Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp

Animal Crossing. It's a game about making friends with cute furry animals. A game about building a community. A game about customising your appearance and that of your home to reflect your personality.

That's as true with Pocket Camp, the mobile version of Nintendo's series, as it has been since the Gamecube days. You can be whoever you want to be - even wearing a Santa skirt, getting KK Slider the dog to play Jingle Bell Rock and pretending you're in Mean Girls. Sort of.

At least that's what Nintendo wants you to think. Really, it's pure evil.

For a game about friendship, it sure is materialistic. The only way to impress your fellow campers is to give them stuff - the stuff they demand from you. Maybe that's a poor fish they want to roast alive, a beautiful butterfly they want to hunt down for their "collection", or a fruit from a tree literally right next to them that they're too goddamn lazy to collect themselves.

The premise of the game is to manipulate these furry little animals into becoming friends with you through the promise of gifts. And what do you get in return? Bits of wood and fluff you use to create new furniture to deck out your campsite and entice your new "friends" to come and visit. Except the demanding little bastards will only visit if you furnish the place with their specific taste in tables, chairs, and bizarre accessories. Something about feng shui apparently.

So who exactly is manipulating who? And what do you get in return? A job reference from a cartoon eagle? For all your work playing Santa Claus, they only ever demand more from you, their cute little faces staring expectantly, the fires of Satan burning in their eyes...

Or maybe their eyes are just red from the craving. You see, Pocket Camper is basically an allegory for drug dealing. These cutesy critters are craving and demanding stuff and you are their enabler, using your hard earned cash and materials to build the slickest gangster pad and prove your wealth to the world. I mean, just look at this stoner dog waiting for her next hit, or this hallucinating ostrich...

Or maybe Nintendo are the real dealers here, delivering a pointless, never-ending quest that's thumb-shakingly addictive. What is the end goal? The animals don't stop coming, manipulation upon manipulation like an Inception of gift-giving that never leads anywhere. And when you can't play on the tube because the game requires a perpetual internet connection and you're stuck watching a spinning loading wheel while this stupid mouse just stares at you blankly and...GAH!

I've fallen down the rabbit hole. Someone please make it stop.