Animal Crossing: amiibo Festival is what happens when you combine Animal Crossing and Mario Party. Basically, it’s an adorable board game set in the world of Animal Crossing. Players tap amiibo figures to the NFC reader on the GamePad and then move around the village-themed board in a friendly competition.
In Animal Crossing: amiibo Festival, you start out your game by selecting which month of the year you’d like to play in. Each month has special events like holidays or town festivals, kind of like in the main Animal Crossing game series.
You will need one compatible amiibo in order to play Animal Crossing: amiibo Festival, but other friends can join in without bringing their own amiibos along. The goal of each game is to collect the most Happy Points, which you get in a variety of ways. Every time you play with your amiibo, it records how many Happy Points you earned, and it collects more and more over time. You can spend these Happy Points to unlock costumes for your character.
If you have amiibo cards, you will be able to use them to unlock special minigames. If you played Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer and you used Animal Crossing amiibo cards, you can actually place some of the homes that you designed in Happy Home Designer on your game board in amiibo Festival.
The game also has a single-player adventure called “Desert Island Escape,” the goal of which is to explore an island with a team of (computer-controlled) friends. Your mission is to collect resources, construct tools, and eventually escape the island.
Animal Crossing: amiibo Festival comes out on November 13 for the Nintendo Wii U.