Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival

Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival is a 2015 party video game developed by Nintendo and NDcube for the Wii U.[1] Similar to the Mario Party series, the game is a spin-off of to the Animal Crossing series that moves away from the series traditional format, instead being a party game that primarily integrates amiibo figures into the gameplay. Alongside the release of the game, 8 Animal Crossing amiibo character figures were released for use in the game. It was released worldwide in November 2015.

Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival
Developer(s)Nintendo EPD
NDcube[1]
Publisher(s)Nintendo
Director(s)Aya Kyogoku[2]
Producer(s)Hisashi Nogami
SeriesAnimal Crossing
Platform(s)Wii U
Release
  • NA: November 13, 2015
  • EU: November 20, 2015[3]
  • WW: November 21, 2015[4]
Genre(s)Party
Mode(s)Single-player, multiplayer

Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival was a commercial failure and received negative reviews from critics who criticised the repetitive gameplay, poor amiibo integration and lack of innovation; though its presentation was praised.

Gameplay
Gameplay Screenshot at E3 2015

Amiibo Festival is a virtual board game similar in style to the Mario Party series.[5] Playable Animal Crossing characters include Isabelle, K.K. Slider, Tom Nook, and Mable—four of the series's eight characters upon which Amiibo toys had been based. The game also supports the Amiibo cards which had debuted alongside Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer,[6] and generally requires the use of Amiibo toys for play.[7]

Development

Director Aya Kyogoku stated that the game was conceived as a vehicle for the creation of the first Animal Crossing Amiibo: "Honestly, we just wanted Animal Crossing amiibo. We wanted the company to make Animal Crossing amiibo, so that's why we made a game that works with them."[2]

The game was announced during Nintendo's June 2015 Electronic Entertainment Expo press conference for release in Q4 2015 during the holiday season,[5] later specified as November 2015.[3] Kyogoku distinguished the game from Mario Party by stating that the latter is more focused on minigames, while Amiibo Festival is more of a board game. The game uses Nintendo's Amiibo protocol to insert characters into the game, with eight different Amiibo toys bundled with the game's release.[8] The characters each have personal characteristics, including a house associated with the character as designed in Happy Home Designer.[8]

Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival was released exclusively as a retail product, and is not digitally available on the Nintendo eShop in any region.

Reception

Unlike its predecessors, Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival received mixed to negative reviews from critics, according to video game review aggregator Metacritic.[9] IGN rated the game at 5 out of 10, saying that the Amiibo integration is "cumbersome" and "hard to play with" and that the gameplay is a boring and slow "snooze fest" — having almost fallen asleep while playing. The game was praised as "undoubtedly charming", relaxing, and best played with friends.[11] Nintendo World Report gave the game a 4.5 out of 10, citing "Boring, repetitive gameplay" and "Tak[ing] an hour to get anything good."[12] GamesBeat gave the game 3.3 out of 10 and condemned it for being "a blatant attempt to get you to buy more Amiibo, and it’s not even a good one at that."[14] Not all reviewers were so critical; Famitsu scored the game 32/40, with each of the four reviewers giving it a score of 8.[10]

The game proved to be a commercial failure. It sold 20,303 copies within its first week of release in Japan.[15]

References
  1. "Kaihatsu Jouhou" 開発情報 [Development Information]. Nintendo Japan (in Japanese). Archived from the original on November 30, 2015. Retrieved November 30, 2015.
  2. Eguchi, Katsuya; Kyogoku, Aya (July 9, 2015). "Nintendo's Aya Kyogoku on Evolving The Series". USgamer (Interview). Interviewed by Jeremy Parish. Retrieved September 29, 2015.
  3. "Nintendo of Europe on Twitter". Twitter. Retrieved October 1, 2015.
  4. "Japanese Animal Crossing: amiibo Festival introduction trailer, release date". Nintendo Everything.
  5. Sarkar, Samit (June 16, 2015). "Animal Crossing: amiibo Festival coming to Wii U, plus four new Animal Crossing amiibo". Polygon. Vox Media. Archived from the original on June 18, 2015. Retrieved June 16, 2015.
  6. "Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer cards work on Wii U". GoNintendo.
  7. Josh M-J. "E3 2015: Animal Crossing: amiibo Festival is a Free Download but Requires amiibo to Play". nintendofeed.com. Archived from the original on November 6, 2016. Retrieved June 24, 2016.
  8. Nintendo Life. "Animal Crossing Series Director Explains the amiibo Focus of Happy Home Designer and amiibo Festival". Nintendo Life. Retrieved September 19, 2015.
  9. "Animal Crossing: amiibo Festival". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Archived from the original on November 30, 2015. Retrieved December 20, 2015.
  10. "Famitsu Review Scores: Issue 1407". Gematsu. Retrieved December 1, 2015.
  11. Plagge, Kallie (November 18, 2015). "Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival Review". IGN. Retrieved November 18, 2015.
  12. Ronaghan, Neal (November 18, 2015). "Animal Crossing Amiibo Festival (Wii U) Review". Nintendo World Report. Retrieved November 18, 2015.
  13. Clark, Willie (January 11, 2017). "Animal Crossing: Amiibo festival is a boring, random mess". VentureBeat.
  14. Clark, Willie (November 18, 2015). "Animal Crossing: amiibo festival is a boring, random mess". GamesBeat. Retrieved November 18, 2015.
  15. Whitehead, Thomas, 25th November 2015, "Animal Crossing: amiibo Festival Has Modest Impact in Japan as 3DS Sales Improve" (http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2015/11/animal_crossing_amiibo_festival_has_modest_impact_in_japan_as_3ds_sales_improve). Nintendo Life. Accessed 26 December 2016.
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