Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival

Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival abandoned the village-simulation format entirely and turned the series into a board-game-style party title similar to Mario Party. Players move their figures around a game board designed after Animal Crossing, collect Bells, complete minigames, and try to land on spaces that will bring them the most points before the game ends after a limited number of rounds - without the open world, fishing, bug catching, or building your own house that the series is otherwise built on.

The game was released for Wii U in late 2015 and was developed in cooperation between nd cube, the studio also behind the Mario Party series, and Nintendo as a showcase for amiibo figures: full gameplay required its own set of Animal Crossing character figures, which individual players used to control their pieces on the board, while additional amiibo could be tapped to unlock bonus content, extra minigames, or special rounds. The game's packaging also included its own set of figures and cards in the box, so unlike most other amiibo-compatible titles, there was no need to buy figures separately - though the amount of content still depended on how many additional cards and characters the player acquired. This dependence on collecting figures and the simplified, repetitive game system became the main target of criticism from reviewers, who faulted the game for repetitive play and poor use of amiibo technology's potential, despite it remaining visually and musically faithful to the series' established style.

Why play: Amiibo Festival makes sense mainly as a curiosity for amiibo figure collectors or for series fans who want to see what Animal Crossing looks like stripped of its core and reshaped into a short, random party game for a few people around one television.