Search

Search only in certain items:

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp
Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp
Games
I don't really play a lot of games on my phone. I did play Pokemon Go for a while, but got a little burned out on it. The only other games I really play on my phone are Words With Friends, Crosswords With Friends, and Neko Atsume. That last one is a game with cats so of course it's on my phone since I am a cat lover.

When I heard Nintendo was working on Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp a game for mobile devices and that it would be free to play, I was excited. I love the Animal Crossing games because they are cheerful and fun with activities you could do such as fishing, redecorating your house in various themes, or interacting with the animal villagers in town.

With Pocket Camp there isn't a town. Instead, you have your own RV and your own campsite which you can decorate any way you wish. You can make friends with various animal characters and receive gifts and crafting materials for them when you trade them things they want such as certain types of seashells. They can also visit your campsite as well as your human friends via invitation or at random. There are different recreational areas you can visit on the world map such as a beach where you can fish or a little island where you can collect insects. There's even an area for mining, but you need the help of five people on your friends list or pay a certain amount of microtransaction currency known as leaf tickets. You can also visit a place called OK Motors where you can upgrade your RV, add an upstairs to it, or paint it in interesting patterns and colors.



Getting around on the map is easy. Click on a place and go.


Fishing is one of the recreational activities you can do.

Crafting is another big thing in Pocket Camp. You can gather materials such as cotton and wood for crafting furniture by fulfilling requests for your animal friends like gifting them with types of fruit or seashells they want. This not only levels up your friendship with them, they will gift you with crafting materials and sometimes outfits. They will also hang out at your campsite when you invite them. The maximum amount of animals you can host at your campsite is ten. You can also send animals home via the user menu so that you can invite new animals to your campsite.


Host animals at your campsite, do favors, receive gifts.

If you're in the mood to do a little shopping, there is a marketplace you can travel to on the map. You can buy outfits and accessories from the Able sisters or you can buy furniture from Timmy and Tommy Nook, Tom Nook's twin sons. You can also sell furniture and outfits from your inventory to the Nook twins.


Doing a little shopping at the marketplace.

Personally, I liked decorating my RV and adding a second floor. Crafting the furniture and items for my little traveling home was fun and I enjoyed decorating it the way I wanted. I liked decorating the campsite as well especially after I expanded it so I could add more items for visitors to enjoy.



Decorating your RV is fun!

There are daily goals and stretch goals you can do that offer crafting materials, leaf tickets, or bells (the name of the money used in the game) as rewards. You can also visit your friends campsites to see how they decorate theirs and give them kudos when you visit. I thought it was very cool seeing how much variety there is in each of the campsites I visited and showed the uniqueness and style of each of my friends.



Visit your friends campsites. It's fun!

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is relaxing fun. There's no pressure or time limits. You can just enjoy yourself doing what you wish whether it's fishing or hanging out with your animal and human friends at your campsite. It's cute and colorful with a variety of things to craft and outfits to collect. Some may think it's a bit repetitive, but I don't mind that part of it. It's nice to log in and get my daily bonus, do a few things I like, and see what changes my friends have made to their campsites.

With it being the holiday season, Nintendo did a Christmas update for the game. You can now craft Christmas items, a Santa Claus outfit, and Christmas gifts. It has been fun decorating my campsite for Christmas and seeing all the Christmas cheer at my friends' campsites. I'm looking forward to the next seasonal event items they do. In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy the Christmas items and the entire game itself.
  
A Luminous Republic
A Luminous Republic
Andrés Barba | 2020 | Crime, Mystery, Science Fiction/Fantasy
9
7.5 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
Well-written (1 more)
Unpredictable
Flat characters (0 more)
Andres Barba's A Luminous Republic has feral children, senseless murders, and a plot that keeps the story moving enough that the reader won't want to put the book down. This story creatively combines politics, murder, fear and family - - - but the best part is, the book is unpredictable.

We first meet our main character, whose name is never given throughout the entire story, when he and his family are moving to San Cristobal because of a job opportunity. He works for the Department of Social Affairs, and has just received a promotion because he has come up with a very successful plan: " I had developed a social integration program for indigenous communities. The idea was simple and the program proved to be an effective model; it consisted of granting the indigenous exclusive rights to farm certain specific product." Our main character believes that this plan will bring the farmers more money. And he is more than happy to go back to the city where he fell in-love with his now wife, Maia - - - a violin teacher who had a daughter before meeting him, who he calls 'girl' throughout the story because she is also named Maia.

While on his way to work one day, our main character comes across one of the unknown children of the jungle, which shakes him up a bit. The unknown jungle children were known to beg at street lights for money and food, but one of the grimy, frizzy-haired boys stared the man down, only to end up giving him a very wide smile. "The boy's smile unsettled me because it confirmed that there had been a connection between us, that something had begun in me ended in him." Pretty soon after, he begins to notice these unknown jungle children running around a lot more, and that sometimes their intentions are not always innocent - - - he and the 'girl' witness an elderly woman get robbed of her groceries by a group of these children in the middle of the street in a subtle but violent way.

The unknown jungle children soon begin to rob several people,and when a police officer is killed while being attacked by them, the Mayor and the police want the children off the streets as soon as possible. Working with our main character, the former and the latter try to figure out the strange language these children use, whom may be the leader among them, and where they disappear to at night. Since the story is being told from our main character's past, the book is written like a True Crime story, with names of professionals and such being cited throughout. Our main character brings up a woman, who was a young girl at the time of the jungle children's invasion on San Cristobal: Teresa Otano, who happened to 'publish' her diary from that time, which gives readers insights into the jungle children: "Often, some of the thirty-two [jungle children], on their nightly journey back to the jungle, congregated next to Teresa's house, on one corner of Antartida Avenue. At first, Teresa, enthralled, simply makes notes, logging the days on which they appeared, whether there were three, four or five of them, what they were wearing, and so forth. She establishes patterns and identifies a few of the kids..." our main character explains to the reader.

But soon, the children cross a line that they can never come back from; being told by our main character from the view of surveillance video tapes, he describes to us that the jungle children entered a supermarket after an incident with a guard that works there, they block the entrance doors and begin to destroy items throughout the store, but the chaos quickly escalates, and two adults are murdered by the children - - - fear now holds the town in its grip, causing search parties to sweep through the dense jungle after the children fled.

But murder wasn't something new to San Cristobal, our main character explains to us that the suburbs of this area usually had a murder a week all year long, and that on the outskirts of the jungle, there were known spots for drug trafficking and assaults. What made the 'Dakota Supermarket' murders scare the town was that the residents' own children began to behave differently afterwards - - - they start to play a 'game' where they put their ears to the ground, believing that they can hear the jungle children talking to them. Our main character even walks in on the 'girl' playing this exact game. "For a second it was as if I were witnessing a ritual invented by a twelve-year-old girl, and I thought of how afraid my daughter must have felt when I found her in the bathroom that day. People often remark on the self-assured quality of the invocation, its instruction-manual tone, but I'd say that its intensity actually stems from what it dispenses: adult logic, a world that no longer serves. How could our children possibly have explained to us what they were doing? We weren't prepared for their world or their logic. Somewhere out there, underground, that dissonant sound was being sent, in code: down below, chaos. "

This phenomenon attracts the attention of money/fame seekers, which includes the Zapata children. Four siblings, ranging from the ages of five to nine, claimed that the jungle children were speaking to them through their dreams. They would make drawings from what they were told by the jungle children, but state that even they didn't know what the drawings meant. The media quickly jumped on them and put them in front of a camera, causing the family's home to be surrounded by civilians at all hours of the day and night. One night, the crowd outside becomes anxious, and breaks into the house, stealing not only the drawings from the Zapata children, but also the life savings of the family. At this point, the Zapatas had had enough, and retreat from the story altogether for reasons I won't disclose here. I can't give away much more of the book without ruining the story.

Barba's attempt at making a different kind of Lord of the Flies was done well, but the lack of emotion is felt throughout the entire story which makes the characters flat, especially our main character, who I didn't find likable in any such way. He calls a grieving woman a 'whore,' and he seems rude towards his family, especially his step-daughter.

A Luminous Republic is redeemed by is unpredictability, which is something that doesn't come along in fiction that often anymore. I enjoyed that the story was written like a True Crime novel, with fictitious documentaries, news reports and books. So, I would recommend this book to people who like True Crime and Mysteries.