New Horizons review – your new island paradise

Animal Crossing: New Horizons came during a pivotal moment in our world history. As the lockdown protocols were implemented to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, many were drawn to the digital island as both escapism from the horrors of the outside world and a substitute venue for parties, gatherings, and celebrating major life events when it was otherwise impossible. There’s no doubt that New Horizons has done a lot of social good and even as the world opened up and life transformed into a new normal, this charming paradise still has plenty to offer new and former residents alike.

It’s unclear why Tom Nook ultimately decided to team up with Dodo Airlines in order to establish a new island-based colony. However, as one of its first debt-riddled residents, you’re tasked with building up a brand new community from scratch. This involves gathering Bells to afford planning applications for facilities such as Nook’s Cranny and the Museum, or completing fundraising projects to terraform natural ramps to otherwise out-of-reach places.

This endeavor takes months, if not years, to complete, with day-to-day tasks aimed to last a few minutes at a time. You’ll soon transform the island from a colorful yet isolated playground into a luxurious community filled with homes and amenities to enrich your town into a must-visit destination. It’s up to you how long you continue playing every day, but those first few moments each day tend to involve the bulk of your chores to earn Bells, the main currency of all Animal Crossing games, and the new Nook Miles for doing more menial tasks.

As more residents settle into the island colony, you’ll find more stuff to do on any given day. Most of the inhabitants will be the handful of potential villagers who can live in your town at any point, and each has a different personality. Despite appearances, all of them have value. Some may be sweet and inviting from the get-go, while others are more aloof at first, but still decent folk. They also have a unique catchphrase, along with a combination of species, design, and hobbies, meaning that no villager is the same. As such, everyone has their favorite bunch of misfits they want living on their island, and with over 400 potential neighbors that can move in, that’s a lot of birthdays to remember.

Fundamentally, the biggest change in Animal Crossing: New Horizons is that the core gameplay now revolves around crafting items. This means that nets, spades, and fishing rods now break after a few uses. Degradation as a feature is divisive among gamers, especially when previous games in the series had unlimited uses of each tool. However, the item requirements to craft a replacement for a broken tool are never all that harsh, and New Horizons has plenty of options to allow you to store spares just in case.

With the focus on crafting, there are plenty of recipes out there that allow you to make just about anything. These are given to you by greeting your villager friends, found inside bottles that wash up on the island’s beach, or as rewards for doing favors. You can exchange these recipes with other players if you want a certain decoration on your island or inside your house, but it might take a while since there are nearly 1,000 of them available.

While remembering which chores or tasks you need to do might be stressful, at least the laid-back world of Animal Crossing: New Horizons is thoroughly inviting. You can spend hours tending to a garden, all while the gentle music breezes by, changing every hour of the day. While departing for other islands does add variety, the main showpiece is whenever you’re hanging out with your animal friends in the halls of the TARDIS-like museum. It’s significantly bigger on the inside, filled with an insectarium and aquarium you fill with captured critters, as well as an exhibit showing the evolution of all living things, thanks to your fossil donations.

Of course, Animal Crossing New Horizons is not just a game about making things, as it caters to multiple different types of gamers. Many who have stuck with the series since the GameCube will likely want to show off everything they’ve made or collected along the way. This can come in the form of decorating their home and island to delight the judges, but it can also manifest rarer plants by arranging flowers in specific combinations. Those looking for inspiration can also fly to other people’s islands via Dodo Airlines and hang out with them, snagging fruit-based souvenirs along the way.

Then there are the collectors, who spend a lot of time capturing bugs, snagging fish, and digging up fossils for the museum, all of which are displayed for everyone to see and are under the constant care of the sleepy owl Blathers. Your collection will likely take almost a full calendar year to finish since some critters are exclusively available during a few short weeks, and even then finding the most elusive creatures on your island will be tricky. However, there’s no better thrill than nabbing the Giraffe Stag you successfully snuck up on or trapping a tarantula chasing you.

Certain days of the week offer new opportunities with the various island visitors. These include Saharah, a camel who sells rugs, and the musical K.K. Slider putting on a show in the town square, giving you a reason to return daily. The precise timings of these events can be hard to keep track of, especially when it comes to working out when to sell Turnips if you’re playing the “Stalk Market” minigame, but keeping a separate diary can help with this.

While Animal Crossing: New Horizons offered plenty on release, it also received plenty of support over the first couple of years, adding new features along the way. One of the most helpful returning features is the ability to set ordinances allowing you to change your village’s behavior. Those too busy to play during daylight hours can activate the Night Owl ordinance to encourage their town to become more nocturnal, while the Bell Boom ordinance makes everything more expensive to buy and sell.

You can also visit random player islands via Luna’s Dream bed, have a coffee with Brewster, cook for your friends, participate in group stretching sessions at the town square, and experience seasonal events during each calendar year. There’s a lot to look forward to as the days and months roll on, and if you can gather a bunch of people to celebrate the occasion digitally, all the better.

It’s not just the range of new features that make island living more convenient that is appealing, as there’s plenty of new stuff available for collector-type players as well. Alongside the many deep sea creatures you can snag while wearing a wetsuit, you’ll also need to decipher which works of art are real among a sea of fakes sold by the tricksy Redd. Later updates also add Gyroids you can dig up while exploring the potential treasures you can find on smaller islands during Kapp’n’s boat tours.

Perhaps the most useful of all the expansion updates is the changes to Harv’s Island, which used to include only an area to take photos of you and various villagers or special characters. However, with enough donations to each of the gyroids around the cooperative, you can attract traveling vendors such as the aforementioned Saharah or Redd to appear daily rather than wait at least a week. This can be especially helpful for getting otherwise rare items to show off to your friends or completing that art collection at the museum.

There’s also one bit of DLC, namely the Happy Home Paradise. If you’re a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack member, you’ll get this DLC for free, but it’s otherwise available as a standalone paid-for experience. Here, players can design houses and gardens for a range of different villagers and other NPCs, while meeting their client’s expectations. Doing so will also unlock the ability to construct up to five facilities, each with bonus items you can get that even include random recipes or other rare trinkets. It’s not essential to get the most out of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, as there’s plenty to do in the base game alone thanks to all the free updates, but if you really like the home design element, this is a decent offering.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons marks the pinnacle of a wholesome series that fans and newcomers alike will thoroughly enjoy for years to come. It combines almost everything you could want from these laid-back games, though it did take a fair time to become feature-complete, and even then it can still feel somewhat restrictive at times. If you can organize yourself around these restrictions, then there’s a lot of joy to be had with New Horizons, no matter if you decide to play it purely to collect things or if you use it to express yourself and invite others to join in.