Animal Crossing: New Horizons – How to use Amiibo with the Campsite & Photopia

Stefan L 20/03/20 Comments Closed

The amiibo functionality in Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a little different to how it worked in Animal Crossing: New Leaf’s Welcome Amiibo update. You’ll be building a campsite for animals to come visit, letting you chat with them and potentially invite them to live on your island, or you can head to Harv’s island for a photoshoot, inviting animals to pose as models.

Unfortunately, compared to New Leaf Welcome Amiibo, the amiibo functionality feels a little more limited, or at least, not as obvious to use. We’ll update this guide as we have more information.

We’ve got plenty of other walkthroughs and tips for Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and more on the way. Visit our game hub to check those out.

How to build the Campsite

The campsite is unlocked after the Resident Service Tent has been upgraded to a Resident Service Building. At that point Tom Nook will reveal his grand plan for the island, which will require you to build a campsite for people to come visit your island.

Simply gather everything you need for the DIY Recipe that Tom Nook gives you, and find a spot to place the campsite on your island.

The next day, the campsite will be complete, and the day after that you can see your first guests when a tent appears. In fact, you will see your first guest as a scripted moment in the game. If you like them, you can ask them to join your island, and help Tom Nook in setting up a building site for them.

How to use amiibo with the Campsite

After your first guest, you’ll be able to use amiibo to invite some of the many animals to the Campsite. You do this from the Nook Stop terminal in the Resident Services Building.

These amiibo must be from the Animal Crossing range, and the added caveat is that (in our experience), many of the physical amiibo that feature the series’ main characters won’t work. Isabelle and Mabel both appear to say that they can’t come to the campsite right now, while Cyrus, Reese, KK and Digby all fail to even summon an apology!

This feature feels more oriented toward the amiibo cards range, though we do not currently have any handy to test.

Visit Harv’s Island and Photopia

Harvey hosted the camp ground in Animal Crossing: New Leaf, but he now lives on an island of his own in New Horizons. Once he’s visited your island and you’ve talked to him, you can fly to Harv’s Island from the Dodo Airlines airport.

Harv will welcome you to his home, explaining that it’s a cool place to stage and take photos in its many rooms, in what he calls Photopia.

How to use amiibo with Photopia

In Photopia, you can move and place items and scenery however you like to create a scene, and you can also invite many amiibo characters to your game. To do so, press down on the D-pad to enter the decoration mode, and when you see the amiibo icon in the bottom left corner of the screen, touch amiibo to the NFC sensor on the right Joy-Con thumbstick or to the Nintendo Switch logo on a Switch Pro Controller.

Again, Cyrus, Reese and Digby could not be summoned, but Isabelle, Mabel and KK joined me, and could be placed in the scene, just like other objects. Drag and drop them, tap to rotate, and press the right shoulder button to bring up the Reactions menu to give them a reaction to pull.

Now enter the camera from your NookPhone, and trigger all of the programmed Reactions by pressing A. Take a photo with +, which will be saved with the rest of your Switch’s screenshots.