Animal Crossing: New Horizons gets a March 20th 2020 release date, a year later than expected. Despite the delay, the live gameplay from Nintendo Treehouse provided an insight into the new game.
New Horizons takes the player to a deserted island, a setting that Animal Crossing hasn’t tried before. A bit like the Animal Crossing mobile game, Pocket Camp, the player spends a lot of their early game sleeping in a tent. It seems like New Horizons has taken a lot of inspiration from the mobile game.
In a sort of survival vibe, the player is also able to access an extensive crafting menu. You harvest materials and use them to build things for your fledgeling campsite. In the mobile game, you deliver items to Cyrus to craft for you, rather than purchase them from a shop like in the old Animal Crossing games. In New Horizons you can either buy them or craft them, giving the player a choice.
That’s what this game is about. In Animal Crossing: New Leaf, the previous game in the series, it was the player’s task to develop a town using primarily pre-built public works. In New Horizons, it’s your job to build up an entire island from scratch. There is unprecedented freedom for designing your island, including the ability to place furniture outside.
There also seems to be some new farming mechanics and a unique way of progressing through the game. Discovering new items works on a recipe system. You need to find certain items and perform certain acts to create a recipe. It’s likely your friends will have discovered different things on their island, but the devs were quick to show how easy it is to share your experience.
During the Nintendo Treehouse live stream the developers showed how smooth it is to play cooperatively on the Switch. There are up to eight players living on a single island, and you can work together to gather resources and craft new items. For the first time, Animal Crossing seems to be really embracing co-op play. There are local, wireless and internet connections available for multiplayer.
Plus, if you thought you could escape Tom Nook, he’s parachuted onto the island and is already asking you for more bells. Animal Crossing: New Horizons looks to capture the familiar gameplay of Animal Crossing while taking it literally to new horizons. At the end of the Nintendo Treehouse AC segment, the developers kindly asked for more time to perfect the game. Judging by fan response across the web, people are willing to wait.
