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.
June 2021
I was cordially invited to a wedding this month. Well, maybe not so much as a wedding, but the recreation of a wedding ceremony between two alpacas. This wedding event in Animal Crossing goes on all of June. When you fly to Harv’s Island from Dodo Airlines brings you to a special occasion. Two alpacas named Reese and Cyrus are interested in various shots from their wedding day and celebration. They need you as the photographer to take the pictures and recreate their most treasured moments. You are given a limited number of items to design the room and take the picture. After doing this, you show the picture to Reese, and she gives you a certain amount of heart crystals, depending on the quality of the image. You can use these crystals to purchase unique limited edition wedding furniture. This event goes on for the entire month of June. This event gets somewhat repetitive fast, and only good if you like to get any of the rare wedding items offered this month.
At the start of June you receive a call from Harv asking you to stop by his island. 
When you arrive at Harv’s Island, Harv introduces us to Reese and Cyrus. 
You go into a replica wedding hall and set up the room to replicate the couples wedding hall or day. 
After you set the wedding up, then you take a photo for Resse, who will grade you on the quality of the photo and reward you with Crystal Hearts. 
June also marks the beginning of the Summer Bug off. Occurring on the fourth Saturday of the summer months until September, The Bug Off lasts from 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM. Flick, a unique character, will have a tent outside of the Resident Services. Speak to Flick, and he’ll start a challenge to capture as many bugs as you can around your island. The first game is free but costs 500 bells after the first try. There is no limit to how many times you can participate or any limit to the number of bugs you can catch. You have three minutes, and when the time is up, you return to Flick. He gives you points based on the number of bugs you catch. You earn one point per bug and two extra points if you catch three or more bugs. Earning ten points or more, you can exchange the points for bug-off items. When you catch bugs during the event, they are sent to a bug cage next to Flick. Flick pays a premium for the bugs of 150% of the base price of the bugs. After the event, you can save the bugs in the cage or sell them to Flick. Overall this event is a fun distraction and a good way to catch bugs you may need for your museum. Bugs seem to spawn a lot during the three minutes.
Probably my favorite time of the Season are the bug offs.
Around the island, nothing much changed. I’m just gathering materials and catching bugs, taking a swim to get other sea collectibles that I need, fishing, and building another bridge. I haven’t found a design layout I’m happy with for my island and still need some infrastructure before moving on with some design Items I’d like to do around my neighbors’ houses.
Ultimately that is all I have for the month in terms of events. I usually go around and collect supplies, but is this all there is to the game? When I purchased this last year, I, like many others, felt Animal Crossing: New Horizons would get at least for another few years. But there hasn’t been anything from Nintendo since April, and no mention of the game at E3. I’ve played this game for a year, and I now have concerns that this game will get repetitive and lose my interest fast. I’m kind of shocked that Nintendo isn’t pushing for more support for a game that sold 32 million copies. I’m aware the previous games in the series sold nowhere near as well as this game did. Also, the pandemic last year was a factor in driving sales up for the game. But this is the second best-selling Nintendo Switch video game behind Mario Kart 8. Building a new user base this big, wouldn’t you want to keep this game going longer. You can establish new long-term fans of this series by showing you support for this Social Platforming game. Maybe there will be another announcement soon, or not at all. At least address the fans of these games monthly. That was happening on youtube, but even that seemingly stopped. I’ll guess we will have to wait and see.
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