If you’ve read my first impressions of Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival, you’ll know that I found the board game to be quite boring. But fortunately, the game has other modes as well. I’ve recently spent some time with the Desert Island Escape mode. This mode is just for one player, and it requires three Amiibo cards. The game comes with three cards, so this shouldn’t be a problem.
The cards you scan are the characters that will be stranded on a desert island. The object is to find three logs and a sail, which are hidden somewhere on the island, to build a raft and escape to freedom. You have seven days to accomplish this goal, with each day being represented as one turn for each of your characters. Unlike the board game layout, the island is represented in hexagonal spaces which give you more freedom to explore where you want.
You start with only three days worth of food, so you’ll need to collect fruit, fish, and/or honey along the way to replenish your stock. You can also pick up items such as stones, string, sticks, and cloth in order to make tools. Those tools will help improve your odds of finding food or getting past obstacles. A shovel lets you avoid pitfalls, a fishing rod allows you to catch fish, a slingshot improves your chances against enemy creatures like snakes and centipedes, and a net improves your odds of getting past the bees and scoring some honey.
Each character has a special ability. For example, dogs like Goldie can sniff out nearby items, allowing you to go directly to the goodies you need. Bears like Stitches are good at finding honey and fending off bees. Cats like Rosie can catch fish without a fishing rod.
One game, I made the mistake of selecting Eugene to be on my “ugly all-stars” team. Eugene is unpredictable but strong: Some days he can move forward 7 spaces, which is very helpful. But other days, he’ll be lazy and will refuse to move at all! That’s not being a team player!
At night, your characters will set up a tent to rest. You can choose to place the tent on any spot that you’ve already explored. If you have enough items, you can make a tool from the items you’ve collected. When you’re ready to proceed, you’ll eat and sleep. In the morning, you’ll start out the new day from where you pitched your tent.
As soon as you’ve found all of the parts you need for your raft, you’ll immediately assemble the raft and escape to freedom. You are scored based on how much of the island you’ve explored, as well as how much food and how many days you had left.
Unlike the board game, I’m really enjoying Desert Island Escape. It’s quite fun and I’m looking forward to playing it more. I actually think Amiibo Festival may have been better received if this had been the focus of the game. There are 30 islands to escape from, and each one seems to take about 10-15 minutes to complete. I’m not sure if this mode will have much replay value once those are completed, but at least Amiibo Festival isn’t a total loss. Here is a gameplay video featuring Stitches, Goldie, and Rosie:
Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival also has other modes that I haven’t unlocked yet. I’ll have more blog entries discussing those in the future, so I hope you’ll continue to visit Jeff’s Gaming Blog! See you next time!