This week, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp was updated to celebrate the holidays. Going live on November 30th and running until just after Christmas (the event concludes at 12:59am on December 26th), the event allows you access to holiday-themed furniture and clothing.

As with all the crafting in Pocket Camp, you need specific crafting materials (candy canes) to create the limited-time items. Certain items you craft begat more candy canes, so check your timed goals for the full list before crafting if you’d like to make the most of your time and efforts.

Candy canes can be earned in one of two ways: you can either go to the quarry to obtain them, or you have the chance to earn them each time you complete a request for an animal you interact with. In my chunk of hours with the game yesterday, I’d say about 65% of the time I seemed to net candy canes from completing regular requests. It certainly wasn’t every time, but it was often enough that I didn’t feel the game was holding out on me.

The holiday items are definitely festive (you could theoretically deck out your entire camp, furniture-wise, with holiday items), and in one day I managed to net enough candy canes to craft the rug, couch, big festive cake, mountain of presents, and the bed. That’s around half of the items, and my camp already looks festive as heck.

The good news is that I’ve not felt like this event was pushing me toward spending any real world currency. The rewards roll out fast enough that it never feels like an absurd grind-fest. And the festive items are a fun change from my normal camp decor (normal after just a week, I suppose?).

With this holiday edition of Pocket Camp, I start thinking about all the other games (past and present) with holiday events, or games with past DLC content for the holidays (the Borderlands 2 Headhunter pack: How Marcus Saved Mercenary Day, comes to mind), and it puts me in the mood to play those, too. I happen to live in a place where it is nearly always hot and sunny, so the concept of snow currently only exists for me within some of the games I enjoy most.

Do you enjoy holiday content in your games? Do you take part? If so, which have been your favorite holiday events/DLC?

Also, what will you be playing this weekend?

Now that I am back in town, I’m hoping to officially give up on my dream of completing more 2017 games and simply play games that are of interest to me. I’ve still not finished Wolfenstein: The New Order, which I started so I could roll into The New Colossus. What I find myself really wanting to play are a plethora of smaller digital titles that released this year. I’m also feeling the pull of Yakuza 0, and I’d like to go back and finish Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. It seems I made it partway through several games, only to halt progress for whatever reason. I’d like to wrap some of those up, just because.

Whatever you decide to play, I hope you enjoy yourself and have a safe weekend! Cheers!