How to understand the hype around Animal Crossing
Since March 20, 2020, Twitter has been inundated with screenshots of animals and characters on a desert island. Between two confinement announcements, I can see my friends posting photos of their desert island and their multiplayer adventures on Animal Crossing: New Horizons. But I’m also seeing more and more tweets and conversations from people who don’t understand the hype around this game. The excitement is so huge that we had to create a channel dedicated to the game on our community discord.
It is, therefore, to answer all your questions that I am writing this article.
My relationship with Animal Crossing
You should know that I’ve been playing Animal Crossing for a little while, I discovered the series through the Wild World game released for the Nintendo DS, and then I became interested in the first game released for Gamecube. After that, I was also able to try Let’s Go to the City, which was released for Wii. That version allowed multiplayer play with one player on Wild World and one player on Let’s Go to the City before the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection (CWF) was shut down for good. I invested in a Nintendo 3DS on purpose so I could play Animal Crossing: New Leaf, a purchase I haven’t regretted since I spent over 500 hours on it (and even got the badge to prove it)!
When Pocket Camp was announced, I remember pre-registering directly on the play store. Even though it’s a mobile game, I enjoyed the experience and I play it voluntarily in transport or during the loading times of my PC games.
Then Animal Crossing: New Horizons was announced. You have to know that I’m very reluctant to buy yet another console. However, I’m currently confined to my home with my boyfriend’s Nintendo Switch. A very good excuse to finally buy the game after all! I’ve been able to play it, and I must say that I love doing what I want on my desert island. I can go and plant my flowers and trees, put up fences, complete my museum, talk to the locals. And if I feel like it, I can create new rivers or add cliffs!
Animal Crossing is a game that has helped me a lot, whether it’s to gain self-confidence or to meet people and interact with them.
But why is Animal Crossing so successful?
An intergenerational game
This can be explained first of all by the fact that the Animal Crossing series is now 19 years old. So there’s an aspect of nostalgia that plays on that, a bit like the Pokemon series of games.
So Animal Crossing is a series of games that can bring generations together. It’s relatively easy to get started, and it’s quick to understand how it works. The streamer MisterMv plays Animal Crossing: New Horizons with his daughter.
We can also talk about the very famous Audrey aka Audie, an 88-year-old grandmother who played Animal Crossing: New Leaf every day for four years. She has accumulated nearly 3,580 hours of play!
Moreover, in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, a new character named Audie makes her appearance. The presence of this character is a tribute to Audrey, Animal Crossing’s biggest fan.
A game to be played the way you want it to be played
The advantage of Animal Crossing is that the player can simply play the way he wants. There aren’t any specific goals other than to complete the museum, pay off all the loans that your friend Tom Nook has made to you to enlarge your house or get the highest score for your interior decoration.
The player is, therefore, free to play as he wishes. Whether he wants to chase butterflies instead of catching them or to scare away the fish, even to hit his villagers with a net, the player can do whatever he wants. So there are no right or wrong ways to play this series of games. The player decides what goals he wants to achieve and how fast he wants to do it.
A game in real-time
One of the great features and strengths of the original game was that Animal Crossing is played in real-time. The original version on Gamecube even had a tiny internal clock built into the cartridge so that the time of day and even the seasons are played just like in the real world. This meant that players had to come back every day to advance through the game. If the player tried to change the system clock, Resetti would show up to yell at the player because the player had cheated.
With Animal Crossing: Wild World coming to Nintendo DS, it was already easier to move time forward and our friend Resetti didn’t bother us about that anymore. There was a phone that allowed you to change the time of the game without touching the time on your system. That was also retained in Animal Crossing: New Leaf on Nintendo 3DS. However, in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, that’s no longer the case, and to travel through time the player has to change the date on their system directly.
Events of all kinds
In the Animal Crossing games, you have the opportunity to attend events. Between fishing tournaments, egg hunting, Christmas, Halloween, … There is always something to revive the gameplay when the gameplay starts to run out of steam.
An aestheticism that plays an important role
Animal Crossing is a series of games with graphics that can be described as cute. We can also mention the musical atmosphere of the game which is meant to be quiet and changes according to the time of the game. On top of that, the style of play is more than casual, which also makes it one of the most relaxing games on the market.
Unlike other games, in Animal Crossing you never have to worry about being shot at by an enemy or attacked by a zombie. However, beware of tarantulas, scorpions, and wasps, which will not only wish you well.
And likewise, for those who compare The Sims to Animal Crossing, be aware that in the latter, you can’t encounter “failure”. Your character doesn’t die, can’t catch fire, and can’t drown in a pool without a ladder.
In the end, playing Animal Crossing is a bit like taking a little digestive walk after a good meal when it’s nice outside. And in this time of confinement, this feeling is more than welcome!
A game that allows you to learn in a playful way
Recognize insect and fish species
It doesn’t look like it, but it’s thanks to Animal Crossing that I was able to distinguish between different species of fish and butterflies. Every time I caught a bug or a fish, there was a little joke with its name on it. Once I gave them to Blathers (the museum curator) he would give me a summary of the insect or fish.
Learn more about dinosaurs
When I was younger, I was a big dinosaur fan. I could spend hours watching the same “Little Dinosaur” movies with Petit-Pied and his friends. For a while, I also wanted to become a paleontologist and I more or less realized this “dream” by going to dig up fossils in Animal Crossing with my little shovel and bringing them to Blathers so that he could analyze them and tell me the story behind these dinosaurs.
Learning a new language
The Redditor Balloon Monsoon had fun calculating the number of dialogues present in Animal Crossing. To give you a quick summary, the author of this Reddit thread has determined that the Animal Crossing: New Leaf script is about 1,092,240 words long.
That’s 3,871 pages, or 72.8 hours if it were an audiobook! That beats the seven Harry Potter books combined, which total 1,084,000 words. But it also beats the King James Version of the Bible, which contains only 783,000 words. In other words, no one will be able to read all the dialogue in the game.
And it is this diversity that has led people to change the language of their game so that they can learn a new one. Still, on Reddit, I came across the thread of a deleted Redditor explaining why Animal Crossing is perfect for learning languages. To sum up, Animal Crossing is quite simple to understand, the sentences are not too complex and given the diversity of the dialogues, it is possible to learn very quickly. You will be able to mention the famous common bar in every possible language thanks to this!
Learn the basics of trading
It may sound surprising, but it’s true that with Animal Crossing, you’ll be able to learn the basics of trading so you can make the most of your bells with turnips. Every Sunday morning, a character (Daisy-Mae or Joan depending on the opus) will come and sell you turnips at a certain price. His turnips are bought back by the Nook family at varying prices. The price of the turnip changes twice a day (at noon and midnight), and is also different depending on your friends’ cities. Your goal is to resell your turnips for more than you bought them. However be careful, you only have one week to do so! And if you plan to travel in time, your turnips will just rot and get lost. For example, I bought turnips last Sunday at 94 bells apiece. So my goal is to sell them for at least 100 bells a unit and to do that, I’ll have to carefully follow the turnip market in my city.
Connect and keep a relationship
Play with your friends
In these times of confinement, more and more of us are finding alternatives to virtual aperitifs. And video games are indeed the most effective solution in the end!
The New Leaf and New Horizons opus allows you to join your friends for walks and various activities in your village. Whether by inventing your games (who remembers the hide-and-seek games?) or by organizing fishing or insect hunting contests, players always find what to do!
By the way, because of containment, one couple had to cancel their plans for their wedding anniversary and decided to do a photoshoot in Animal Crossing: New Horizons to recreate their wedding photos. The result is adorable.
Catchy characters
But your IRL friends aren’t the only people you’ll be able to talk to. Indeed, your locals have a lot to tell you! Even the various salesmen and “important” characters in the game. Whether it’s their backgrounds (we can talk about the three Able sisters and the story of the trio’s separation, or the famous Phyllis in Wild World, …) or simply saying hello to them, something will make you get attached to all this little world! You will be sad when one of your inhabitants will announce to you his departure, or you will hate another one because of his behavior.
Reconnecting with yourself
Speaking of characters, they are not judgmental of you, except when you are stung by wasps. In Animal Crossing, no one will judge your political opinion, religion, style of dress, sexual orientation, etc. Moreover, in New Horizons, you can even choose the way your inhabitants should address you (male or female), a great step forward for gender representation in video games! It’s a relaxing bubble that’s good for the mind.
There’s so much more to say about Animal Crossing because the game is so complete. But that will probably be in another article! However, thanks to this article, you can now better understand why there is so much excitement around this series of games!
