DGC Ep 211: Animal Crossing (part three)

Dev Game Club

Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we continue our series on the unique series Animal Crossing. We talk about collecting, changing the world, paying off your second mortgage, the many purposes the animals serve, and the fun the developers seem to have had contributing ideas to the game, among other topics. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.

Sections played: An hour each day!

Issues covered: Brett's growing gyroid collection, Gyroid Orchestra, speeding through your second mortgage, expanding player verbs through mortgage payoffs, stealth training and game expansion, changing perspective in games and in life as your routine is hampered, limiting your verbs by weather and time of play, the metagame of what's worthwhile to have in your inventory, revealing something about you through your style of play, freeing up time by paying off that second mortgage, how a change in inventory management would dramatically change play, being careful of what you incentivize, convenience changes behavior, the choice of your third mortgage, starting to fill in the museum, having few opportunities for insect collecting when you play at the same time each day, the difference between this and a Majestic, allowing you to come to a game vs a game coming to you, having more weeds when you miss a day, using the animals for so many things, subtle tutorialization, replacing real socializing with the animals, asynchronous social, putting everything in the interactions with animals, Brett details his ongoing romance with Bertha and the interactions with Lily and Alli, reading into the characters, the return of Tortimer and bridge placement, unplanned design, banging rocks with shovels, giving your designers tools and making it possible to add whatever they can think of, empowering creativity, allowing the player to make play, pitfalls, customizing your attire or space, added and experimental hardware, using the GBA to go to an island, the eReader, getting another type of fruit, the fish market, the difficulty of the ocean fishing, Tim's cherry tree that lived, terraforming your whole island, a digression into who Snake's Mom is, your Mom guilting you over labor, reflecting nostalgia in Animal Crossing and in anime, speedrunning the rest of the game, potential seasons and holidays to see, localizing holidays, MMO adoption of events.

Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Resident Evil 4, Majestic, Phantasy Star, Legend of Zelda: Four Sword, The Sims, Lee Meriwether, Metal Gear Solid 4, The Girl Who Could Stop Time, Shenmue, Epic Mickey, Kirk Hamilton, Aaron Evers.

Next time: Hitting a few seasons!

Twitch: brettdouville, instagram:timlongojr, @brett_douville, @timlongojr, and @devgameclub [e-mail]