An­i­mal Cross­ing: Not as New Hori­zons

MISHAWAKA – Yet an­other re­view of An­i­mal Cross­ing is on the hori­zon, as that is all I have played in the in­ter­ven­ing week of self-iso­la­tion. 

Yes, I am still play­ing An­i­mal Cross­ing: New Hori­zons, and still hav­ing a great deal of fun do­ing so. Keep your eye-rolling and con­de­scend­ing glares to your­self; every time the screen goes black, and I see those eyes re­flected in the TV that are hav­ing way too much fun with a game that is os­ten­si­bly for kids, what­ever self-re­spect I had left dies. 

It’s not all ex­is­ten­tial crises in load­ing screens, though. When­ever I am con­tem­plat­ing a new ad­di­tion to my is­land, like a bridge be­tween the two halves of my is­land sep­a­rated by a river, I look at the hun­dreds of thou­sands of bells it costs, and I ask my­self, “Is fish­ing for an hour and a half so I can pay this off RE­ALLY worth it?” That thought is then dis­carded as quick as all the col­lege let­ters show­ing up in my mail­box that don’t in­clude schol­ar­ships. 

My fledg­ling town, Palaven, has re­cently had its Res­i­dent Ser­vices build­ing up­graded; where a tent once was, now stands an ac­tual Res­i­dent Ser­vices BUILD­ING. This is un­doubt­edly my most prized achieve­ment thus far, as with the con­struc­tion of this fine struc­ture, comes Is­abelle, the great­est An­i­mal Cross­ing char­ac­ter of all time, who now runs the build­ing along­side Tom Nook.  

Is­abelle takes care of is­sues con­cern­ing the res­i­den­tial af­fairs of the is­land, func­tion­ing, for all in­tents and pur­poses, as the Shawn Holt­gren of the com­mu­nity, only, im­pos­si­bly, more love­able. She’s there to help you change the is­land’s flag, theme, and/​or res­i­dents. Though I changed the first two the sec­ond I had seen her move in, I have yet to see what hap­pens when I re­quest to re­move a vil­lager. This is­n’t for lack of un­de­sir­able neigh­bors, but be­cause I don’t want to have to make my way through the many menus it takes to re­move them, es­pe­cially when I can dump all the fur­ni­ture I don’t want and can’t sell onto them. 

Thanks to the help of Is­abelle, Tom Nook is more than will­ing to spend his new­found free time help­ing you with con­struc­tion pro­jects around the is­land, so long as you’ve the cash to make it hap­pen. Say you want to build a bridge, as I men­tioned ear­lier. The cheap­est op­tion, a log bridge, is four logs of wood spread across a river no more than five feet wide, the orig­i­nal ver­sion of which Tom Nook has you build on your own. If you want to in­stall that bridge now, it’ll run you well over sixty-thou­sand bells, which takes about twenty min­utes to ac­cu­mu­late, as op­posed to the pre­vi­ous build­ing cost of a few planks of wood you can find in five min­utes. 

I will now be in the process of fly­ing to all my friends’ is­lands to steal all of their fruit, as that is one of the fastest ways to make money in this game, to pay for the nu­mer­ous con­struc­tion pro­jects that my is­land will soon be un­der­tak­ing. It’s ei­ther that and all the dodg­ing of fruit po­lice that comes with it, or risk life and limb, or a bruised ego, whichever comes first, to catch a taran­tula and sell it for eight-thou­sand bells. I’ll take my chances with the fruity five-oh, per­son­ally.