Animal Crossing fans 'won over' by surprise new release

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is dead. Long live Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete.

As announced back in September, Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp will be going offline on 28 November.

Fans had a completely understandable, normal reaction to this news. My favourite of said reactions belongs to Eurogamer’s Philippa Warr, who had a mini heart attack mid-shopping trip upon receiving Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp’s “end of service” notification.

Look, I don’t play this game, but I have a friend who does and let me tell you - I am not exaggerating when I say I have never seen her more upset in all of the years I’ve known her than when she learned of Pocket Camp’s impending closure.

Who's ready a new mainline game? I know I am.

Luckily for fans of ordering little people around in their phones, Microsoft Teams owners– sorry, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp owners will be able to transfer all of their data, including their villagers and items, into a new, offline version of the game: Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete.

This version of the game releases on 3 December this year and will cost $19.99 - although it will only cost $9.99 until 31 January.

Heads up though, you’ll have to link your Nintendo Account to the original Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp before it goes offline - so you can transfer all of your data over to the new version once it comes out.

If you want any more info, here’s the trailer for the new version of the game that has all the details.

Over on the r/ACPocketCamp subreddit, everyone is thrilled with this news. You’d think they’d just won the lottery or something.

“They definitely won me over with this,” replied daringred_, “$20 is not bad for new items for almost another year, and I love that we won't necessarily lose our friends because you can transfer them over into the little cards and see them in whistle pass!”

“This eased like ALL my worries lol,” agreed nocctea, “And unironically, I'm really happy the journal stickers are gonna stay and we can have our camp caretaker with us still!”

Gotta wonder why Nintendo didn’t announce all of this immediately, considering how distraught a small subsection of the internet has been for the past couple of months.

Either way, it’s nice that the game will be getting some kind of always-offline variant so that fans can play it, essentially, forever.