PSA: How to back up your save for Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete

Is there anything more terrifying in video games than losing a save file? No amount of Silent Hill monsters compares to the gripping fear of the phrase “Save file corrupted.” If you’ve ever lost entire collections of Pokemon, Animal Crossing villages, or hours of Final Fantasy, you get it.

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete is a great, fully-featured game all on its own. All of the paid currencies have been removed, and now it’s a flat price like a normal video game. With 7 years of content, there’s plenty to sink your time into. It would be a real shame if something happened to that save file… And it doesn’t take much.

For better or worse, this version of the game is offline. That means your save is no longer backed to a cloud service. If anything happens to your game, even just uninstalling it on the same device, your save file is gone. Take heed, fellow camp managers: You have to manually back up your save. The real kicker, is that it’s only saved for 7 days, so you’ll have to do it once a week.

It’s a strange design decision. Even uninstalling the game on Switch or 3DS and reinstalling it keeps your save. But we can help you with the process of backing your save file up. Fortunately, it’s very simple.

This process can be started either on the title screen or in the game itself. The image above shows where the title screen button is. In the game, you’ll go to the game menu (the circle with the four squares inside it, lower right-hand corner). Select the “Misc” button, and then select “about changing devices.” From there, the steps are the same as above.

You’ll select Store Save Data, and receive a prompt to sign into your Nintendo Account. If you don’t have one, it’s really quick to create one, but it is necessary to back up your save. Select your account, and wait for the game to save your data. You’ll then close the game.

You can continue to play on the same device; simply relaunch the game and continue. But if anything happens, like you need to reinstall the game for technical issues, you’ll be set back to that previous save. Some people have decided to store their save data every day, as if they were playing the original Animal Crossing, and feared for the wrath of Resetti.