Let’s cross some animals!

[shadowhive]

Hi! So this is my first post here and I figured I should talk about something that’s helped to keep me sane these past weeks. That thing is Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

New Horizons is the latest game in the series and it’s already become one of the best selling games of the year, so chances are if you have a nintendo Switch you already have it. But for those that don’t you might be wondering what Animal Crossing is all about?

On this game you start out by going to a deserted island to start a new life. You’re not alone though, there’s Tom Nook and his nephews who run the shop and resident services and you also start out with two island villagers. These villagers come in the form of animals (the player character is the only human in the game) and as time goes on you can find and befriend even more. (At time of writing the total number of villagers you can have is 10, which I think is too few considering there are almost 400 different villagers.) After setting up the tents of yourself and the villagers and, choosing the island name, your island life begins.

So what does that entail? Well there’s a variety of things that you can do. You can catch fish and bugs (which can be donated to the museum) and, once your tent is upgraded to a house you can decorate it with furniture, carpet and wallpapers. New to this game is the option to craft things, tools, furniture even musical instruments!

Your starting island has native fruit and a type of flower, but you can gain others (if you have friends you can easily gain all the fruits and flower types by going to visit their islands!). As time goes on you get special visitors coming to your island, like Kicks (the skunk who sells shoes, socks and bags), Saharah (the camel that sells rugs, mysterious carpet and wallpaper) and Flick and CJ who buy bugs and fish respectively (and getting models of them too!).

I got the game on the day of release and my island (Eventide) is now completely full of villagers, including some of my favs like Lucky (a dog wrapped in bandages) and Julian (a stylish unicorn). My museum is filling up, with my fossil exhibit almost complete (with only two fossils short!). My shop has been upgraded and I also have a clothes shop. My house has all six rooms (that it can have currently), which includes a room I’ve got decorated with skull and horror stuff alongside one with sci fi stuff. My island is still pretty wild, unlike some who have it covered in paving and nicely ordered, but I like it that way. Even so I’m working on making a kitchen and diner area on a part of the island next to Julian’s house.

I’m so grateful that this game came out during this time. As someone who as anxiety and depression, this is helped distract me from my thoughts and help keep me sane. I know I’m not the only one that’s been helped by this game and it seems a lot of people are using it as a distraction or escape.

One interesting thing that’s come from the lockdown is the Monterey Bay Aquarium has been doing Animal Crossing streams every Monday. The focus has been on the museum and there’s been interesting facts about the various exhibits. They’ve even had guests on to talk about fossils and insects and it’s really fascinating. The link to their twitter is here which keeps an update on their streams among other things. (From the one last night I learned that diving beetles can fly, which I had no idea about!)

Do you have Animal Crossing? What are your native fruit and villagers? Let me know in the comments. And if you don’t, what games are you playing to help keep you sane.

Lastly here’s some pics from my island


Julian’s house, which features the rare zodiac furniture


The diner area


The butterfly room of the museum


One of the aquariums of the museum

Comments

[petrea_mitchell]

Lovely photos!

True to my tradition of being one craze behind the times, I'm finally playing Fire Emblem: Three Houses. I started in late March with the Golden Deer House, finished that, and am now in the church route. I like this one, but I think Fire Emblem Fates may still be my pick for my favorite FE game.

[althea_valara]

I'm curious: does this Animal Crossing game do the thing where if you don't log in for several days, your island deteriorates? I own one of the past Animal Crossing games (mine is for the Nintendo DS) and I was very turned off when I didn't play for several days and came back to find my town covered with weeds and cockroaches in my house. I felt like I was being punished for having a real life, and yeah, just, no.

That said, I do know lots of people who are enjoying Animal Crossing, and I'm glad the game exists as a good distraction right now, even if the game might not be to my tastes.

As for me: I'm spending most of my time playing Final Fantasy XIV. I've actually scheduled myself some time away from the game today since my play has been rather excessive lately, oops. I have two characters: Althea Valara on Coeurl, and Eirian Ari on Brynhildr, both on the Crystal data center.

Other games I'm playing are Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, War of the Visions:FFBE, and I'm attempting a replay of Final Fantasy IX. Yeah, I like Final Fantasy, why do you ask, lol!

[shadowhive]

Thanks!

Ohh nice! I’m behind on the Fire Emblem games. I played the one with Chrom behind never finished it (I’m useless at so many games)

[shadowhive]

Yeah that was a bad thing. Honestly, I’ve gone on every day so I’m not sure. However, weeds are a thing still that crop up on islands. Only this time you can sell the weeds and use them to make things (umbrellas, clothes, bonsai, hedges) so they’re not completely useless.

Yeah it really is such a great distraction, I’m glad people you know are enjoying it

Oh nice! I’ve not played much final fantasy (i have xv I think it is? The one with Noctis? But I’ve failed at actually going on it)

That’s awesome!

[light_of_summer]

Thanks for your intro to Animal Crossing. I had heard the name, but didn't really have an idea what it was like. I'm glad you're finding it helpful. (I also struggle with depression. Not sure about anxiety—maybe anxiety disguised as tension?)

I suspect that my experience of games of that sort would be very different, like constant reminders that my real life habitat needs attention!

In the last few years, I've mostly played variations on Mahjong solitaire. The one I'm currently playing is Mahjong Chain.

Other than that, I've been reading dragonlady7's blog entries about being a spectator/kibitzer while a friend of hers plays Witcher 3. That's honestly probably about the right distance for me from Witcher canon. 😏

[shadowhive]

That’s ok! I’m glad I could help! I’m guessing a lot of people have heard about it lately and we’re all ??? Yeah it really has been helping, especially in the early days of lockdown here when things were most scary and stressful

Hee my real life habitat is pretty bad, that might change once Uni finishes.

Oh nice!

Ohh that’s cool! I’ve played some of The Witcher 3 myself, but I was a bit hopeless at it so that sounds like the best way to enjoy it!

[althea_valara]

Oh, that's good that the weeds are useful! Maybe I'll give the game a try in the future, then. Can't right now, I lack a console to play it on and I don't have the money to buy one.

Yes, Final Fantasy XV is the one with Noctis. I've played all the main series, and they're all good in different ways. FFXV is one of my more favorite ones, because of its open-world exploration, but mostly because of the banter between the chocobros. It's just such a delight to see them interact with each other. I was smiling for a good portion of the game.

[shadowhive]

Yeah they are pretty useful. The same is true of the trash you fish up too, you can make them into things. And ahh yeah, it is a lot.

Aww yay I love the chocobros! 🖤 when I was last on I Was at a waterfall cave but kept dying

[ninetydegrees]

ACNH has been a great distraction to me as well and I've been playing almost every day since I downloaded it. My native fruit are cherries, my native flowers are pansies, with wildflowers as sister flowers, my native villagers are Boone and Katt.

I've made it to the point where KK comes every Saturday so I can relax now and set my own goals :) Like you, I've kept my island mostly wild and natural-looking.

[ninetydegrees]

I love Mahjong solitaire ! It's my favorite solitaire game. It's also made me want to play traditional Mahjong, which has also become my favorite traditional board game too :) There's something about the tiles that make it really appealing to me.

[shadowhive]

Aww that’s good to hear! Yeah my native fruit was cherries too. My first villagers were Canberra and Poncho.

Oh that’s great!😁 do you have any goals in mind now?

One of mine is to try and collect fake art when people have Redd over. I wouldn’t usually but people have noticed that the fake stuff are... well, haunted

[ninetydegrees]

No cockroaches in houses in this version, and weed comes back but very slowly and sparsely. There's a reward if you log in to the game's ATM that increases if you do it every day but it's a capped bonus and not much anyway. You can easily get as much or more money in other ways.

[ninetydegrees]

Now that I've befriended Sable, my next goal is to make hybrid flowers. I have some but not all of them yet. I'm also making more bridges and ramps and trying to collect missing stuff for the museum. Got my first Coelacanth today \o/

Edit: now you're scaring me bc I have one of his fakes in my house ! XD

[shadowhive]

Oh nice! I was terrible at hybrids on past games but on this one I’ve had them come randomly! I’m meaning to get them all too. And nice catch!

I dunno if all the fakes are haunted but some are. Some of the paintings change at certain times of the day. One of the statues glows at night, while another floats. I love it

[ninetydegrees]

Oh very interesting then! Thanks for the info :)

[cynthia1960]

I told Emma about the aquarium Animal Crossing stream.

[lash_larue]

I play pc games, which is sadly problematic since for some time now they require Steam or somesuch which I oppose as intrusive and a waste of bandwidth. We can only get satellite out here, so any online game is a non-starter.

Skyrim is the only thing I have been able to get running properly on the new Windows 10 pc. It has lots of replayability and there are scads of mods for it. Still. I still have the old pc, that has the Mass Effect series on it as well, but no good place to set it up. There's room in the downstairs apartment, but it's impossible to use a keyboard around the resident felines.

We also have an original NES, SNES, Nintendo 64, and Sega Genesis and a bunch of those games. However, none of them display properly on any screen we have. Our ancient Trinitron has perished.

The original Legend of Zelda is one of my favorites. It took months to complete that simple game. My brothers and I would share maps and tips by mail. Today's games are much more beautiful and sophisticated, but they seldom bring the sense of wonder that those few pixels did in the way back when.

L

[shadowhive]

Oh yay! That’s great

[shadowhive]

That’s a shame

I’m not much of a pc gamer, but I did have Skyrim and spent so much time on it. I love it so much!

Awww kitties

I have the nes and n64 somewhere, but not plugged in either. I love the Zelda games so much🖤

[light_of_summer]

Interesting that Mahjong tiles are so positive for you!

I find them slightly distracting, because I tried to learn the meanings of the characters but know that I frequently think of some characters by the wrong meanings.

For example, I often think of the character for 5 as an "h," and the character for 7 as a "t." And I completely forget the meanings of the directions and dragons!

I don't think I've ever touched a physical Mahjong set, but I can imagine they might have significant tactile appeal. ☺

[ninetydegrees]

Well, what works for you is more than good enough :) I've learned playing traditional Mahjong with bilingual tiles (I don't know how they're called) and I think I've seen numbers being drawn with a brush so I think this helped. Oh and also in the traditional games winds are always in the same order so it helps too.