I am not, by and large, a mobile gamer. I'll play games on my clunky old Galaxy A03 every so often, but it's rarely my first choice of platform. That's important to mention because Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete was a game I found myself coming back to regularly, a nice little breather between caring for aging parents and doing other work. It's perfectly designed to be playable in bite-sized chunks, a relaxing experience when you need a brief moment of escape.

It also replaces the original mobile version of the game, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, a “freemium” game that did require a constant internet connection and some of the other less desirable features of mobile gaming. As I understand it, that game has been retired, but if you saved your data from it to your Nintendo account, it is possible to import it to Pocket Camp Complete to pick up where you left off – your campsite, friends, levels, and goodies should all remain. (I say “should” because I haven't personally attempted it, never having played the original.) That said, if you didn't save your data to your Nintendo account, you'll have to start from scratch, which could be frustrating if you've already sunk hours into the first version.

Still, starting from the beginning isn't a terrible experience. The game opens with the chance to design your bobble-headed avatar. While the options are basically “boy” and “girl,” it's not difficult to create a nonbinary person with the available bits and pieces, such as hair and clothes. You're then walked through the basics of setting up your game and campground by a very easy tutorial, which pops back up periodically whenever you encounter a new site, activity, or special character. Controls are intuitive and easy even for the coordination-challenged among us; trust me, if I could make my avatar go where I wanted her to, anyone can. That earns this game the rare accolade of having fishing mini-games that didn't make me want to scream; the entire experience is designed for easy play and to maintain a sense of relaxation.

The gameplay is focused on a few different elements. The major one is leveling up, which allows players to improve their campsite (you can't change the terrain until you hit level thirteen), craft more items, and interact with more characters. You can gain levels by completing tasks, which include raising your friendship levels with the local citizens and fulfilling goals. The goals take on several forms. There are daily goals (go to a place, catch this kind of fish, pick fruit), special seasonal goals, and interacting with other characters. The middle set of goals is what I found the most engaging; during my playtime, the seasonal events all related to the Toy Festival (a very thinly veiled Christmas), and the variety of mini-games was good. It began with collecting ornament bugs from flowers, moved on to a fishing derby, and as of this writing, collected weird little reindeer statuettes scattered around the various sites. Again, ease of play was a major draw here, with a simple well-timed tap sufficient to complete a catch.

Discussions and quests for other campers can be a little wearing. You need to raise your friendship with someone to level three to invite them to your camp (a bit higher if you want to dress them up), and the repetition here is more grating than soothing. In large part, this comes down to two things: the verbal quirks of each character and the actual sound design for their speech. As someone who is sound-sensitive, I turned off the sound fairly early because the high-pitched, double-layered squeaking of the character voices made my skin crawl. It's meant to be cute, but it went past that into “annoying” territory for me; your tolerance may vary. (Music is much less offensive and generally harmlessly tinkly.) Still, it is pretty easy to raise your friendship levels, and although each camper will have a list of items you need to own before they visit your campsite, it isn't difficult to acquire everything, especially since the game will bookmark what you need.

Gameplay is, as I mentioned, largely about pushing the screen when it tells you to or using your finger to guide your character around the landscape. Crafting is similarly simple, requiring only that you have “leaf tokens” (functionally the same as the similarly named item in the original game) and materials, both of which are easily acquired. Designing your campsite and the inside of your van is a little more difficult since you need to have some spatial reasoning skills, and I often found myself with a space I couldn't move around in due to my lack thereof. Some special items can only be won in seasonal events or through the random opening of a fortune cookie, and this gacha element does add a little something to the gameplay, especially if you've ever felt a burning desire to own an airport luggage carousel. The other thing to note is that there's at least one area that won't be open to you until you've acquired enough camper cards, the game's version of making friends. I did not manage this in my time playing, but I also didn't make it my focus.

Overall, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete is a fun way to relax when you need a moment to stop. Easy to play, easy on the eyes, and very forgiving, it's cute and fun, even if the voices are neither. I do recommend playing on a better phone than mine because there was some lag and I later on found it impossible to talk to my camp manager as the screen would not load, but overall, this is a good, gentle gaming experience.