Animal crossing: New Horizons Beginner’s Guide

Published in 2020, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a life simulation game developed by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch. There have been four installments in the Animal Crossing series, New Horizons is the fifth one.

Due to its release amidst the global pandemic, New Horizons was a great commercial success, and received a wide acclamation as being the best-selling Nintendo Switch exclusive title, including on Gamecamp. It also broke the record for most digital copies sold on a console in a month.

The gameplay is quite simple and straight forward. You control a customizable character who moves to a deserted island after purchasing a package from a tanuki character, Tom Nook, who has been in every game in Animal Crossing series. New horizons is a real life simulation, taking place in real time. Because of that the player can explore the island in a nonlinear manner. The player can gather and crafts and even buy AC items, catches insects and fish, and build up the island into a community of anthropomorphic animals.

Is Animal Crossing: New Horizons worth playing in 2021?

If you’ve ever come across anything related to Animal Crossing: New Horizons in these past few months, you might have heard people call it a remedy for the ongoing crisis in the world. It surely almost seems like the launch of Animal Crossing: New Horizons was perfectly timed, it gave people a much-needed escape from the anxiety and tensions of the pandemic life.

In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, you are the master of your will, you get to decide how you pass your days on the island, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t some structure. The game revolves around contracting Tom Nook (A Tanuki character) to upgrade your house or complete island infrastructure projects and then paying him back through no-interest loans. We also have the museum, curated by Blathers (a nice owl), and to build that, players need to donate the bugs, fish, and fossils they find.

For starters, there is no such thing as winning or losing in this game. So, if you are the type of person that likes challenges, then you won’t find this game to be that amusing. Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a real-life simulation game that tries and remove the rough parts about day-to-day living and keeping only the good parts. The Only worst things you’ll encounter is a sting from wasps or a bite from a spider. Even the crippling debt is more like a “it’ll sort itself out eventually” kind of problem.

Our Verdict

Aside from some minor issues that we’ve encountered, like tools durability and local multiplayer, we are happy to confirm that the global reports are actually true: Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the perfect game for such stressful times.

This game may not be for everyone, but those people, who enjoy games like this will find loads to love. Even if you aren’t actually into life simulators, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is worth a try, because it certainly has a distinctive style that’s very hard to find in any other game.