Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Since it's been taking up a lot of our time lately, I thought it might be fun to post pictures from the game Animal Crossing: New Horizons. The Nintendo Switch has a very easy screen-capture button right on the controller, so it's a habit to take pictures of "cool stuff" whenever. We had a lot of pictures saved so we thought, why not share?

My friend had never played an Animal Crossing game before, but it's like Star Wars: It's popular for a reason, right? Like, it can't be anything but a great game to be so popular. This game was actually given to my friend as a planned-late-Xmas-gift, so... I guess we're in!

The premise of the game is simple. You move to a deserted island, and... do stuff. Nothing in particular, just whatever you feel like. We named our island Fort Pillow. You start out with two random neighbors, we got Tammy and Jay.

Talk about the right game at the right time. Just when the world shuts down and encourages people to stay home, Animal Crossing becomes the perfect escape! The gimmick of the game is that it happens "in real time." For example, if it's noon in real life, it's noon in the game. There's a lot of stuff attached to time-of-day um, times.

One of the things you can do is fish. While your character doesn't necessarily need to eat, you can sell the fish for money. Or you could fish up a boot. That's not worth much. This was the first thing we caught?

Catching bugs is a thing, too. There's an owl named Blathers who has hopes to open a museum where he can house all the bugs and fish species available to catch. Along with dinosaur fossils you dig up. He doesn't like bugs and has the funniest reactions whenever you give him one.

Eventually you travel to mini-islands to gather resources, and encounter new animals you can invite to move to your island. Annalisa here is workin' the charm, how can we not invite her?

You upgrade your tent into a home, and each time you pay off the loan, you can take out another loan to make your house bigger. Adding more rooms to fill up with more stuff. This is also a funny sort of picture to send to your friends because who doesn't want to brag about this sort of thing?

The Museum is upgraded to a super nice building! Walking around it has an odd sensation of walking around a real museum. Have we just been to too many museums?

Whenever you catch a fish or bug, there's always a pun to go along with it. The fish appear at different times of the day, and even in different months. The oarfish is rare, we were happy to catch one.

Another random Nook-Miles Island resource trip finds us Rodeo. Wearing a graduation gown, talking about how much he likes bugs. It was a different quirky charm, but he seemed like fun, so why not move to Fort Pillow?

The Tarantula comes out at night and you have to sneak up on it very... very slowly. If you mess up, it runs at you and BAM! A lot of players hate these things. It's sort of terrifying which makes catching them so very sweet.

The Nook Family opens a shop! There's a small ceremony. The monkey off to the right is Tammi, with an "i" She randomly moved in. So that's not going to be confusing, we have Tammy and Tammi.

Eventually Isabelle joins the staff. She does morning announcements to let you know what's going on today. Yep, the game wants you to play... every... day. It's oddly addictive, why wouldn't you?

The resident services building has an ATM which you can deposit money and buy things um,... online? The game's online, not real online. You'll want to buy the pocket upgrades as soon as you can, so you can carry more stuff around. It sounds silly, but you can cram like over forty trees in your pocket!

There are events that trigger on specific days. While not technically endorsing holidays, this creepy rabbit is promoting "Bunny Day" which is Easter Sunday. So you have to play the game on that specific day to take part in Bunny Day activities.

You and every neighbor have a Do-It-Yourself, or "DIY" workstation. They give you recipes to mix up the local resources to make stuff. Anything from wood tables to golden dishes to lunar rovers. Make sure to check in with them to see what they are up to!

Tammi had a Birthday! Party at Tammi's house! We sent her a gift in the mail, but when we showed up for the party, she asked if we brought a gift. Um, we mailed it! Not wanting to say "no," we had a wasp we caught earlier. Hey, for a bug, wasps are pretty expensive, so in Animal Crossing, that's a good gift...

 So another big thing about the game is... you can visit your friend's islands! Yep, they can visit yours, too! You can trade stuff and just check out what they've done.

While on your friend's island, you can talk to their neighbors and just explore the random stuff they got instead. Hi Bluebear! I'm visiting from Fort Pillow!

After your neighbors  become more friendly with you, they give you a nickname. And then your other neighbors each warm up to you and ask if they can use the nickname, too.

Chillin' on the couch with a visiting friend. There's a cell phone in the game with various apps that let you check bug and fish stats, DIY recipes, friend status, and other stuff. If you make someone a "Best Friend" they can chop down your trees if they want! But they wouldn't do that, they are your Best Friends.

You can build bridges across the rivers, and to show you how cool the game can be, here's a thing we thought of. We built a bridge and then another one right above it on top of the waterfall. Came out very nice looking.

 Eventually you unlock the ability to "terraform" the island a lot. You can build up the cliffs or knock 'em down, divert the rivers, and add walkway paths. This map shows the layout right after we started doing a lot of work. So we can remember how it started. We tried not to alter it too much, but some people like to level the whole thing and pretty much build it back to perfection!

 How was Tammi not using my nickname yet? Anybody else? Your neighbors are all so sweet to you, it's part of the game's charm.

 The un-official goal of the game is to build up the island's reputation enough that the musician K.K. Slider visits to hold a concert. He's a video game icon with real music available to listen to. His attitude is truly inspirational, he jams his music for free, he just wants it to be heard. That's how all music should be, he says.

 It's very simple for a concert, but super emotional. My friend is a sucker for moments like this. 

After he holds the concert, K.K. Slider will visit your island and hang out every Saturday night. He takes requests and gives you a free copy of the first song you ask him to play. You gotta look up "Go K.K. Rider" I'm sure it's available to listen to for free somewhere, that's what he'd want.

 There's still lots more to do once you've had the concert. You can build up your island to get a 5-Star rating. There's no one way to get there, you gotta find your own way!

 It's amazing and rewarding to keep tweaking and exploring your island. This might not be what people think of when they think "video game" it might qualify as something else? Consider this a warning or endorsement, but give it a try and you'll get hooked... like all the fish you're about to catch.