Animal Crossing New Horizons — Two Months In

Animal Crossing: New Horizons debuted on the Nintendo Switch back in March to universal praise. Two months later, some have made the decision to leave behind their treasured islands.

The Animal Crossing series has, for a long time, been synonymous with a feeling of safety. As so many before me have pointed out, it offers a mirrored version of our world where the worst thing that can happen is your friend moving away. This is still a sad occurrence, but when compared with real life’s hardships it hardly stacks up.

When you boot up Animal Crossing, you move into a world where your mortgage payment is optional with no consequences for never paying. Your house is safe from being foreclosed. You can even decorate it with televisions, computers and other decor that can fall from trees or come as gifts from your animal neighbors.

Like our world, Animal Crossing has currency but, unlike ours, it is in no way tied to a job. You earn money to pay off your houses loan or buy new furniture from picking up and selling shells, fruit, catching fish and bugs and, if you’re feeling risky, playing the stalk market — a series staple wherein you purchase turnips to sell back later at a higher price. Animal Crossing offers a joyous escape from our world with none of the hardships of life and all of the beautiful parts.

For many, this sense of security is something few other games can offer. Often, other games that can offer a similar feeling only span a couple of hours, contrasted against Animal Crossing’s expected play time of months or even years. You are meant to watch, and help, your town grow and thrive. In New Horizons you start with a deserted island and shape it into your tropical, or otherwise, paradise.

Now that the game has been out a few months and the honeymoon period has faded, some have taken issue with some of the design choices of the game. From the inability to craft more than one item at a time to the games lack of save backups that has led to countless players losing their islands with hundreds of hours of playtime.

These are enough for some to write off the game. I can especially empathize with those who work tirelessly on their islands for days on end only to have your data become corrupted. I am at the 200 hour mark and if my file corrupted I would likely write it off as well. But some who are leaving the game behind have different motives entirely.

Animal Crossing has been dubbed a cultural moment. At times, that title feels like an understatement. New Horizons has become the de facto method of experiencing a social life now that we are all stuck inside. It has become host to birthday parties, graduations, even funerals. There is even a talk show hosted in game named ‘Animal Talking’ which you should absolutely watch. So far Elijah Wood, Danny Trejo and other big name celebrities have joined the show.

Sadly, New Horizons’ big moment is having some adverse effects on players.

Imagine this: you just got Animal Crossing: New Horizons. You boot it up, listen to the fun catchy title music, then start your island. The first day is fun. So much fun, in fact, that you can see where all the hype came from. You want to visit your friends but realize you can’t until a real world day has passed so you finish up what your doing and wait till tomorrow.

The next day you log on, excitedly texting your friends that you want to visit, they walk you through the process and you visit their island. At first, you’re awestruck. The island is beautiful, it’s so well decorated, it’s even five stars they tell you. You compliment it and aspire to build yours as great as theirs. But, when you return to your island, and begin laying the foundation you realize just how far behind you are.

The game may have only come out two months ago, but because of COVID-19, so many people dedicated upwards of one hundred hours to the game upon its release leading to many filling out their museums with all the seasonal bugs and fish in rotation, getting every type of fruit and learning the secrets of crossbreeding flowers. These are activities meant to last months, but they were completed the first week of release.

New players feel like they are impossibly behind, and old players feel they have done everything already. These two groups of people are at completely different ends of the spectrum, but are equally tired of the game. Animal Crossing: New Horizons may have came out at the perfect time to increase its sales numbers and popularity, but it came out at the wrong time to foster the type of game play it is designed to accommodate.

The “right” way to play is a subject of great contention in Animal Crossing circles. Some players exploit the Switch’s internal clock to time travel in game leading to these players completing tasks, filling out their museum, and finishing their island much more quickly than players who play the normal way of in game time aligning to real time. This has led to a split in the fandom of some who think time traveling is an acceptable way to play and others who feel it is cheating and ruining the experience.

Time traveling has existed in the Animal Crossing series since the first game, and has been equally scrutinized throughout its lifetime. There is, however, a new addition to the debate of ways to play that arrived along with the newest title. Before COVID-19, most people did not have close to the hundreds of hours of time that people poured into the game at launch, but now, with the world on its head, many people do.

Animal Crossing has always been a game you make time for each day. You set aside 30 minutes to water your flowers, check on your friendly neighbors, see if you have any visitors and peek in the shop. While you can spend long amounts of time in game, it is time the developers didn’t plan for with the same attention as if you were playing only an hour a day. The longer you play, the more the central gameplay loop loses some of its charm.

I still greatly enjoy the game and play it every day. It is my escape. It’s even on in the background as I write this. But lately, I have dedicated less and less time to my town. I log on each day to pull my weeds, water one or two areas of flowers, check the shop and log off. Some days I do more, but most days I follow a new, less interesting gameplay loop of walking through my town, feeling overwhelmed, and logging off.

So, has Animal Crossing lost its charm? Have people begun to desert it for good reasons? I would say yes and no. Undoubtedly the status New Horizons has received as the worlds pick for game of the year is largely due to the current state of the world. Still, New Horizons offers so much to do, so many ways to lose yourself from the stresses of the outside world, and so many ways to play.

Has it become less interesting as less and less of the game has become fresh and new? Undoubtedly. Still, over time, I believe people will return to Animal Crossing: New Horizons with the knowledge it doesn’t require hundreds of hours to enjoy and feel accomplished, only a few minutes each day.