Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth's Dondoko Island is Animal Crossing with baseball bats

We got our first look at Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth's Dondoko Island at last year's Xbox Partner showcase. Right as it dropped, I was in New York giving the Animal Crossing-esque minigame a go myself, albeit for a quickfire half hour of bashing rubbish bags with a baseball bat and plonking a urinal on the dirt to satisfy a tutorial. Still, in that brief time I've come away thinking I could lose much of my life to the promise of converting a polluted island into an idyll with the power of abs and friendship. There is the strong possibility of a grind. But hey, it's optional!

LAD producer Hiroyuki Sakamoto says that Dondoko Island opens up in Chapter 6 of your adventure, where you befriend a turtle and events transport you to the island's dilapidated shores. The setup is simple: Dondoko has been ravaged by pollution and garbage and it's your job to make it a habitable place for yourself, its wildlife, and the fuzzy goofs who have your back in your Sujimon team. The end goal? Transform it from a feeble one-star heap of gunk to a five-star resort, where tourists pour in to peruse its newfound convenience stores and bars and, fingers crossed, cat cafes.

My 30 minutes on Dondoko Island didn't start with a turtle, but did see me come face to face with the enemy: The Waste Disposal Deviants, aka The Washbucklers. They're a band of pollutant pirates, of course, led by the dastardly Dread Pirate Hook. After some taunts and a promise to bring ruin upon our lands, he set three of his cronies on me. Combat was real-time rather than turn-based, and ever so slightly top-down, almost as if it hinted at future large scale battles reminiscent of, say, Yakuza 6's clan battles. It seemed a little simplistic and a bit floaty, though, as I swung my bat and the pirates toppled over without much resistance. Perhaps the only ounce of tension lay in avoiding hits, as my health had been split into three brittle hearts.

In the main, though, Dondoko Island is clearly a parody on Animal Crossing, and borrows heavily from Crossing's daily incentives. Each morning on Dondoko you have a morning assembly, where you're able to assess your island's overall condition through a map screen, and see daily tasks that contribute to your star-ratings milestones. I'm unsure exactly how these daily tasks will evolve, but mine had me clearing out areas of the Island, like the Great Tree and the Entrance. "Clearing out" means "evaporate bags of trash with your baseball bat", naturally.

Inevitably, Dondoko also mirrors Animal Crossing in having a shop with a rotating selection of sought-after items. Bridges represent important milestones, allowing you to move around your island more easily and access new areas. You can collect bugs by crashing a net down onto them, filling in a cute entry in your logbook. Head to a pier and you can charge up your spear and launch it at shadowy blobs to catch fish.

But! Dondoko Island has some important differences to AC, and it isn't just because rude little rhinos don't pitch up tents and then roast you for saying hello. Getting cool furniture and items seems a touch more immediate than AC, in that you won't be shaking trees or dipping into your coffers. Instead, you're encouraged to craft stuff with the resources you collect from bashing trash around the island, which then levels up your Building Talent. A higher building talent unlocks more things, and the cycle continues. While there's absolutely a possibility of the resource side of things getting a bit grindy over time, in my short session it didn't take long for me to unlock a whole array of benches and ornaments.

Spending time furnishing your house also seems vital to success. My demo abode had a single room I was able to pop nice housey items into - like a bed, a sofa, and horny statues. If I had plopped more things down and expanded my place, it would have increased my Livability stat, which would then increase my maximum health and help me get more resources when batting trash. A calendar on the wall also let me decide whether to skip time, usher in a new day and, crucially, reset the daily treats.

Sakamoto also revealed that we'd be able to visit each other's islands online. When asked about it, he clarified that it wouldn't be "in sync", so both players won't see each other pottering about in real time. Instead, it's more like visiting someone else's island while they're out at Big Tesco. While a bit of a shame, it'll be interesting to see if players design their spaces to direct your eye to cool things, since they can't steer you themselves.

In another interesting twist, Sakamoto said players will be able to battle each other's Sujimon teams on island visits. Who knows what sort of rewards we might get, or whether there's a leaderboard. Will people flock to the island of the Sujimon Grandmaster who's designed their place to mirror a Pokémon gym? I'm intrigued.

Considering I only spent 30 minutes with the mode, it's far too early to tell how it'll hold up after a few hours. I worry about any possible grinds, and if RGG find a way to make them enticing enough not to get tiring. Still, from my brief stint I'm amazed at the potential depth of the AC parody and knowing my history in getting hooked on the series' real estate minigames, I can see myself succumbing to the tourist trade in Infinite Wealth.