Big Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp update gives designers a good reason to return

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp just became a bit more like the Animal Crossing games we love and remember, with a big update that introduces an interior design component.

The Happy Homeroom is a new location on the Pocket Camp map, where players can participate in a design minigame that challenges their stylistic chops. Happy Home Academy maven Lottie, whom Animal Crossing fans first met back in Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer on 3DS, teaches classes in interior decorating. Joined by a panel of judges, Lottie doles out assignments that require fixing up a room to an animal camper’s particular tastes.

If the judging panel likes the touches and thinks they’re in line with the chosen theme, players will receive a passing grade and a rank up with the Happy Home Academy. This is more like earning bragging rights than anything else, although particularly good designers will win the materials needed to build rare golden furniture. (They’ll also get a nice jacket.)

Happy Homeroom requires a special voucher that players receive on a daily basis. It also requires having a load of diverse furniture, which, if you’re a long-lapsed player like me, is a challenge in itself. The minigame makes players pull from their own inventories to design rooms for their animal friends, so if Goldie wants a ranch-themed room and you have no ranch-themed furniture, well, you’re out of luck.

For a lot of us Animal Crossing fans, though, designing tiny rooms like this is a blast. Even if it’s just a small bedroom and not an entire campsite or van like the rest of Pocket Camp allows for, these minigames are a fun, familiar diversion from the mobile game’s more non-traditional setup.

This is the most recent update in recent weeks, although Polygon felt that February’s prior additions were “strangely counterintuitive to its friendly core.”