Something unexpected happens the more you play Animal Crossing: amiibo Festival. The game gradually scales in difficulty. The board develops new pathways, as players spend Happy Tickets on additional features like the Cafe or Police Station, as a more minor adjustment. The Stalk Market, however, ends up experiencing the most alterations.

Animal Crossing: amiibo Festival does many things, like make you work for all the best content and provide a surprisingly fun survival simulation. Most importantly, it illustrates the need for even more Animal Crossing merchandise. We need tarot cards.

The last time I talked about Animal Crossing: amiibo Festival, I was pretty negative about the experience. To be fair, I had spent almost two hours playing it so I could unlock the one minigame I really wanted. Tedium weighs on people. It was worth it though, because those two hours were well spent. Now I can play Desert Island Escape whenever I want.

Animal Crossing: amiibo Festival is many things. It’s a means of tiding over all the Wii U owners craving a full Animal Crossing installment on their consoles. It’s also a part of Nintendo’s kid-friendly charge this holiday season. That isn’t even bringing up how heavily it pushes amiibo, what with requiring constant NFC figure tapping to roll dice or save Happy Points to characters and amiibo card swiping to perform actions in most of the minigames. But, above all else, it’s demanding.