On March 20th, 2020, a long-awaited video game, Animal Crossing: New Horizons released to the public. The concept of this and all Animal Crossing games are to keep a simplistic graphical and gameplay style to appeal to newcomers while incorporating old content from previous games for fans of the series. Since the game’s release, it has sold over 30 million units and received tremendous acclaim from critics and fans of the series. I started to play in June 2020 and saw what made the series great. I plan to continue to play this game for years to come. This blog a year-long project I’m undertaking. I’ll be playing the game, exploring and developing my island, and trying to get the five-star rating and discover and complete what I can while observing and trying the many different things to do in this game. This is my Animal Crossing New Horizon Journal.
March 2021
I’ve always been familiar with Animal Crossing, but I haven’t started playing until last summer. I named my island Serenity as corny as it sounds, and I don’t regret choosing it. When I created my island, my goal was to create an escape and distraction if I needed to get away from real life whenever I needed to escape and relax. It turned out that 2020 was a great year to do that with all the turmoil that our society faced that year. Weekly, I play for about 2 – 3 hours cumulatively and so far logged about 130 hours. Committing to the game for almost a year makes it an enjoyable time-waster, so to spend another year with this game, I will be interested to see what New Horizons and the game designers have in store for all of us.
I currently have nine residents on my island. I don’t let most of them leave whenever they think it over. It doesn’t sound kind, but I don’t have the time to get to know new residents. My residents include Hans, Rhonda, Louie, Plucky, Baabara, Spike, Rodeo, Pinky, and Soleil. The residents going around with their daily lives are a nice touch to see that every character will do something different to match their character traits and style. Sometimes, I’ll see a character exercise and do yoga in the town square. Maybe another character will try to catch bugs. Read a book by a small pond or fish at that pond. These are nice touches that keep the game playing and life progressing on your island, even when you aren’t there.
I haven’t built any new houses on my land in the last couple of months and don’t plan to have any more residents until I completed upgrading my home. I have a two-story house that I’m paying off. I’m happy with the layout of my house, which I’m sporting a Super Mario design in my main living room. I created the place to have the standard rooms that someone needs in a house—things like a bathroom, bedroom, living room, and kitchen. I don’t have many items and keep my house empty and straightforward. With Spring around the corner, I am looking to redecorate maybe and refurnish my place.
The collectibles in the game are a nuisance to complete. I haven’t finished any of the insects, fish, or sea creatures available to catch and display in the museum. The only thing I’ve been able to complete is the fossils, which I found easy to do. You can always get four or more fossil dig sites around your island a day, and I took the past year to complete the collection. Fossil digging was my favorite thing to do, as it was an easy way to earn extra bells by having Blather’s examine them and selling them to Nook’s Cranny shop for extra bells. Nook miles achievements are another, but kind of unnecessary way to are nook miles. Completing most of the challenges is another way to earn ways for buying items and possibly selling the miles for more bells.
I’ve unlocked the Island Designer since my last post. It’s an exciting way to say I’m terraforming my island. It’s a neat little way to get more land or water, depending on what you want or need. Build or destroy cliffs to elevate land if you wish to build a steep mountain or a flat island. Also, you can create various paths around the island or replace grass. I didn’t change around my island much, except for land to get to other areas of my island. The paths are what I focused on for the central area of the island. The stone style provided a simple and easy way for myself and others in my town to get around and make the island presentable with walkways around the land. I stuck with the stone pathway. I’m aware of the customizable paths that you can create. I don’t have the time and care right now to make a design. That goes with the clothes and island flag as well. I’ll take any of the default offerings the game offers for now.
Adding infrastructure is one of the more annoying things to do in this game. It took a while to build up enough bells to earn some stairways and a few wooden bridges to get around the island without using a ladder or a vaulting pole. Being able to build one item at a time is time-consuming until you complete another project. I have a few wooden bridges around, but I am currently trying to upgrade to a zen bridge. They are expensive and a nuisance as it seems like I’m the only person on the island with enough money to pay the construction off. Lloyd does collect donations, but the amount donated is so tiny, I lose patience and wind up paying for the rest of the cost. I’m sure if I had more town folk, or even a higher rate, that this project wouldn’t take as long. I’ll have to see as I attempt to improve my island.
I’ve also gone through the painstaking task of going around my island and dug up all of the pansies that overtook my island areas that I couldn’t access for the longest time. But digging the flowers up, According to Isabelle, I might have reduced my island rating. According to Isabelle, my island rating has gone from three to two stars. I’m not mad because this allows me to redevelop with new plants and vegetation. It also might require me to travel out to other islands in the airport and grab other vegetation that I can’t find on my island. My current fruit is peaches. When I first tried the game, I started with oranges as my island’s fruit. However, I didn’t save my game and lost the oranges. I had to start my game over again with peaches as my fruit. I miss oranges.
There weren’t many events happening in March that caught my interest. I finally attended a shooting star night. It wasn’t as hard to get star pieces as I initially thought, and we pleasant and relaxing to watch the stars falling. There was also Super Mario Bros. in-game merchandise you could get with bells. Due to the Super Mario 35th anniversary going on for the past few months. Most of the Mario items I purchase are placed all around my house.
As March ends and we go into April, there are things that I sort of regret not doing that are usually seasonal items, like building Snow boys to get the recipes for the winter items. Still, I don’t think that is a problem as I’ll have another year to spend time in this game. I’m looking forward to my first egg day, and I missed the last one. I’ll see how many seasonal bugs and fish that I can catch. If you wish to check out my island, my dream address is DA-6752-3837-1917. Thank you for reading, and I hope you subscribe to this series and check out my other posts on my blog. Until next time.
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