Best-selling title Animal Crossing: New Horizons has made its mark as one of the most popular games in Nintendo history – but what’s the point of the open-ended game? From an outside perspective, it can be hard for some to even understand its appeal, which is often jokingly described as a debt simulator or game about manual labor. The gameplay of Animal Crossing never truly ends – players could hypothetically play the game for decades after release and still find their island and villagers continuing to thrive, and many players are currently still playing ACNH over two years after its release.
While there are differences between each title in the series, every Animal Crossing game sees players moving to a new town full of anthropomorphic animals, acquiring a home loan, and helping to build and decorate the town. Animal Crossing: New Horizons has drastically increased user freedom when it comes to running their island, introducing terraforming and allowing players to place items outside. Each game also takes place in real time, with months and seasons passing by in Animal Crossing just as they do in real life and seasonal celebrations being held throughout the year.
It’s true that a good portion of the game involves work: players will need to collect resources and earn money to progress in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Mixed in with that work are the friendships formed on the island and everything that comes along with them – birthday parties, group holiday celebrations, letter writing, and more. These two elements have come together to create a game that’s enraptured millions of players – but what’s the real point of Animal Crossing?
For Some Animal Crossing: New Horizons Players, The Point Is Friendship
The Animal Crossing games have long allowed players to connect with both their real-life friends and anthropomorphic animals. Particularly during the pandemic, human contact was hard to come by – friends had to rely on digital communication for several months. During this time, video call platforms like Zoom became very popular, but some people longed for more interactive activities to do with their friends, and Animal Crossing: New Horizons fit the bill perfectly. All the game’s multiplayer interactions are incredibly wholesome, allowing players to gather on each other’s Animal Crossing island and play games, share their designs, and trade items with each other.
Although ACNH‘s adorable island inhabitants are simply a collection of pixels and programming, their ability to give players laughs, comfort, and a feeling of companionship is very real. After a long day, an adorable animal complimenting a player’s in-game outfit, offering them a gift, or sending them an encouraging letter in the mail can be just what the doctor ordered. These characters are undoubtedly very dear to many Animal Crossing: New Horizons players, with many fans of the series developing their own favorite animals and striving to fill their island with their top-ten villagers.
Expressing Creativity Is The Point For Some Animal Crossing: New Horizons Players
It’s no question that the Animal Crossing: New Horizons creative community is one of the largest in the world of gaming. The thousands of items offered within Animal Crossing coupled with nearly endless customization options and terraforming has given players a huge realm of possibilities when it comes to their island. For many fans, their island is a blank canvas that they can shape into anything they’d like. Some players may use the space given to rotate different themed areas seasonally, such as a pool area in the summertime and a pumpkin patch in the fall. Each year can be seen as a new challenge, trying to expand and improve upon previous seasonal ideas. Others dedicate their time to crafting their island in a certain aesthetic, such as cottage-core or city-core.
Other players enjoy challenging themselves with pop-culture recreations, building everything from historical sites to television sets in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. The creation of in-game tributes to other beloved media helps players to not only add a personal touch to their island, but feel a sense of accomplishment at making a realistic replica of the location. Many players take a great amount of pride into creating the perfect aesthetic for their island, sometimes turning the entire space into a tribute to a single movie, game, television show.
Crafting And Chores Are Addictive For Some Animal Crossing: New Horizons Players
It may sound counterintuitive, but the chore aspect of Animal Crossing is what keeps many players returning to the game. It can become a daily routine, a to-do list that satisfies to urge to be productive yet relaxed at the same time. A large aspect seen in many cozy games is forming task loops, where one chore begets another and forms a fun cycle of serotonin for the player. One of the largest forms of this in the game is the repayment of home loans, where players strive to make enough Bells to pay off their home only to immediately go back into debt for their next expansion. It works on a smaller scale as well, particularly when it comes to gathering crafting materials to create new items.
Some Animal Crossing: New Horizons Players Want To Be The Best
Although there is technically no way to “win” Animal Crossing games, some players are determined to prove it can be beaten. For most, this involves completionism, with parameters like all critters caught, a full museum collection, all recipes cooked and crafted, a fully-expanded home, and so on. Each one of these accomplishments takes a huge amount of effort, and without the use of time-travel would take players at least a year to complete due to the seasonality of the game. The more thorough fans wish to be, the longer the goal will take – some might say a player’s collection isn’t complete until they’ve completed their entire catalog, which contains thousands of items, or collected a portrait from every Animal Crossing villager, of which there are over 400.
The True Point Of Animal Crossing: New Horizons
The true point of Animal Crossing is a bit of a paradox: there is no point laid out by the game itself, and because of that the point becomes whatever the player wants it to be. The difficulty of Animal Crossing: New Horizons is determined by players – technically players never need to progress in the game if they don’t want to, and they game will never penalize them for it. In fact, there are very few things Animal Crossing will ever penalize players for, the worst being the occasional scorpion sting or rotten turnip. Animal Crossing: New Horizons‘ gameplay styles can vary drastically from player to player, which is why the series has become a fan-favorite for so many: It can be the ultimate outlet for creativity, friendship, achieving goals, or anything else players desire it to be.
