When you first enter the game, you find yourself in a taxi driven by a character named Kapp'n. From the questions that he asks you, how you look will be determined by your answers. I ended up as this cute pink-haired little round-face human arriving at my town. Well, the town does have a mayor but since he's forever sleeping except during special events, you're stuck with the role of looking after the town and its residents.

Arriving in town, you meet up with Pelly the Pelican who manages the Town's Civic Hall and Post Office. She will tell you that you actually own a house and that you can actually share it with 4 other residents. Hurrah! But, there's a catch to the house (there's always a catch somewhere).Out of nowhere, this shady raccoon named Nook pops up and says that you owe him 19,000 bells for the house’s mortgage! At first this seems a lot of money but that's nothing compared to higher amounts you pay to expand your home! Interior decoration is never cheap, whether in real life or in-game.

Now the Civic Hall houses the town's Post Office (handling mortgage payments for Nook, bank account, saving and mailing letters) as well as handling other town matters (e.g. does everyone like the town surroundings, donations for the next town, or just moving towns). It's run by Pelly and her sister Phyllis. Here, you can do things like checking whether your town full of animals love it, donate free money to Boonbox town which you never go and meet, put a new theme song for the village, mail letters, have a savings account for bells (town currency) and letters, or, if you wish to, move to another town on another Nintendo DS.

Anyway, to get you started off with a few bells, Nook takes you under his wing (or arm) and puts you to do a few tasks. They're pretty simple to do: plant flowers and trees for him, meet all the residents, and do quite a fair bit of errands for him. Once you've done all that he's asked you to do, he lets you off and you're free to do whatever you want after that. Well, that's probably because he knows you're going to owe him tons of money anyway. Nook the Crook, I say.

Now, Nook, who recruits his nephews to help work the store has a shop known as Nook 'N' Cranny which eventually undergoes 3 expansions to finally be Nookingtons which is a 2-storey building with a hair salon, which allows for different types of hair style and color. As for Nook's shop, it expands when you've bought / sold him enough from him. From his shop, you buy tools (fishing rod, watering can, spade, slingshot, axe, butterfly net) that help you with your day-to-day living. As for the Shampoodle the hair salon, Harriet the Poodle will help you to change your hairstyle and the color of your hair at a nifty (or not so nifty) price of 3,000 bells. I'm currently running around with blue hair for a change to blend with the sky.

Ok, first off on the list is earning enough bells to pay off that hefty loan. There are many things that you can do in the game to earn money. The easiest is actually collecting items to sell back to Nook. There are seashells by the beach, fruits from fruit trees and rejected furniture in the Recycling Bin in the Town Hall. You can also use the fishing rod and catch fish by the sea, river, pond or waterfall. Different types of seashells are priced differently. As for fruits, local fruits are 100 bells a piece whereas coconuts and foreign fruits (from other towns or from resident's mail) are priced at 500 bells. Fish are seasonal creatures so you'll get different types depending on the time of year you're fishing. And, different fish have different pricing where the rarest fish (and usually the Asian ones that are considered lucky) are priced at a few thousand bells. As for furniture, your residents will throw them away when they get tired of it so it's free stuff considering Nook sells furniture at 1,000-3,000 bells a piece!

So what's the whole point of the game? So far, the main aim is to decorate your home where you have the option of expanding it to a maximum of 4 different rooms. Of course, all these comes with hefty prices as you're going to spend a lot of time having to collect seashells, going fishing and collecting fruit. Now, before you get bored out of your wits, there are some other ways to earn money. Another thing about obtaining the money is that most of them, you're going to have to sell stuff to Nook. Strange isn't it? You owe him tons of money for house renovations and you still have to sell him stuff (the crook!).

Now, there is also a Museum nearby where you can donate fossils, bugs, fish and paintings. Fossils are dug using a shovel (which you can buy from Nook the raccoon) - just look for some cross-markings on the ground and dig. Using a net (again from Nook), bugs are found on trees, flowers, rocks and ground. Paintings are bought from Red the Fox who comes once a week selling some exclusive furniture and, the paintings (of course). To get into Red's tent the first time, go around the town chatting the residents until one of them mentions the password. Now, you can enter Red's Furniture Tent and buy exclusive items at very exclusive prices that will make you the envy of the ton by burning a big hole in your pocket. Now that you know where to find fossils, bugs, fish and paintings, you can donate them to Blathers the Owl, Museum Caretaker and he will display them. For fossils, he's the only person who can identify the type of fossil (which you need to do anyway to get Nook to buy them off you). Blathers will accept any donation provided it's not in the museum yet. So, anything extra will either be sold or given as gifts to residents.

By the way, the Museum has a cellar cafe, the Roost, where you can buy a cup of coffee from Brewster Pigeon, the owner. If you do this everyday, Brewster will eventually open himself up to you and chat a bit more. The Roost is also the place where the famous canine musician, K.K. Slider, performs every Saturday night (8 - 11pm). He will take requests from you or you can relax to whatever he's currently playing. At the end of the performance, as an appreciation to you, his audience, you'll receive a tape recording of his performance (fully instrumental) which you can play on any stereo player that you'll have in your house. The Museum also houses the town's observatory, run by Celeste, Blathers' sister. Here, you can make your own Constellations and giving them names. If you're up to teasing Celeste, you can also say that she's cute and she will get all sweaty and nervous! But, do it often enough, like Brewster she will eventually open up to you.

Another building that's interesting is the Able Sister’s clothes shop. Here, you can buy clothes from them as well as accessories, umbrellas and head gears. You can also design up to a maximum of 8 different patterns which you can either keep in your pocket or display it in the clothes shops. Now, the shop is manned by the 2 sisters, Mabel and Sable. Greeting Sable everyday and she will become friends with you and open up her life stories. Some of the clothes stuff are cute like orange jumpsuits, suit of armors, a skeleton cow head (!!!), eye patches, moustaches and even Big Bro's hat (a.k.a. Mario's hat).

The last town building is not really a building but the Town Gates. Manned by two canines named Cooper and Booker, this is where you can exit the game and head onto another town via Nintendo WiFi. You get to meet other people in other parts of the world and also the residents of their town. It's not a free-for-all as you can only have 3 visitors in your town and vice versa when you're heading off to another town. Also, both you and the other party will need to exchange Friend's codes to enter each others towns. Speak to Cooper about opening the town gates for visitors or heading off to another town for fun-filled adventures. What I do is exchange Friend's codes online at Animal Crossing Community so that my code doesn't get revealed to any stranger. Plus, there is a rating system for the users so people messing up your town do not stay popular for long.

What else is there to do? Well, you can work on getting yourself some golden tools e.g. axe, net, fishing rod, net, watering can, and slingshots. For the Golden Fishing Rod and Golden Net, you'll need to catch all types of fish and bugs respectively. The Golden Spade is just burying a spade for 24 hrs. As for the slingshot, knock down 15 presents from the sky and you'll be getting. By the way, the presents appear in the sky at different 5th min e.g. 45 min, and you have to run as far north as possible to shoot it down. Axe is from obtainable from a walrus named Pascale who appears now and again on the beach. The Golden Can is the tougher: a perfect town for at least 16 days! The other option of a Golden Can is buying it off from another player on Nintendo WiFi but the going rate is 500 thousand to a million bells! Wah!

Oh, and some other ways to make money. An easier way when you are still penniless, try shaking trees and banging some rocks. Each day, one rock will yield a maximum of 4,000 bells (depending on whether you can continuous bang that rock). Trees (none bearing fruit) can be shaken for bags of 100 bells each or a bee hive with nasty bees. Urgh! One sting and your eye is pretty much swollen. However, never fret! Once you save the game, it will disappear. Also, one or two furniture pieces may drop from shaken trees.

Since you're going to be buying stuff to decorate your expanding home, you can also join the Happy Room Academy (HRA) to get some bragging rights on your home decorating skill. There are certain criteria to fulfill and matching scheme and themes of furniture sets will earn you high points. There are also bonus items such as animal pictures, fish that will appear in aquarium boxes, etc. that will give you higher ratings. And, of course, mix-match sets will pull you down. Another way to get bonus points is to put it down according to Feng Shui rules i.e. certain furniture are color-coded and needs to be put into a certain spot for high points. Judging is done once a week and your score will be revealed later on.

Being the caretaker of a town doesn't mean that only the surroundings needs taking care of. You have to also take care of the various town residents which are an extremely motley crew! That means you have to speak to them and mail them letters now and again. Yes, you're going to have to spend a bit of time writing letters to each resident and occasionally include presents with the letters. You would also be ask to run various errands now and again by them. Sometimes, at the end of it, you'll end up with a gift, sometimes not. If you neglect your residents, they will one day pack up and move out of town. But never fear, new ones would pop up soon enough.

During certain times of the year, certain events would be triggered. There is a Fishing Tourney once a month where you are fishing for the biggest fish in town. Tortimer the Mayor judges this event. There's also other events such as Yay Day which is you are going to compliment all the residents. Not that they understand, mind you, but it's the thought that counts. La-Di-Da Day is when you get to pick and choose the new Town theme song from the residents. They go all a-twitter when it's their song that you pick. And spring is in the air so 1st April will see the cherry blossoms on trees blooming. And lots and lots others.

There are also some interesting characters that will appear during certain times of the day. So far, I've met Joan the Boar (sells White and Red Turnips on Sunday, you can sell to Nook on other days in the "Stalk" Market for a profit or loss), Dr. Shrunk (a mad psychologist who will give you different emotes), Saharah (trader for carpets and wallpaper, she makes you do errands first though), the mystical Katrina (so mystical to the point that she's not so useful) and some others. I still trying to see if I can meet them all but it's not easy. They have a habit of turning up during weekday mornings and that's when I'm not free to game!

You can also do the sneaky thing of traveling back and forth through time by changing the time settings. This doesn't work out well because your town will end up with weeds and your residents may have all gone. If you try to return back to the original game settings from the future, the weeds will still remain. Then, your residents will start complaining about them.

There are so many other things to do in game: trying to breed flower hybrids, shoot down a UFO for some neat stuff, roll a snowman during winter-time for awesome furniture, change Blanca the Cat's face with whatever design you want and she will take it with her randomly to another town, uniting mother cat Katlin and her kitten child Katie between 2 different towns via Wifi for free stuff and others too. There's just so many things to do in-game that I still haven't done yet!

Now, for the gameplay. No skill is required to learn the game so it was easy to just dive right into the game. It's very easy to alternate between using the stylus and the buttons. Most of the time, I prefer to use the game buttons because it's not easy to use the touch screen and not accidentally click on something else! Still, there are times when the stylus comes in very handy, especially when your thumbs are starting to get pretty sore. The characters do not have an actual voice, just some mumbling and painful squeaking now and again. You can turn this off in the beginning by clicking on the Phone in your bedroom.

For my WiFi connection, I'm using the Datel MAX Wifi because living in Malaysia, I couldn't find the recommended model listed on NintendoWifi.com . The connection is not too bad and there's only about 2-4 sec lag between the actions and chat. Still, it goes pretty fast enough unless someone's connection is terminated. When that happens, everyone's gameplay will revert back to the last known save so if the Town Caretaker (player) did not save the game, you will lose all progress up till the time you spoke to Cooper about going gallivanting off. Other than going onto the NintendoWiFi network, you can also beam directly DS-to-DS to visit a friend's town. Again, it's important to exchange friend codes to do so.

What can be improved is the chatting method. It's tedious to click on the keyboard to type out your message. Writing recognition on the touch screen would definitely go a long way to make it easier to exchange messages. That's my only gripe about the game. Other than that, I'm pretty happy with it. It's really a simple game giving you the ability to buy stuff that you like to put in your home.

Now, please excuse me while I go back to paying back the Crook's, I mean Nook's loan. It's now hit a whopping 598,000 bells! It's going to be a long time before I can even expand my new house. There's another 3 more expansion to go before I finally get my 5-room mansion.