Power Hour Review: Happy Home Designer (New 3DS)

I am going to have to start with full disclosure and admit that I played the first two versions of Animal Crossing on the DS and 3DS with something that bordered on addiction. With the first iteration I played the game every night until the battery in my DS died and had to deal with that asshole Resetti every morning. With the second version I drew my 5 year old daughter into the madness and we’ve spent the last 2 years visiting each other’s towns and buying way too much stuff (clothes, house expansions, and furniture).

So when Nintendo announced that there was a 3rd Animal Crossing (Happy Home Designer) coming for the New 3DS I was pretty sure that no matter how much I denied it (to myself and everyone else) I was still going to buy this game. I was going to ignore the fact that I raged at Animal Crossing: New Leaf for making me stand in the sun for hours a day in order to look anything like myself and that I had to ignore the shopkeepers telling me that the clothes that I had chosen were intended for boys but would look “fine” on me anyway if I wanted to wear anything other than little short skirts.

customizationBut I digress. This week I became an interior designer. And I got to be brown, not just vaguely brown, but like Black people brown and I even got to trade out my little grey pleated skirt for a smart pair of grey (and later black) slacks without someone telling me that my choice was gender inappropriate. And to top it all off I got to choose the hair style that I wanted (a short one that, while still straight, could pass for an afro if you squinted) without having to wear a default girl’s style until I unlocked a hairdresser.

Happy Home Designer starts with your working (again, but officially this time) for Tom Nook in his interior design business. Your job this time around is to design the home’s of their dreams for the residents of your dilapidated little town, but the more homes you design the more buildings become available for renovation. And that’s when Isabelle enters the picture. In Animal Crossing: New Leaf Isabelle worked for you as the assistant to the mayor (you) and in this version she is working for another (as of yet) unnamed mayor leading the renovations of the actual town buildings (thus far for me it’s just the school). Oddly, it has just occurred to me that if I am now a designer working for Isabelle that apparently I have lost my job as mayor and if the town is this run-down (and boarded up) that it was probably for good reason.

amiibo_cardsAnimal Crossing: Happy Home Designer is designed especially for the New 3DS because of it’s built-in NFC (Near Field Communication) reader. The game uses the reader to read Nintendo’s new amiibo cards. The cards come in blind packs of 6 for a less than 6 dollars and give you new characters (that you won’t otherwise encounter as clients) to import into your game as residents of your town. Nintendo will release 4 distinct series of cards with 100 cards per series. Each pack of cards contains one special NPC card that gives you a highly sought after character like DJ KK, Isabelle, or Tom Nook. If you have a last generation 3DS you can also buy a game bundle that comes with a separate NFC reader for $10 more than the retail price of the game alone.

What this means for me (a mere 24 hours after the game has released) is that I have already made 3 separate trips to the store buying card packs looking for an Isabelle “special” card so that I can bring her in as a resident in my city (no luck yet). And it means that I have had to ponder whether I was going to buy the game with the NFC reader separate for my daughter, Pea, or if I was going to buy the basic version of the game and have her wait it out until I buy her a New 3DS (or rather get the upcoming Legend of Zelda version for myself and pass my current New 3DS down to her.

12074953_10105539858930228_6661614955033185376_nAn hour in to Happy Home Designer and I was hooked. I was doing interior design, chatting up residents of the town, and generally having a lot of fun. Since that first hour of game play I have spent several more watching the gameplay itself expand and bringing new residents into my growing town. The first night I had the game I fell asleep designing a house and yard suitable for a kangaroo mama with a lot of babies, so that may say something. This game is definitely worth the price of admission if you have enjoyed either of the other Animal Crossing games and I think that you could probably even skip buying any amiibo cards (unless you’ve got a collectible jones like me) other than the one that comes in the game case. N.B. the buying the digital download gets you a theme for your 3DS rather than the additional amiibo card.