''Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival'' is a 2015

party video game A party video game is a genre of video game that stems from in-person party games, involving player-to-player interaction as the central gameplay element. These games are often defined by simple controls which can be easily picked up and understoo ...

developed by

Nintendo is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto. It develops, publishes, and releases both video games and video game consoles. The history of Nintendo began when craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi ...

and

NDcube formerly known as Nd Cube and later NDcube, is a Japanese video game developer and a subsidiary of Nintendo headquartered in Tokyo with an additional office in Sapporo. They are best known as the developers of the ''Mario Party'' series since ...

and published by Nintendo for the

Wii U The Wii U ( ) is a home video game console developed by Nintendo as the successor to the Wii. Released in late 2012, it is the first eighth-generation video game console and competed with Microsoft's Xbox One and Sony's PlayStation 4. The W ...

. Similar to the ''

Mario Party is a series of party video games created by Hudson Soft and owned by Nintendo. It features List of Mario franchise characters, characters from the Mario (franchise), ''Mario'' franchise in which up to four local players or Artificial inte ...

'' series, the game is a spin-off of the ''

Animal Crossing is a social simulation video game series developed and published by Nintendo. It was created by Katsuya Eguchi and Hisashi Nogami. The player character is a human who lives in a village inhabited by various anthropomorphic animals and can ...

'' series that moves away from the series traditional format, instead being a party game that primarily integrates

Amiibo (, ; stylized as amiibo; plural: ''Amiibo'') is a toys-to-life platform by Nintendo, which was launched in November 2014. It consists of a wireless communications and storage protocol for connecting figurines to the Wii U, Nintendo 3DS, Ni ...

figures into the gameplay. Alongside the release of the game, eight ''Animal Crossing'' Amiibo character figures were released for use in the game. It was released worldwide in November 2015. ''Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival'' was a critical and commercial failure, with criticism for the repetitive gameplay, poor Amiibo integration, and lack of innovation, though its presentation was praised.

Gameplay

''Amiibo Festival'' is a virtual

board game A board game is a type of tabletop game that involves small objects () that are placed and moved in particular ways on a specially designed patterned game board, potentially including other components, e.g. dice. The earliest known uses of the ...

similar in style to the ''

'' series.

Playable character A player character (also known as a playable character or PC) is a fictional character in a video game or tabletop role-playing game whose actions are controlled by a player rather than the rules of the game. The characters that are not control ...

s from the ''

'' franchise include

Isabelle Isabel is a female name of Iberian origin. Isabelle is a name that is similar, but it is of French origin. It originates as the medieval Spanish form of '' Elisabeth'' (ultimately Hebrew ''Elisheba''). Arising in the 12th century, it became popul ...

, K.K. Slider,

Tom Nook Tom Nook, known in Japan as , is a fictional character in the Animal Crossing, ''Animal Crossing'' series who operates the village store (or the Resident Services building in ''Animal Crossing: New Horizons''). He first appeared in the Nintendo 64 ...

, and Mabel—four of the series' eight characters upon which

toys had been based. The game also supports the Amiibo cards which had debuted alongside '' Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer'', and generally requires the use of

figures for play. The game also features

minigame A minigame (also spelled mini game and mini-game, sometimes called a subgame or microgame) is a short game often contained within another video game. A minigame contains different gameplay elements and is often smaller or more simplistic than th ...

s that may be played by scanning Animal Crossing amiibo cards.

Development

Director

Aya Kyogoku is a Japanese video game director and producer. She is the current manager of Nintendo's Entertainment Planning & Development (EPD) Production Group No. 5, which oversees the ''Animal Crossing'', ''Splatoon'', and ''Wii Sports'' franchises. Ky ...

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." The game was announced during the Nintendo Digital Event at

E3 2015 The Electronic Entertainment Expo 2015 (E3 2015) was the 21st E3 held. The event took place at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, California. It took place from June 16 to June 18, 2015, with 52,200 total attendees. Major exhibit ...

for release in Q4 2015 during the

holiday season The Christmas season or the festive season, also known as the holiday season or the holidays, is an annual period generally spanning from November or December to early January. Incorporating Christmas Day and New Year's Day, the various celebrat ...

, later specified as November 2015. 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

protocol to insert characters into the game, with eight different Amiibo toys bundled with the game's release. The characters each have personal characteristics, including a house associated with the character as designed in ''Happy Home Designer''. ''Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival'' was released exclusively as a retail product, and was not digitally available on the

Nintendo eShop The is a digital distribution service for the Nintendo Switch and the Nintendo Switch 2, and formerly available via the Nintendo Network for the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS. Launched in June 2011 on the Nintendo 3DS, the Nintendo eShop served ...

in any region.

Reception

Unlike its predecessors, ''Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival'' received "generally unfavorable" reviews, according to video game

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Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

, with an aggregate score of 46 out of 100. ''

IGN ''IGN'' is an American video gaming and entertainment media website operated by IGN Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Ziff Davis, Inc. The company's headquarters is located in San Francisco's SoMa district and is headed by its former e ...

'' 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. ''Nintendo World Report'' gave the game a 4.5 out of 10, citing "Boring, repetitive gameplay" and "Tak ngan hour to get anything good." ''

GamesBeat ''VentureBeat'' is an American technology website headquartered in San Francisco, California. ''VentureBeat'' is a tech news source that publishes news, analysis, long-form features, interviews, and videos. The ''VentureBeat'' company was foun ...

'' 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." In Japan, four critics from ''

Famitsu , formerly , is a line of Japanese Video game journalism, video game magazines published by Kadokawa Game Linkage (previously known as Gzbrain), a subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, Kadokawa. ''Famitsu'' is published in both weekly and monthly f ...

'' gave the game a total score of 32 out of 40. The game proved to be a commercial failure, selling only 20,303 copies within its first week of release in Japan.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 Gamer Network Limited (formerly Eurogamer Network Limited) is a British digital media company based in London. Founded in 1999 by Rupert and Nick Loman, it owns brands—primarily editorial websites—relating to video game journalism and ot ...

. Accessed 26 December 2016.

References

External links

* {{Portal bar, Video games 2015 video games Amiibo Festival Digital board games Multiplayer and single-player video games Nintendo Entertainment Planning & Development games Party video games Video game spinoffs Video games about dogs Video games about raccoons Video games developed in Japan Video games that use Amiibo figurines Wii U games Wii U-only games Nintendo Cube games