On Tuesday evening, Nintendo pulled back the cover on its latest mobile game: Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. Like Super Mario Run and Fire Emblem Heroes before it, Pocket Camp is a scaled-down version of the popular series, but might be the most faithful to its source material of any Nintendo mobile project to date.
If you’re a fan of the franchise, chances are that you’re champing at the bit to get your hands on the game. Sadly, the global rollout of Pocket Camp won’t begin until late November, but if you’re willing to jump through a few hoops (or if you happen to live in Australia), you can download the game on your iOS or Android device today.
As is the case with many mobile titles, Nintendo has soft-launched Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp early on the App Store and Google Play in Australia. Unless you live there, you’ll need to find a way to access that country’s mobile store on your platform of choice. The good news is that we have instructions for both iOS and Android below:
iOS
- Open the App Store on your iPhone and tap the blue face icon at the top of the screen.
- Tap on Sign Out.
- Tap on this link right here to find Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp.
- Tap on Change Store when the pop up appears.
- If you don’t load directly to the app, you can find it in the Games section.
- Tap on the Get button once you find Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp.
- Choose Create New Apple ID when the pop up appears.
- Create a new Apple ID with an unused email address.
- Once you reach the Payment Method screen, choose None. You will need to input a legitimate Australian billing address, but all you need to do is a quick Google search to find a suitable address.
- Enter the verification code sent to your email address.
- Now that you’re logged in to your Australian account, you should be able to click this link again and download Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp right to your phone. You might have to change stores one last time.
Android
- Install a VPN (TunnelBear gives you some free data you can use to download the app).
- Create an account in your VPN app of choice and choose Australia as your country.
- Once you’re connected, go to Settings > Accounts and add a new account.
- Create a new Google account and skip the Set up payment info screen.
- Once you’re done, open Google Play and switch to the new account.
- You should load into the Australian Google Play store, where you can download Pocket Camp.
A month isn’t an especially long time to wait (especially with Super Mario Odyssey coming out in two days), but if you simply can’t wait to start playing Animal Crossing on your phone, these methods should help.
