Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival – A Game Deserving a Second Chance!
Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival – The Black Sheep of the Family
The Animal Crossing franchise is a massive success story; creating popular game after game. Everyone has favorites (Wild World's atmosphere or New Horizons' island creator are excellent examples), but almost every game is enjoyable. However, there is one game which isn't: Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival.
This game is a party spinoff – the sole Wii U title. And it didn't win any friends, mainly because it's quite honestly just a really poor party game. It functions just like Mario Party—a simple board game relying on dice rolls and luck rather than on anything more advanced. Those Amiibo figures are advertised, and came with the game – it's implied these drove sales rather than the actual software.
Why Amiibo Festival Was a Disaster (and How It Could Be Fixed!)
Amiibo Festival's problem isn’t the basic format, folks! It's that the game is quite honestly terrible; just not good. Those simpler mechanics and laid-back pace aren't terrible but they don’t hold anyone’s attention for long, besides perhaps the really, really young people; and its integration with Amiibo felt more like a cheap ploy— making it far too obvious this entire thing was simply an attempt to increase the number of products sold than focusing on game development itself, a fairly predictable strategy used in an attempt to generate hype.
This resulted in a very questionable output. It felt more like a children’s toy and thus failed to capitalize on Nintendo’s image as a strong, professional game studio, producing great gameplay.
A Better Animal Crossing Party Game? Absolutely!
A good Animal Crossing party game? Totally possible! Mario Party's chaos, combined with unfair randomness, produces amazing gameplay. Animal Crossing already has that charm which everyone loves; that combination would result in success, generating an incredibly unique and high quality gameplay output which should satisfy the vast majority.
Think about it: Animal Crossing has those random elements – forgeries, pitfall seeds; and they could’ve easily turned that delightful blend of nice and nasty into an awesome game!
New Horizons' Success: A Blueprint for Future Spinoffs
Animal Crossing: New Horizons was a monumental hit; proving there is huge potential for expansions and spinoff titles for this wildly popular IP and demonstrating there’s also a massive untapped opportunity in party titles, similar to other hugely popular game releases of that particular generation. Happy Home Designer is okay; not quite achieving that "grand success", it also displays a less than great reception which emphasizes those missed opportunities. However, Amiibo Festival could have a huge reboot. Just tone down the reliance on Amiibo – focusing instead on creative, well designed gameplay–making the product actually worthwhile, that is what makes for those grand titles; those kinds of enjoyable gameplays and a brilliant addition to a vast existing IP that all fans eagerly want to have continued support and improvements upon; a testament to quality gameplay and an enduring interest within the larger game universe that the creators actively help build!
Conclusion: Give Amiibo Festival Another Chance – This Time, Do It Right!
Amiibo Festival wasn't amazing – really a huge failure, not entirely unforeseen due to the prior failures before its official launch. Yet its problems are fixable. Instead of solely focusing on merchandise – focus on fun game mechanics. That would greatly improve its existing issues; producing gameplay quality far better than previously existed, appealing to a far larger audience; an enjoyable and unique party title only achievable if they really, truly try – taking a new approach.
Nintendo learned from Amiibo Festival’s mistakes and improved on their approach for newer products, proving there's a commitment towards improvement in later projects! It's really worth looking back upon previous projects; learning from what caused some major issues within their early productions – creating valuable lessons that improved subsequent releases which greatly impacts their products! A new, more creative spin on the Amiibo Festival concept could be fantastic, producing gameplay far superior to previous iterations. This approach showcases commitment towards better quality and shows improvements in their production methodologies over time. Many games are already known for those changes done for improvements and this simply adds to the existing conversation.
