Animal Crossing: Wild World
Verdict: A wide world of wonder
Platform: DS.
Rating: 5/5
Last week I moved house twice. Thankfully only one meant lifting heavy boxes up two flights of stairs, the other involved being driven by a sea faring turtle in a taxi through the pouring rain. I found it kind of fitting to name the latter town Sherwood too.
In the globe like world of Animal Crossing you are presented with an open ended paintbox game full of humour, mortgage repayments, socialising, creativity and lots of laid back fun. It’s a game with no finite goal other than earning money to pay off your mortgage (at your own leisurely rate), become an expert in interior decorating and make your town appealing to visitors - how you do this is up to you.
Provided with the tools to create you can do what you want - plant orchards and flowers, compose music, create constellations, paint and design clothes and furnishings in glorious pixel vision.
If all that creativity is tiring then go fishing or head down to the museum’s cafe for the sounds of the free spirited K.K. Slider, the singer/songwriter dog.
Presented in a colourful and stylised way your town exists in real time - day, night, weather and the seasons enchantingly matching reality by the DS’ internal clock and populated by cute animals full of character, bad jokes and a penchant for asking favours.
Play quickly picks up a rhythm of its own, short bursts everyday becoming routine to check the shops and mail, water the flowers and chat to the animals. If you leave it for a while they’ll wonder where you’ve gone and weeds will start to grow. It’s infectious and consuming, albeit in healthy bite size pieces and it’s even invading my dreams.
If you’ve played the Game Cube version then this is all very familiar because Wild World isn’t really a sequel, it’s more like a remix. Apart from the necessary and welcome streamlining for it’s portable home and intuitive touch screen controls the main difference is the addition of multiplayer between DS’ and over WiFi internet.
This allows up to four friends to play and chat together in one of their towns, a stop watch item allowing for the creation of fishing and bug catching competitions and games of hide and seek. Nintendo’s robust friend code system means no strangers can enter your town allowing people of any age to play in a safe and fun environment.
It also allows for information to travel between towns in a random viral like exchange of residents, constellations and clothing designs - if you ever find a Pacman t-shirt in your shop designed by Jammy, that was me.
Come to Sherwood, I have pears and oranges and a nice line in pixel design.