Our guide to LEGO® Animal Crossing
LEGO® has recently collaborated with Nintendo™ to bring the popular video game Animal Crossing to life in brick form! They released five exciting LEGO® Animal Crossing sets for avid fans of the game, and of LEGO®, to explore the characters and world of Animal Crossing. These were released on the 1st of March 2024 and they have already been a huge hit, as millions of people enjoy and create their own happy world on the video game.
But what makes this awesome collab so amazing and popular? And just what does the LEGO® Animal Crossing sets bring to children? Discover everything you need to know in our guide to LEGO® Animal Crossing and unlock the magic of this genius collab in this blog!
What is Animal Crossing?
Animal Crossing is a wonderful and hugely popular social simulation video game that was developed by Nintendo™. The game was brought to life by Katsuya Eguchi and Hisashi Nogami who released the game in Japan in 2001 for the Nintendo 64. The game was then enhanced and released on GameCube in the same year. Since then, Animal Crossing gained popularity, which is still growing to this day! Nintendo™ has re-developed and enhanced the game over the years to suit other Nintendo™ devices, so it can be enjoyed by all on many devices!
The game allows players to step into the shoes of a human character who lives in a quaint, serene village. This village is inhabited by humanlike animals that you can socialise with and help out with tasks. The game has an open-ended approach, unlike the more rigid objectives of the more traditional games. You can escape reality to enjoy wonderful activities such as fishing, fossil hunting, insect catching and socialising.
Animal Crossing also offers players real-time play as the internal clock and calendar mirror the passage of time, seasons and even time of day of the real world. Plus, players have lots of customisation opportunities with creating their own unique character and modifying the village to their liking! This means that everyone’s Animal Crossing world can be unique to them and different to how the game begins.
What is LEGO® Animal Crossing?
LEGO® Animal Crossing brings the popular video game to life in the real world, in brick form! It is based on the scenes that you can come across in the game and the characters too. Animal Crossing is all about creating a world where you can build the life you want and make and grow a village that’s unique to you. LEGO® has reflected this through their fun sets that allows children, and even adults, to build the Animal Crossing world in the real world, using their own hands!
This awesome collab allows children and adults to explore the characters and world from the video game and play out various stories and scenes in the brick landscape, bringing the video game to life! The LEGO® Animal Crossing sets also encourage fans to partake in imaginative play with their favourite characters. Fans can build their own Animal Crossing world, by putting sets together, in the physical world. They can enjoy the building and play aspect time and time again just like they do on the video game.
Who are the characters?
So, which of the famous Animal Crossing characters are portrayed in the LEGO® Animal Crossing sets? Well, the characters that are within the collection are hugely popular and are the main characters that you come across during the game. There are eight of the famous characters across the five different sets. These are:
· Tom Nook: A racoon with brown fur and a long nose. He appears at the beginning of the game in his wooden shack where you can purchase items from him.
· Marshal: A smug villager who is an off-white squirrel with a choppy brown fringe. He can easily get along with other villagers and is polite and kind.
· Rosie: An iris blue cat with dark blue fur. She is a peppy villager who is always in a good mood and is easy to be friends with.
· Kapp’n: A green turtle who serves as a driver of various forms of transport. He rows boats, drives taxis and even drives buses! He loves to sail the seas and talks like a pirate.
· Bunnie: An orange rabbit with a creamy beige face. She is a peppy villager who is easy to get along with but can over-react to trivial subjects.
· Fauna: A brown deer who first appeared in the New Leaf game. She has the nature hobby so she can get distracted by insects when walking around.
· Isabelle: A nearsighted bright yellow dog who resembles a Shih Tzu. She is friendly, hardworking and eager to assist players with tasks. She is the secretary in the Town Hall.
· Julian: A bright blue horse with a horn on his head, resembling a unicorn. He is a smug villager who is kind, polite, fun and easy to be friends with.
These characters come with various LEGO® Animal Crossing sets, such as Kapp’n and Marshal come in the Kapp’ns island boat tour set where kids can set sail with Kapp’n to a deserted island to meet Marshal!
What age is it suitable for?
Due to the small parts within the set and the difficulty to build, the LEGO® Animal Crossing is suitable for children aged 6 plus. From the age of 6, your child can create their own Animal Crossing world in the real world and play to their hearts content. They can have lots of hours of fun building the various sets and characters. Once built, they can then re-enact parts of the game or create their own stories using their imagination. The sets can be played with over and over again and can become a part of your child’s regular playtime activities, just like the video game!
How does the LEGO® Animal Crossing sets work with the video game?
The LEGO® Animal Crossing sets have been designed to give kids the freedom to make their set and world unique. They can customise the sets to create their own unique real-world village. This is like the video game where kids can customise lots of things, such as their village and character, so the LEGO® sets work with the video game due to this same aspect.
Each set has been created to easily fit together, offering a high level of customisation. Kids can switch various elements between buildings, even including window frames, with one simple click. The sets can also be adapted, changed and mixed together so builders can create their own village and make settings that are unique to them!
LEGO® wanted users to experience the freedom of customisation to reflect the whole point of the video game and bring it to life. Also, the minifigures were created to accurately depict the characters in the video game so children can identify who they are, build a connection to them and enjoy playing with them.
Can you play together?
LEGO® Animal Crossing can be enjoyed by both boys and girls and can easily be played with together. Just like the social aspect of the video game, where you can connect to other people’s worlds, boys and girls can connect their worlds together for some imaginative play. They can easily share their village with each other, or even just one set, as many of the sets include more than one character! Boys and girls can create imaginative stories or re-enact parts of the game together and bring Animal Crossing to life!
They can even connect their different sets together as, even though each set is quite distinctive, they can be connected to build a real-life Animal Crossing village or island. This is perfect if each player doesn’t have every set and their friends or family have the other sets. Boys and girls can set up their ideal village or island and play with it together. They can even customise each other’s sets to create a unique village together, that they both like, as it can easily be changed back once they are done!
Boys and girls can also build their sets or village together too as a fun bonding activity. They can communicate with each other to decide how best to customise each set so that they create an Animal Crossing world they all love. For this, it is ideal that only small groups, or pairs, play and build together so there isn’t lots of clashing and arguments over customising the sets.
Now you know everything you need to know about the LEGO® Animal Crossing sets, why not try some out and let your child bring the video game to life? Collect all of the sets and encourage your child to create their own real-world, unique village or island. They can have hours of entertainment from building the sets to playing with them time and time again! LEGO® Animal Crossing truly brings the video game into the physical world through the engaging customisation and realistic, loveable characters that reflect the much-loved game!