During this event, the game had an unpleasant urgency that I resented. I largely let it pass me by because I found it very annoying. Bunny Day was the 12th, and leading up the event you could collect new crafting recipes for another, even greater reward. The much loathed Bunny Day event was a perfect example of how mobile game mechanics don't exactly mesh with what Animal Crossing is at its core. The lesson that Animal Crossing has tried to impart is that it is alright to stop rushing. The islands in New Horizons don't have enough rocks on them to give me anywhere near 99 stone, but Nook Miles Tickets can send me to islands with more rocks, which then leads me down a hellish path of doing random unmotivated tasks to be able to destroy a bunch of rocks. In Pocket Camp, where crafting was first introduced into Animal Crossing, you'd be able to use Leaf Tickets, which you buy with real money, to make up the difference if you couldn't get enough stone. In almost any other game, the next step would be to collect all 99 stone. Some of these recipes, like a stone arch I've been eyeing for my little bamboo grove, costs 99 stone. When you look at crafting recipes, you pretty much are being urged to collect those resources. New Horizons sometimes invites the grind mentality, specifically when the game brushes up against design decisions from its mobile game cousin, Animal Crossing Pocket Camp. But you can't blame all of this on the circumstances. People are trying to get to all the milestones faster and faster, partly because we are all inside and we are very bored. It's meant to be a game that you play in fits and bursts, designed for people who don't make gaming a huge part of their life.Īnd yet the grind has come to Animal Crossing. How about having a five star village? Well, now your town looks nice! What about sending letters to villagers? There actually is a prize for that one: they might write you back.Īnimal Crossing is a meditative experience, a way to be with myself and my thoughts for a few hours a day. Is there any prize for finishing the museum? It's purely bragging rights. I can chop trees and plant flowers to my heart's desire, but Nook's Cranny will always close at ten o'clock. It feels like Animal Crossing is respecting my time and showing me-quite aggressively sometimes-that the game doesn't have any active goals for me to pursue. In a normal world where I can go outside, that doesn't feel all that annoying. It will take a week for you to fully unlock the basic tools and have a decent amount of villagers on your island, and there is nothing you can do about it. The game progresses at the excruciating pace that it is designed to do whether you like it or not. You can't be "behind" in Animal Crossing. One sign of this is that I hear my friends lament that they are "behind" in New Horizons. I have never seen Animal Crossing played in the way that New Horizons is being played, though, and the fact that most people are stuck inside with this as their one quarantine treat has definitely stretched the mechanics of the game outside of their limits. In some ways, it's relaxing, if you are like me and feel relaxed by crossing things off a checklist. It's created new ways to connect with friends. It allows me to connect with nature even when I'm stuck in doors. Every time I played, I returned to the bench, if only for a few minutes-a private ritual between myself and the game.Īnimal Crossing: New Horizons has been touted as the game " we all need right now." In some ways, that's true. It slowly became my favorite spot in the game. I would watch the game transition between the hours on that bench, listening to the music transition from the late afternoon to the evening.
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