Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth puts its own Yakuza-style twist on Animal Crossing in new minigame Dondoko Island

25.10.2023 - 20:17 / rockpapershotgun.com / Hiroyuki Sakamoto / New

If it wasn’t already clear that Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth is going to be plenty zany in that good ol’ Yakuza way, RGG Studio has now revealed that Ichiban Kasuga’s next adventure will pack in its own Animal Crossing minigame - but done Yakuza-style, naturally.

Happy Resort Dondoko Island is a new activity revealed during tonight’s Xbox Partner Preview stream, showing off a mix of gathering, crafting and town management. Its debut trailer showed off butterfly-catching, first-person spear-fishing and resource gathering - in the form of smashing up a bunch of washed-up trash on the beach - with said resources then able to be turned into a bunch of furniture and furnishings. If you can’t be bothered with making it yourself, there’ll be a store from which you can buy things too. Getting that Animal Crossing vibe yet?

You’ll be able to customise both your own “dream home” (examples shown included a bare room with trash bags and a single table, room with a caged tiger, and a room with what looks like an entire fruit market stall) and the island’s wider infrastructure, laying out roads, paths, buildings, vehicles and more - including a giant fire-breathing statue shown at one point.

Like, yes, Animal Crossing, the island will be populated with a bunch of colourful characters who you’ll be able to befriend and give presents to in order to win them over.

One of those characters will be PingWing, a parrot that appears to speak by shouting hardware: “Wi-Fi! Router! USB! GPS! BBS!” Another appears to be a bloke in a burger-shaped hat with ketchup and mustard in his jacket pockets, burger-print trousers and a crop-top that accurately reads “KING”. A pair of hairy, human-sized Sesame Street-looking monsters referred to only as “Strange Creature?” also popped up a number of times throughout the footage hollering “ALOHA!”, though that might just be my nightmares calling.

Those tourists will have specific wants and needs you’ll have to fulfil to get them to move in, and you’ll also be able to host campfire singalongs with Kasuga strumming away.

The idyllic island will come under threat from uninvited guests - including a crew of purple-wearing street punks and, er, boars - who you’ll need to politely convince to leave by beating the absolute life out of them with your fists, baseball bat and whatever else is to hand.

In other words, it’s all very Animal Crossing (except the fistfights) and very, very Yakuza. Chief producer Hiroyuki Sakamoto confirmed the activity will be unlocked through a side quest at the start of Infinite Wealth’s sixth chapter, and won’t tie into the main story in any way - so you’ll be able to ignore it entirely or lose hundreds of hours refining your island as you prefer.

Li