2020 was a pretty wretched year for most of us, but one of the few positives shining brightly amongst the overwhelming barrage of bad news and misery was Animal Crossing: New Horizons, a game which is celebrating its first anniversary today.
You obviously don't need us to remind you about the global pandemic and the myriad of awful things we've seen over the past 12 months, so let's cut right to the chase: Animal Crossing: New Horizons became – for Switch owners, at least – one of the best ways to escape the horror of the real world and take a much-needed breather.
Since launching on 20th March 2020, the title's gone on to be one of the best-selling games on the Switch, as well as Nintendo's fastest-selling release ever in Europe. It's been smashing sales records since its opening month and it's not hard to see why – as we were all locked indoors, what could be better than interacting over the internet via the medium of cutesy ostriches (we love you, Cranston) and idyllic island getaways.
Of course, the game's also been treated to plenty of post-launch updates which have helped to keep things as fresh as can be – even if some of us have struggled with Animal Crossing fatigue from time to time. With the latest update arriving just this week, it seems like we'll be getting new content for a good while yet, too.
So, here's to Animal Crossing: New Horizons. A game that's brought us closer to our families and friends in trying times, and one that will be remembered by some of us as an important part of our history. Happy birthday, ACNH!
Make sure to check out our New Horizons community gallery – a special feature showcasing some of the best screenshots submitted by you, our lovely readers.
Comments 34
Please show my Wedding Party Sabotage from Wedding Event. 😂
1 year of paying debt and getting stung by wasps. I love this game
Its definitely my most played game. I have 1300 hours lol. Went hard on it during the height of the pandemic last year. I do like the newest update too. The 50 more design slot are long awaited.
An amazing bit of software, a cultural phenomenon, up there with Pac-Man, Space Invaders and Mario. I played it solidly but hardly touch it now, which is fine. It served its purpose to delight and distract me during a very rough year. Younger member of my household - it's a daily driver, with much excitement about the Sanrio characters. Anyway, Happy Birthday ACNH!
Still playing this game regularly and will probably continue to do so for a good while.
I'm working on pretty much the last major thing for my town now which is breeding blue roses and then breeding all the other kinds of hybrid flowers and decorating my town with them. I've put in almost 600 hours I think.
@Giygas_95 Best if luck to you, blue roses are an absolute pain to get. I had to reserve a good chunk of my island just to try and breed for them, remembering which rose was bred from which, etc. Eventually I was about to cave in and buy them from other people (using bells, not real money) but just as I was about to, my first blue rose spawned. It was actually kind of a hype moment for such an otherwise relaxing game.
@1ofUs,
Those wasps are the gift that just keeps on giving.
@ryancraddock "2020's most important game?"
The most important game of 2020 was easily Cyberpunk 2077.
It showed us that:
CDPR isn't infallible despite TW3's success.
Last gen systems aren't meant to run next gen games.
Don't believe the hype.
A game delayed - even 3x - won't always eventually be good.
There are some things even Keanu can't save.
ACNH was 2020's most successful game w/ 30 million sales. Though even w/ that it really wasn't all that important, just part of the pandemic lockdown zeitgeist. ACNH may show up in all of the history docs about "2020: The Lost Year". Cyberpunk won't, but it was still more important. ACNH just was. 🤷♂️
@Yosher It's going pretty well so far. I have a guide I'm following to get a 1/4 chance at a blue rose. I just finished producing the two special purple roses I need to produce a special white rose. Once I have that special white rose, I just have to do a few more breeding combinations.
Wait something happened in 2020 and acnh came out at the same time? No one ever told me! This website needs more articles about this so I can willingly remember such a brilliant world we all love and thrive in.
@Giygas_95 It still very much comes down to getting those special rose variants that grant you other special rose variants and you won't know they are those special variants until you test them which eats up a lot of time especially if you continuously get bad luck with these. Glad to hear it's going well so far for ya though, and hope that blue rose journey will continue going well for you!
@Yosher The guide I'm following only has a test point at the second type of purple rose. You have to breed them with a yellow rose to see if it will produce another yellow rose, and I got two of those which I'm breeding together now to produce the special white rose. As far as I can tell the rest is fairly cut and dry as to what combinations of roses produce what in this sequence I'm following.
@Giygas_95 Even if the rest is fairly cut and dry, you still gotta have a system to be able to tell which rose is which though or you'll just get confused, so I hope you have such a system and don't get confused and having to start all over again like I had to do once or twice before I made such a system.
With all the money they’ve made on this one, they need to keep new updates going. The only good thing about pocket camp is the continued support and changes they’ve made.
@Yosher I do sorta. I took a screenshot of the video I used where it showed a diagram of the whole process, and I just go by that. As I complete steps, I remove previous steps and just keep it to one pair of flowers as much as I can. As long as I can get the right pair to produce a blue, then I should just be able to start cloning that blue rose from then on out.
@Giygas_95 That works. What I did was make a fairly large batch of roses, and each next step would be located at different places of my island, having several of each step available to increase the odds of spawning blues. And even then it took me a long time to get them.
I just want to finish the museum and fish now. Not sure if the museum will ever happen as Redd turns up once a month and everything is always fake.
When I saw “(we love you, Cranston)”, I was thinking “(Everyone loves Raymond)” would’ve been funnier.
@Grandiajet,
The museum is pretty much impossible without cheating, I mean you could wait years to totally fill the place.
Sadly never made it a year. Lost interest entirely around the end of December.
I was quite disappointed that this game didn't win Game of the Year.
Yes, The Last of Us Part II had a very deep story that influenced our overall personalities and how we see the world, but New Horizons was more influential to the real world. It gave people - not exclusively gamers - a sense of escape and a simple life that doesn't have the burden of extreme safety measures or a hostile environment against ethnic minority groups.
Sure, it didn't (and still doesn't) have a whole lot of content, but it worked very well and it saved a lot of people from the insanity of cabin fever. It gave people a way to hang out and interact with each other in ways that a simple video call or multiplayer game couldn't. It was the perfect distraction from all the crap around the world.
It is what I consider to be the first "pandemic game" which was followed by Fall Guys and Among Us. There was no better time to get this game than within the same month that lockdown began around the world.
I saw a Triforce on the image at first and thought they were announcing a Zelda crossover like they did with Mario. It would have probably convinced me to buy the game.
It's a helluva drug... My most played game, though I tend to spend less time on video games...
I celebrated by deleting my island and starting fresh!
Been playing it everyday since getting the day after launch last year. I still find it enjoyable to log in an hour or so everyday after I wake up.
I ended up getting my copy in October last year and it’s been a ton of fun since. I liked some of the new things like terraforming and being able to put any furniture outside. A lot of fun customization in this game. I’m looking forward to future updates.
I didn't get New Horizons until the summer, put about 55 hours in, got into late October and just fell off the wagon. I'm using the anniversary as inspiration to get back into it, but I've set my system date back to October.
I never got this game because I didn't enjoy new leaf too much. I did however get two of my favorite games of all time last year, something which animal crossing could never become, for me at least.
Kept me entertained for maybe 2 weeks or so. Just wasn't the game for me. Maybe if the entire had bigger changes between them but nothing AC does is really all that new or even creative, unfortunately.
I've been playing this everyday since launch!!!
@Yosher It took from about January 18th until today, but I finally just got my first blue rose.
@Giygas_95 Well, that did take quite a while, I'm not surprised there because these things still are an absolute pain to get. But you got one! Congratulations!!
@Yosher Thank you!
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