Finding Fun #14: Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Welcome back to Finding Fun, the series where I learn about game design by exploring the fun in some of the greats. This time, we're stepping onto the tranquil shores of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. This life simulation offers numerous lessons across cozy game design, routine-based engagement, and fostering creativity. Let's unpack what makes the slow pace of island life so captivating.
Core Gameplay Loop in Animal Crossing: New Horizons
The heart of New Horizons beats with a gentle rhythm: Live, Gather, Craft, Customize, Connect. You arrive on a deserted island, gradually transforming it into your personal paradise. You build and furnish your home, interact with anthropomorphic animal neighbors. and cultivate the island's natural resources.
The core loop encourages your daily check-ins and involves:
- Daily Routine: Check shops for what is new, chat with neighbors, identify fossils, and more.
- Resource Management: Fish, catch bugs, chop wood, hit rocks, and harvest fruit to earn currency or gather materials for crafting.
- Customization & Progression: Use resources to buy or craft furniture, decorate your home/island, expand your house, build infrastructure, terraform, and unlock new features.
- Collection: Donate or display fish, bugs, fossils, and art across your island.
- Social Interaction: Visit friends' islands (or have them visit yours), send mail, exchange gifts, and participate in seasonal events.
What's Fun in Animal Crossing: New Horizons?
Immediate Fun in Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Island Discovery Charm
From the moment you arrive, there's a simple joy in exploring your unique island. Discovering your native fruit, mapping the initial layout, and meeting your first two quirky neighbors creates an immediate sense of place and personality. It feels like your island from the start.
Learning the Ropes
Grasping the basic mechanics like fishing, bug-catching, hitting rocks, and shaking trees is inherently satisfying. Each new activity learned unlocks another layer of the island's potential. The initial tasks are straightforward and rewarding, providing a calm and enjoyable introduction to island life that doesn't overwhelm the player.
Long-Term Fun in Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Personalized Expression
Making your house and island truly yours is a core long-term driver. Choosing wallpaper, flooring, furniture, and outdoor decor that reflects your style is as engaging as you want it to be. The daily anticipation of checking Nook's Cranny or Able Sisters for that perfect item captures the thrill of treasure hunting. Crafting adds another layer, giving you more agency in realizing your design visions.
Sharing and Connection
The social aspects provide emergent, enduring fun. Visiting friends' islands to see their creations, exchange items, or simply hang out builds real-world connections through shared virtual experiences. Sending letters and gifts fosters a charming sense of community, both with other players and the island's residents.
Nintendo Charm
Scattered throughout are references and items from other beloved Nintendo franchises (like Mario-themed furniture). These nods add an extra layer of charm and familiarity, making the world feel even more inviting for long-time Nintendo fans and reinforcing the playful environment you are in.
Unexpected Fun in Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Surprisingly Deep Collecting
The sheer variety within the collections — fish, bugs, fossils, and even genuine works of art — can catch you off guard. Learning to distinguish Redd's fraudulent paintings or piecing together massive dinosaur skeletons in the museum adds a light layer of education and curation.
Dynamic World Events
Your island isn't static. Seasons change, bringing new critters and aesthetics. Holidays introduce special events and visitors. Random occurrences, like wasp attacks when you shake trees or the thrilling (and lucrative) appearance of tarantulas/scorpions at night, inject moments of surprise which aim to keep your daily routine feeling fresh.
Nook Miles Motivation
In a game that celebrates aimless wandering, the Nook Miles system provides direction when you want it. These achievement-like tasks reward your everyday activities (catching fish, crafting items, etc.) with a secondary currency used for unique items and travel tickets. It subtly encourages your exploration and engagement without feeling like a mandatory checklist, offering satisfying little goals when you're unsure what to do next.
Not So Fun in Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Cumbersome Inventory Management
Dealing with limited pocket space and the process of managing items feels slow and clunky. Constant trips back home or to the shop to empty your pockets interrupt the flow of gathering and exploration, especially in the early game before inventory upgrades.
Painfully Slow Interactions
Certain interactions, particularly with service NPCs like Orville at Dodo Airlines, involve excessive, unskippable dialogue and slow processes. Traveling to other islands, while fun in concept, is hampered by lengthy loading screens and repetitive conversational hoops. This results in more frustration than anticipation, and thus results in some of the game feeling less cozy and more boring.
Terraforming is Tedious
While the ability to reshape the island is a powerful creative tool, the actual process of terraforming is slow and imprecise. Making large-scale changes requires significant time and repetitive actions. This can easily feel more like a chore than a joyful act of creation as you work to shape your island.
Stress > Relief > Growth > Progress in Animal Crossing: New Horizons
How does New Horizons handle these core pillars in its uniquely low-stakes environment?
Stress:Primarily manifests as gentle pressure or choice paralysis: "What should I focus on today?" Missing a rare bug, owing Bells to Tom Nook, worrying about turnips spoiling, or managing limited inventory space. It's all stress, but dialed way down.
Relief:Found everywhere! Paying off a loan, catching that elusive fish, learning a new DIY recipe, receiving a compliment from a neighbor, completing a Nook Miles goal, finding the perfect furniture piece, or simply enjoying the ambient sounds of the island. Almost every action provides a small reward to the player.
Growth:Learning optimal ways to earn Bells (like turnip trading or tarantula farming), discovering efficient gathering routes, improving the timing for fishing, unlocking new tools and recipes, and expanding your home are all mini-goals that players can work towards.
Progress:Marked by tangible island improvements: bigger house, more shops, bridges and inclines built, unlocking terraforming, achieving a 5-star island rating, completing museum collections, cultivating favorite villagers, and acquiring coveted items or recipes. Progress is steady, visual, and player-driven.
Lessons Indie Game Developers can learn from Animal Crossing: New Horizons
What design philosophies from island life can indie developers apply?
Engaging Daily Routines Offer Comfort: New Horizons proves that predictable routines can be compelling. Unlike high-stakes games like a multiplayer-focused one where outcomes are uncertain, players know what to expect when they boot up Animal Crossing. This comfort and familiarity build long-term engagement.
Consider how incorporating satisfying, low-pressure routines can benefit your game's core loop.
Tone Permeates Everything: The game's "cozy" feeling is the sum of countless intentional design choices: the soft art style, ambient sound design, charming animal neighbors, deliberately paced UI, and lack of genuine high-stakes threats. Every element works in concert to establish and maintain the desired tone.
Ensure your game's mechanics, aesthetics, and UI consistently reinforce its intended feel.
Flattened Peaks and Valleys for Longevity: Significant achievements in New Horizons unfold over days, weeks, or even months. The game avoids sharp peaks of intense stress or relief, instead opting for sustained and short waves. This prevents player burnout and encourages long-term investment.
Evaluate if a less spiky stress/relief cycle might better suit your game's goals and genre, allowing players to savor progress over extended periods.
Credits
A big thank you to Sleepy Longplays for their chill playthrough footage and Nintendo which both helped source the images used in this post. Check out their channels!