It’s no secret Animal Crossing: New Horizons has been moving units like Tom Nook moves your hard-earned Bells to his personal account! Within just ten days of its launch, it became the seventh best-selling Switch title and sales don’t seem to be diminishing, even now. Then again during these crazy times of self-isolation and lockdown, it’s easy to see why. New Horizons’ timely release offers us an escape – and to a tropical deserted island, no less.
Describing the gameplay of Animal Crossing to newcomers has been a notoriously difficult task for fans of the series, and yet it’s shown a tremendous appeal across the board. For one thing, money literally grows on trees. And sometimes from rocks when you hit them with a spade…
The basic premise has you taking on the role of a customisable human character who has taken the exciting opportunity to live on an island where cutesy anthropomorphic animals can move in and waddle around aimlessly. Naturally, being the only human character on the island, it falls on your shoulders (and opposable thumbs) to de-weed the island, meticulously arrange flowers and trees, and eventually build a thriving island civilisation with its own infrastructure. As with other titles in the series, there are no bosses (except maybe Tom Nook), no zombies, secret Umbrella pharmaceutical companies, or demon summoners hellbent on spoiling your flowerbeds.
If you’ve ever played any of the other entries in the Animal Crossing series, you’ll be familiar with the core gameplay mechanics. You’ll spend a good amount of time planting trees to grow and sell fruit, catch bugs and fish to add to Blathers’ Museum, and sell items to make Bells, which can be used to pay off Tom Nook’s rather hefty loans! Upon the completion of each instalment, you’ll have the opportunity to upgrade your home with extra rooms, so don’t worry, you won’t have to put up with the small confines of your tent for your entire island stay! Although Tom Nook may appear to be the dominant head of your tranquil island life, he does seem to rely rather heavily on you to tidy the island and lay out the town. While these features are recognised as series mainstays, Animal Crossing: New Horizons has a few new mechanics that make it stand out, namely exploring the island with the pole-vault and ladder and the new crafting mechanic. This adds a huge amount of depth to the island, particularly in the beginning.
When you arrive on your new island home, there are no buildings, paths, or any traces of the usual signs of civilised Animal Crossing town life we’ve come to expect from the series. Instead, you’re greeted with tents, empty spaces, uncrossable rivers, and weeds. Lots and lots of weeds. And yet this perfectly establishes the groundwork for the new gameplay mechanics of New Horizons; during this early stage, you’ll be tasked with scavenging supplies to begin crafting the necessary tools you’ll need to survive the treacherous island and its dangerously adorable inhabitants. The game’s new DIY system allows players to use materials – from wood chopped from trees, to shells, and yes, those pesky weeds that ruin the aesthetics of your lovely island – to craft tools. Axes, spades, slingshots, and watering cans will need to be crafted with the right materials and stored in your infamously limited inventory – though thankfully this can be upgraded at a later point. And thank Nook, too, because you’ll eventually find there’s no such thing as enough inventory space! As vital as these tools are, however, they are prone to breaking at just the wrong time, requiring you to once again gather the right materials, run back to the crafting bench, find out that you’re one piece of wood short, find a tree, gather some wood, then start the crafting process and continue exploring the island until your tools break again. Such is island life.
Another new feature you’ll have to make the most of is the new Nook Miles reward system. As you complete tasks you’ll earn Nook Miles which can be redeemed for any number of prizes, from shirts and bandanas, to furniture and that oh-so-precious inventory space. While earning stamps and prizes is rewarding enough as it is, the Nook Miles system cleverly provides a list of tasks – small and large – to accomplish, which is especially useful during the earlier segments of the game: if in doubt, check the Nook Miles app for something to do. They can be anything from planting new fruit trees, catching a certain number of bugs or fish, or even selling items for Bells. The promise of unlocking new hairstyles and clothing is certainly incentive enough to keep checking up on your Miles.
New Horizons is perfectly relaxing and gives players the freedom to do as much or as little as they want, whenever they want. In addition, there is no story – rather you make it up through your own experience in the game – and there is no grand goal, besides that which you set yourself. Building and designing the island is the ultimate goal, but realistically the endgame is when you feel you’ve had enough of Rocket the ape or Eloise the obnoxious elephant. As gorgeous as the island itself is, Animal Crossing is nothing without its charming villagers! In the world of New Horizons, these anthropomorphic animal buddies have never felt more alive. As you run across your island to terraform a mountain here or carve out a river there, you’ll find your neighbours constantly doing something – watering flowers, reading books, singing, crafting at DIY benches, or chasing you down halfway across town to give you a present. Admittedly a little alarming when it’s one of the bear villagers, however. Simply seeing them keeping busy adds an enormous feeling of liveliness to the cast.
If you ever find yourself a little bored of your island, the Dodo airport gives you the opportunity to scout randomly generated islands where you can find new fruits to bring back and plant, as well as flowers, bugs and insects. Occasionally, you’ll also find new villagers to recruit, so long as you have space for them to move in! If you don’t want to put up with Cranky’s mood and you just found Audie the wolf, you can… force Cranky to leave and replace him with Audie: another layer of customisation to make your tropical island get away that much closer to paradise. In addition to random islands, online functionality allows players to visit each other’s islands, as well as an option to offer a Joy-Con to another player. Though limitations here mean that if you aren’t the “leader” you can’t pick up items.
Speaking of progress, while Animal Crossing: New Horizons doesn’t have a core story mode or missions and quests to complete, eventually classic characters and shops will take residence on your island, including Nook’s Cranny, the Able Sisters’ shop, and of course Blathers’ Museum. However, rather than simply “appear” in a predetermined location, you get to decide where they “set up shop” so they don’t ruin your artistic world vision. If you do eventually decide the Museum doesn’t look grand enough in the bottom right hand corner of the island, however, you will eventually be able to relocate it, at a price: as if Tom Nook hasn’t earned enough Bells from you already. The same goes for your own home and those of other villagers as well, whether they like it or not. This opens up New Horizons‘ already flexible customisation and creative options to a vastly broader scope, if the crafting mechanic wasn’t enough.
In addition to crafting, you’ll unlock terraforming abilities! A whole new concept to the Animal Crossing series we never knew we wanted! This literally transforms the island itself into a blank canvas, upon which you can flex your godlike powers and create rivers and mountains – so long as they’re within the limitations afforded to you. The freedom to customise the island, as well as the layout of buildings and landmarks, allows an enormous sense of creative freedom, though there are some minor aesthetic irritations that I feel should be ironed out. When creating waterfalls from ledges, for instance, you can’t remove corners from land masses, and when laying paths some edges can’t be smoothed from under certain buildings.
If there are any more gripes with Animal Crossing: New Horizons’design, it’s the UI. At times it feels like there could have been a more user-friendly way to speed up the need of having to sift through so many menus – especially when customising and crafting. In addition, while the camera retains the stylistic Animal Crossing perspective, it also feels like a hinderance at times, particularly when making use of the terraforming ability. Hiding behind buildings and trees can make it unnecessarily difficult to determine where you’re digging, which could be fixed by adding some more camera freedom. Similarly, you’ll find digging and laying paths to be a little cumbersome as it can be slightly tricky to determine where you’re aiming. As annoying as they may be, however, they do not damage the overall charm of the game.
Be prepared to pour hours, days, and weeks of your life into this game. We do have the time on our hands, after all. Thankfully, this is relatively an easy task, given how gorgeous the game looks! At a technical level, it makes use of a 1080p resolution running at 30fps in docked mode, with beautiful use of colours, atmospheric lighting, and a relaxing soundtrack to keep you company as you play god all over the island. To say nothing of the art style and overall design of characters, environments, and buildings; while true to the Animal Crossing aesthetic, they have never looked better. It’s worth noting that, sure docked mode will naturally make the game shine the most, but even in handheld the visuals hold up extremely well. That and the fact that gameplay itself transitions perfectly to the handheld style thanks to its easy pick and up go nature. If you want to see New Horizons design at its finest, however, a wander through the museum is more than enough to show-off the work that has gone into this game. From a technical standpoint, the museum alone is mesmerising in its intricate detail, yet stylistically as charming and relaxing as the rest of the game. It’s no stretch to say this is one of the best-looking games on Switch!
