Not directly inspired by Animal Crossing, no. We drew inspiration from many things, some not even game related. Sometimes we just think about emotional ranges and feelings we want to express. From games, there are elements in here inspired heavily from Knytt, from Pikmin, and even Crackdown
We have several people who have played this within virtual machines! Seems to work just fine. It's not a native Mac client though, so your mileage will vary.