A look into the Animal Crossing New Horizons update

Jodie Newling

I said I would follow up my review yesterday with a look into the new update and here I am making good on my word. I want to preface this post by pointing out two things; number one, this article will focus on the beginning of the Nature Day event and the addition of the Art Gallery and, number two, I time travelled to take a look at these new features.

So beginning with a look into Nature Day. The Nature Day event is Animal Crossing’s version of Earth Day, which was yesterday (22nd April). In game this event takes place from the 23rd April to 4th May. Now as I said, I only looked into the beginning of the event, there could well be more as the days go on and more in game rewards. The event begins with Isabelle letting you know that Nature Day is upon us in her daily announcement. Upon heading to Tom Nook, you’ll find he is hoping your island will take the time to be extra eco-friendly in the week come, with a note, that he hopes the island stays that way when the event is over. You’ll learn you get bonus NookMiles with NookMiles+ for completing nature themed tasks; including planting shrubs, trees and more.

This new update see the return of Lief the sloth. Lief will appear in your plaza, having set up his garden stall. He’ll sell you shrubs and flower seeds that the Nooklings don’t typically stock on your island (roses and cosmos for me). I’m not sure yet how often he visits, but I expect it’s once a week just like Kicks and Label. He’ll also buy weeds from you for 20 bells per clump rather than 10 in the Nook shop. Unsurprisingly, the UI is the same as the other merchants. Some new in game achievement stamps are now obtainable with the new features, as shown in my screenshots. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more that I haven’t unlocked yet either. Finally, on the Nature Day event, if you speak to Tom Nook having completed one of the special NookMiles+ tasks, he will give the DIY recipe for ‘bushes’ which is a fence DIY that looks like a hedgerow. Not sure if there’s more rewards, I wanted to leave some bits and pieces for myself to discover as I played normally. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out if you do the task everyday that there’s another reward in store for you.

Onto the museum and the return of Redd the fox. The following day (24th April), if you go ahead and speak to Blathers he’ll mention he intends to upgrade the museum. Now I will admit, I’m not sure if this is automatically available will the update or you must have donated a certain number of items. I’ve already finished my fossil section and donated quite a lot of bugs and fish so if there was a donation requirement then I probably surpassed it. Back to Blathers though, he tells you to bring him any art you find so he can open a gallery. You might have already seen Redd’s ship at your smaller beach and Isabelle should have mentioned a ‘suspicious art dealer’ in her daily announcement. Redd will be wandering around your island, introduce yourself and you can purchase a piece of art, again I’m not sure if this is automatically a real art piece or if you can buy a fake one at this stage, the one he gave me was real. Take that back to Blathers and he’ll let you know he’s going to go ahead and open a gallery in the museum.

The following day Isabelle’s announcement will inform you the museum is closed for renovations, as the art gallery is being added. This is a normal day from what I can tell other than the museum being closed. With that, the next day will bring the opening of the art gallery, you can hold another ceremony with your islanders at the museum. I took a little look around the gallery itself, it’s one quite large room which is pretty nicely decorated. The same grand feeling as the entranceway I think, you can see some screenshots below. Redd will be back today too, he was in the plaza for me, I didn’t see him moving around so I think he might be fixed there this time but I’m not 100% about that. You can talk to him to get him to open up shop at which point he’ll start visiting your island to sell you art and furniture. Just like with Lief, I’m not sure how often he visits since I didn’t want to time travel any further to check but again it’s likely to be once a week as with the other visiting characters.

We’ll just take a quick look at his shop. So you can board his boat from the smaller or ‘private’ beach. Every time he visits he’ll have two furniture items for sale and four art pieces. You can only buy one piece of art which Redd will post to you the following day but you can buy both furniture pieces. Again, I can’t be certain without more information so keep an eye out for more people talking about it. But I suspect, the four art pieces will work in the same way they did in New Leaf. Which if you’re unfamiliar or simply don’t remember, had four art pieces in Redd’s tent. You were allowed to purchase one piece and with that, only one of the four items available was a real art piece. The other three were forgeries.

Now, New Horizons has made inspecting the art to check if it’s real easier with it’s improvements to camera control. When you interact with one of the art piece you can tell Redd you want to take a closer look which will put your camera into the photo mode so you can look at the art more closely. As with the previous games, these art pieces are real famous art pieces, so if you’re already familiar with their real world counterparts you might be able to tell which is real straight away. Otherwise, you’ll need to look up the real art piece to compare it to what you’re seeing on screen. I imagine it won’t take long for the community to build a guide which lets you check pretty much instantly which piece is worth your money but for now, you’ll have to do a little research. Which by the way is something I failed to do, I bought a fake piece on my first visit. Although, for the purpose of writing this post, that’s not such a bad thing because it means I can show you what happens if you buy a fake piece. First of all, Blathers will reveal to you that it’s a forgery when you try to donate it and return it to you since he can no longer accept it. Second, you cannot sell forgeries to Timmy and Tommy, which leaves you with just two options; bin it to delete it from your game or use it as a decoration. In hindsight, I should have checked if you can gift it to a resident but I’m only just thinking of that now.

So that about sums up my look into the new update. Now there’s more to uncover but I honestly, didn’t want to spoil the whole experience for myself. As revealed in the trailer, a May Day event follows the Nature Day event, which lets you go on a special island tour and keen-eyed fans have spotted Rover in the background on that mystery island, which is a nice treat for longtime fans of the series. After that we’ve got International Museum Day to look forward to, which looks like it nets you in-game rewards and Wedding Season where you’ll help the cute alpaca couple returning from New Leaf take Anniversary photos to earn even more in-game rewards, apparently in the form of Wedding themed decorations.

I might do a follow up, taking a look into more of the update once I’ve had to experience a bit more of it. But that’s not a guarantee as tomorrow I’m expecting my copy of the Final Fanatasy VII Remake, which I need to play… and review, but mostly play. I cannot express to you my love for Tifa and Aerith and I really need to see more of them.

Anyway, thank you kindly for reading. Hope you’ll stick around for more content. Have fun with the new update!

Animal Crossing New Horizons Review

Jodie NewlingLeave a comment

I realise that it’s a little late to be posting this, given the fact the game released a month ago now and there’s a free update coming in just a day. However, I have been obsessed with this game since it launched, in fact I have barely played anything else. As everyone who knows what video games are is already fully aware, Animal Crossing New Horizons released on the 20th March 2020.

I have been a fan of the Animal Crossing series since I was gifted a copy of Animal Crossing Wild World for my Nintendo DS Lite by my dad in 2007. At age 9, I was immediately captivated with the series. I loved everything about that game, today as an adult I’m fully aware it was far from a perfect game but it was a very special to me. My closest friend (still to this day) had the game too and we had a great time playing together which only continued when we both got copies of Animal Crossing: Let’s Go To The City (or City Folk if you’re in the US).

I thoroughly enjoyed New Leaf for the 3DS as well although I wasn’t so captivated by this addition to the series. An issue which I wouldn’t even put down to the game, I simply wasn’t so charmed by this latest instalment. Although, I’ll admit the Amiibo update did bring me back to the game after a long – long – hiatus. Whilst it’s certainly not everyone’s cup of tea, I found collecting the Amiibo cards fun. Actually, I have a reasonable collection since they were released in the UK, I’m glad they have a use again in this new game. With that, it is finally time to talk about New Horizons.

New Horizons peaked my interest, like many long time Nintendo fans, from it’s initial announcement in a Nintendo Direct uploaded in September 2018, even though we knew nothing about this game except, the obvious, that it was an Animal Crossing game coming to Switch. When the game finally arrived March 20th, I was so ready to play Animal Crossing again. I had followed any and all news leading up to the games release from the Nintendo Direct the month before to the trailers less than two minutes long just to see this beautiful game one more time. In fact, I expect my family was suitably fed up with me since for the entirety of March I just wanted it to be release day so I could finally play this game.

And I mean it when I say, I don’t think I could have been happier with the game I bought. New Horizons is a phenomenal addition to the Animal Crossing series. If you’re not a fan of the series or just don’t own the game yet, then you’re probably getting tired of hearing about it. But I firmly believe, this entry into the series is one of the best Switch games on the market and one of the best Nintendo games I have ever had the joy of playing.

Now, I never played the original Animal Crossing because I didn’t own a Game Cube so I give that game it’s due credit for starting the series. However, New Horizons is the best game in the series by far. It’s adorable, it’s charming and it’s blissfully serene. I’ve seen articles and YouTube videos alike covering why this is the perfect game to be released when the vast majority of the world is in lock down and it’s true. From the music to the villagers, the game is a delight to play.

I accept it is simply not to everyone’s liking, with a real time clock, the pacing is incredibly slow although that is part of the charm of Animal Crossing. We spend so much of our lives trying to be as practical and efficient as possible and it’s easy to forget to slow down and appreciate the here and now. Even when the here and now is a terrifying global pandemic, okay, that is hard to appreciate, to that end I hope everyone is doing as well as can be in this difficult time. Nevertheless, New Horizons encourages you to take time, even just 30 minutes out of your hectic daily life to take a moment and breathe. I personally rely video games as a means of escaping from the daily stresses and this entry into the Animal Crossing series could not be better suited to this role. I mean, you’re an individual living on a idyllic island paradise which you have to power to shape as you see fit. You want to turn the island into a bustling town and meet all kinds of quirky characters, go ahead. Just want to camp out under the stars with a few friends, that’s fine too. The game has a story, technically, but you could spend time in this game quite happily barely going through any of it. The game’s narrative nudges you in the right direction occasionally but there’s no need to rush anything.

Having said all that, I am personally one of those people intent on making their island into an actual civilisation and given I’ve spent about 170 hours, as I’m writing this, I have completed the narrative of the game, got a 5 star rating and now, I am focused on decorating my perfect island with all kinds of trees and flowers along the pathways I constructed. As well as some other little decorative features, my personal favourites right now are my bamboo garden and park, which you can see below.

There’s plenty of content in this title too, which more to come as Nintendo have confirmed there will be regular free updates, one of which is coming this week, on the 23rd April 2020. I’m not going to go into any details about the free update right now since I plan to write a follow up post once I’ve experienced it. But know, it does features plenty of new content with room for more. I for one, really hope Brewster’s cafe turns up soon.

I can’t say I really have any complaints about the game. There’s a few characters, like Brewster, who I miss, being a longtime fan. But, there’s nothing to say they won’t show up later in the game’s lifespan. And even if they don’t make it into the game, I wouldn’t say is exactly lacking in content. Admittedly it is repetitive, but that is part of the series’ formula which does work for it, Animal Crossing’s natural charm counters the seemingly mundane activities available to you. I don’t typically like fishing in video games – it might be one of the only things I dislike about Red Dead Redemption 2 – but in the world of Animal Crossing, it’s one of my favourite things to do.

Every feature returning from the old games has been upgraded, still maintaining that classic Animal Crossing charm that long time fans fell in love with whilst still having been modernised to keep up with newer titles. The museum is better than ever, it looks incredible, long gone are the days with just a few basic tanks in the aquarium section and it only stands to get better with future updates. The Nooklings’ store and the Able Sisters shop have been revamped and now feature some much need UI updates, making shopping much easier. My only minor complaint would be that the UI doesn’t contain a multi-select feature to speed up in-game transactions but it’s a small issue that I can easily overlook. The animal villagers that live with you on your island feel more alive than ever, previous games have given them additional things to do whilst them roam around town, but the simple additions this game features just amount to so much more. You wouldn’t imagine something as trivial and minute giving a villager a book to hold as they enjoy a pleasant spring afternoon would make a very big difference but it absolutely does. Plus, they’ll sing along to music you leave playing which is quite frankly just adorable.

This game fixes every little problem fans have had with the series for so long. You can fully customise your island with the games’ landscaping tools and the ability to move buildings. The inventory has been expanded. Your flowers don’t immediately wilt if you forget to water them or completely disappear if you run over them. Plus improvements to multiplayer, it is an absolute godsend to be able to control which visitors to my island can use the shovel or axe (to many players’ dismay, including my own, some people took delight in ruining other people’s towns in earlier games without this ability to restrict strangers from using these tools). I expect these issues might appear trivial if you’ve never experienced any of the earlier games, but I cannot stress how much nicer playing this game is as someone who has particular ideas about how they want the island to look. You could place paths in earlier games, using custom patterns, but it was tedious and if you missed just one spot you’d probably end up with a villager moving in on top of your flower garden. Yeah… I don’t think I’ll ever be playing New Leaf again…or any of the other games either for that matter.

For anyone wondering if they should buy the game, for themselves or a loved one. I’d wholeheartedly recommend this one, to anyone really. In fact I encouraged a friend of mine to buy it a couple weeks ago, and now he’s playing everyday with me and without me because he genuinely cannot get enough. This game is perfect for everyone, whether you just want something you can pick up and play every once in a while or you want to escape into a new world, Animal Crossing New Horizons is definitely for you.

Thank you kindly for reading this rather self-indulgent review of Animal Crossing New Horizons. This is going up much later than I would have liked since I’ve been too busy playing the game to write about it. But there’s more content to come, including more on Animal Crossing. I’m hoping to post twice a week, maybe three times if I can. Hope you’ll stick around, thanks again, bye!