You Can Now Play 'Animal Crossing' On Your Phone & It's Proof '90s Babies Are #Blessed

We’re all well aware that the news/internet/world in general has been something of a grease fire lately. Perhaps it is because of this that the universe was like, “Here you go. Have this nice lil piece of joy in the form of ‘Animal Crossing’ revamped as a mobile app.” Or maybe it was just Nintendo capitalizing on our craving for all things nostalgic. Let’s go with a little bit of both.

Last night, Nintendo announced Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, a version of the 2001 game you know and love that’s soon to be playable from the comfort of your own smartphone. Set to be released in late-November, you can pre-register for Pocket Camp and be one of the first people to be reunited with all your favorite anthropomorphic animal friends.

If you aren’t familiar with Animal Crossing, perhaps you, like me, couldn’t be bothered with anything that didn’t involve watching Lizzie McGuire, pretending to be Lizzie McGuire, or just thinking about Lizzie McGuire for most of the early ‘00s. Here’s a quick synopsis for you, if that's the case.

Animal Crossing is basically like The Sims with more adorable animals and a bright pastel color palette. The game follows your customized human avatar around in real-ish time through a cute and chill neighborhood. Your goal is to make friends with the cute and chill animals, improve your cute and chill house, and do cute and chill activities like play hide-and-seek or find fossils to donate to the village museum. Really can’t overemphasize how cute and chill this game is.

Pocket Camp will evoke the same cute and chill vibes but in a new setting: a campsite. The new game will also have a few additional features than its predecessors, like more customizable options for your character and home. The Verge has high hopes for the new game, saying it could potentially be Nintendo’s “biggest mobile hit yet.” Given the increasing need for calm respites from our seemingly ever-crumbling world, I’d also guess the game will fare pretty well.

If you’re wondering how much peak nostalgia costs these days, the new Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp app will be available to download on iOS and Android for free. Yes, zero human dollars. Of course, there will be in-app purchases available, in case you want to, like, speed along the building of a new bed for your avatar or something.

If you’re still wondering what the point of the game is or why this announcement matters, the answer is to be fun and cute and also we could all really use this right now. Just let us have this one, pure game with a pretty color palette and leave us to catch virtual butterflies in peace. Thank u so much.

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp joins the ranks of a few nostalgic gaming announcements to happen in the last month. Tamagotchis are also coming back, in case you want to really live your childhood dreams to their fullest and/or feel the guilt of letting your sweet, little pixelated BB accidentally die from overfeeding once again. They’ll be available in the U.S. starting November 5, almost around the same time as the Animal Crossing mobile app. So, better accomplish all your goals and touch base with your loved ones now because good luck doing anything other than feeding your Tamagotchi and building your Pocket Camp home for the rest of the year.

Nintendo might also be bringing back the Game Boy, which is so kind and generous to our souls but also very cruel to and inconsiderate of our aforementioned life responsibilities.

As of Tuesday night's announcement, Pocket Camp will only be available in a limited number of countries. (Calm down, the U.S. is on that list.) Additional countries will eventually be added. So, soon the rest of the world can join us in putting off their real lives, and do nothing but play Animal Crossing, too.