and their maps (tied to the Microtransactions) and gifts (tied to the online multiplayer feature) are not applicable. In exchange, though, the removed features were replaced with entirely new ones that serve mostly similar purposes without the excessive grind and Sunk Cost Fallacy issues as in the online version, like Leaf Tokens being basically Leaf Tickets but with fairer exchange value and easier ways to obtain. That said, all collaboration items will not be available for players in Complete according to the official FAQ, though those that already kept them will keep them if they import their save data from the online version. Still, there is a limited timeframe up to June 2025 to import the online game's save data to Complete, meaning the player's past progress is lost forever if they did not do so prior to that date.
  • Additional item slots for fish, bugs, shells, and fruits bought through Leaf Tickets are not available in Complete since that version disables that feature altogether. Players that did buy them could still carry them over through their online version's save linked to MyNintendo, giving them advantage over players that did not or started fresh in Complete.
  • The Event Happy Homeroom classes, except the Lottie Challenges, are not playable in the Complete version.
  • Since the online version's shutdown, the game's MyNintendo goals and rewards are no longer available, though the account linking is still used for save backups and custom design downloads. Averted for the once-exclusive OK Motors cap and jacket, which are now available through exchanging caps from Brake Tapper (thus the player can now have more than one of each).
• 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.
• Unwinnable by Mistake: The Complete version of Daisy Mae's Pickin' Patch mistakenly rewards players with the non-event log bench instead of the garden log bench, meaning players completing it for the first time (including flower exchanges) are missing out one item in the Farm-Fresh Veggie Patch catalog and have to either use a Complete Ticket, wait for Cyrus to (randomly) offer the garden log bench on the latter half of the year, or wait for the next May when the Farm-Fresh Veggie Patch items become available for timed crafting instead of as a garden event.
• 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.
  • The online version was notable for not supporting custom designs, thus limiting clothing options by whatever the game offers (which to be fair has a lot of variety). With Complete no longer relying on Microtransactions, players are now able to import custom designs from Animal Crossing: New Horizons for further fashion freedom.
• 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.