Rumor: Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp started off as a more simplistic town-building game

At the end of October, The Wall Street Journal shared some rumored information claiming that one reason for Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp’s delay was due to the game seeing an overhaul “at least once during the development process to ensure quality.” Liam Robertson from Unseen64 apparently has more on the situation, and dug up details about how a much different title was initially planned.

Development on the Animal Crossing game for mobile apparently began in early 2016. At the time, what Nintendo had been cooking up was said to be more simplistic.

Robertson’s report states that it would have been a town-building game with an Animal Crossing theme. Players would have their own town in which objects and buildings could be placed with some elements of economy management. One feature let players visit other towns where items could be purchased. This was all under the tentative “Animal Crossing: Town Builder” name.

Town Builder would have been very different from Pocket Camp in that you couldn’t really move around as your own avatar. Instead, things were more static and built upon menus.

Robertson goes on to say that Nintendo requested an overhaul of sorts around November 2016. They felt that it was too “bare-bones” and “basic” to appeal to players. It had been planned to launch by the end of March, but was pushed back indefinitely.

You can watch the full report from Robertson below.