In 2016, Nintendo and DeNA started work on an Animal Crossing Mobile game. Its existence was officially announced to the public in April 2016, and Nintendo mentioned it would be released in 2016.

Animal Crossing Mobile was then pushed back to “by the end of March 2017”. The project had a working title called “Animal Crossing: Town Planner”. However, there was trouble brewing internally as concerns over the game’s quality and simplistic approach as a town builder grew. It was said Animal Crossing: Town Planner was a “town builder with an Animal Crossing theme”, as players could only place buildings and other objects in the town along with micromanaging the economy.

There was no avatar to control and roam around the world as everything was mostly controlled by menu selection screens. You could even visit your friends towns to compare how they look like.

In November 2016 Nintendo decided to push back the game indefinitely, and higher-ups at the company reviewed the game and called it “too barebones, too basic, and didn’t drew players in for an extended period of time”. Everything was scrapped and significantly redesigned into what we know as Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp today.