Game of the Month: Animal Crossing: New Horizon
This month’s game is Animal Crossing: New Horizon
Finally, Animal Crossing has come to Nintendo Switch. The popular life simulation game has captivated legions of players around the world, both children and adults, with its cute characters and sandbox gameplay.
Take control of your character and create your own paradise on a small island – either by yourself or together with your friends.
Animal Crossing is a life simulation video game series from Nintendo that is suitable for children. The game series is available on a range of different consoles from the Japanese gaming giant.
With its sandbox gameplay, Nintendo gives you free rein to move around the small island. Talk to other inhabitants on the island, decorate your abode and collect different types of materials to create your own items. You get to choose how to proceed.
Animal Crossing was launched in Japan in 2001 under the name Animal Forest. Subsequently, the game has achieved great success with several versions for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, among others.
Three major new features in Animal Crossing: New Horizon
The Animal Crossing series has developed over the years and New Horizon offers a number of exciting new features. We will go through some of them here.
The first distinctive feature is that your character in New Horizon starts completely empty-handed. In the previous games, players started in an existing village on the island. The change comes from Nintendo wanting to give players a greater opportunity to choose where they want to settle and build their abode.
The idea is that you should feel that you are creating your own experience from the start without the game exerting unnecessary control.
Creating new things in the game and autosave
The next big feature in New Horizon is how you create things in the game, so-called crafting.
New Horizon has borrowed functionality from previously released versions of Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, for crafting. Among other things, you now have more opportunities to collect materials such as clay, stone and wood that can be used to create signs, benches and tables.
Previously, you needed to talk to the character Resetti to save your progress in Animal Crossing. With New Horizon, Nintendo has finally introduced an autosave feature. Just remember that you cannot back up your saved files, so if something happens to your Switch console, all your progress could be lost.
Where can I play Animal Crossing today?
Animal Crossing is available on many of Nintendo's game consoles, from Nintendo 64 to Nintendo Switch. There are currently five main games and three side games in the series.
Main games
- Animal Crossing (2001) – Nintendo 64, GameCube
- Animal Crossing: Wild World (2005) – Nintendo DS, Wii U Virtual Console
- Animal Crossing: City Folk (2008) – Nintendo Wii
- Animal Crossing: New Leaf (2012) – Nintendo 3DS
- Animal Crossing: New Horizons (2020) – Nintendo Switch
Side games
- Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer (2015) – Nintendo 3DS
- Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival (2015) – Nintendo Wii U
- Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp (2017) – Android och iOS
How many people can play Animal Crossing: New Horizon at the same time?
Up to four players simultaneously on the same Switch console or eight players online. So, in total, eight players per island is possible. When you play locally with other players, the camera follows the leading character. If another player character strays too far from the camera's field of view, it will be teleported back within the field of view after a short period of time.
Will Animal Crossing: New Horizon support Amiibo?
Yes, there will be support for Amiibo. The Animal Crossing series already provides support for Amiibo and there are a number of characters that you can purchase in store today.
How does the day and night cycle and the seasons work in Animal Crossing: New Horizon?
New Horizon follows the clock in your Nintendo Switch. This means that during the day there is daylight in the game and as the evening approaches, the sun sets in New Horizon as well. New Horizon also has a new hemisphere setting enabling players to choose between the southern or northern hemisphere and shows the climate where the players are located.
One reason why Nintendo does not use cloud storage with New Horizon is because of the way time is handled in the game. Nintendo does not want players to utilize time-specific features of the game to access special items and rewards by time cheating.
Notable launches in March
Ori and the Will of the Wisps
Ori and the Will of the Wisps is an adventure game where the player controls a guardian spirit, Ori, as they make their way through a beautiful landscape with many challenging puzzles in a platform format. The game is a sequel to the acclaimed and extremely popular game Ori and the Blind Forest with the same layout, but with a new story, refined graphics and better game mechanics.
NiOh 2
NiOh 2 is an action role-playing game with a story that is as brutal as the gameplay. Fight your way through feudal Japan in this super-tough game that does not leave much room for error. NiOh 2 succeeds NiOh from 2017 with a number of improvements in terms of graphics, combat system and story. If you are looking for an action-packed challenge, then NiOh 2 is the game for you.
NiOh 2 will be released on Playstation 4 in both a standard and a specialvariant.
Half-Life: Alyx
Are you waiting for Half-Life 3 to be presented? Unfortunately, we have nothing to report on that front, however we can tell you about a completely new Half-Life game for VR called Half-Life: Alyx. A game that takes place before the events of Half-Life 2 and is said to be the largest game ever by Valve. Half-Life: Alyx has about 20 hours of gameplay and you will need to have a compatible VR headset for PC.
You can buy Half-Life: Alyx via Steam for PC.