10 Tarantula Hunting
Anyone who has played Animal Crossing before knows that bug catching is a pretty important part of the game. You catch and collect them for your museum, earn a lot of achievements through bug hunting, and it’s how you make most of your money. Most of the bugs you try to catch are harmless, but there are a few that fight back, namely tarantulas.
They chase you and bite you, making you pass out. The amazing graphics of New Horizons, make the tarantulas in the game more terrifying than they ever had been before, but they’re worth a lot of Bells.
9 Multiplayer
Players have been able to visit their friend’s villages since Animal Crossing: Wild World. New Horizons has stepped up the multiplayer experience by adding in both 8-player online play and 4-player local co-op. In these current times of necessary social distancing, New Horizons has helped Animal Crossing fans hang out with their friends and family safely.
There are so many heartwarming and sweet instances of players using New Horizons to simulate dates, weddings, graduations, and other enjoyable social events. It also lets your friends beat you over the head with bug nets or chase you with axes. Of course, it’s impossible to hurt other players and there’s no consequence of whacking your best bud in the head, so why not go for it?
8 Fishing
Fishing is another staple of Animal Crossing that’s necessary to earn bells and complete your town’s museum. It’s also one of the most stress-inducing gameplay aspects. That mostly has to do with the nature of fish in the game since you have to be careful where you toss your lure and (like real-life fishing), it takes quite a bit of patience to wait for the fish to see the lure, then swim over to it. Doesn’t matter if the lure is right in front of their fishy faces, you’ll still be waiting there, holding your breath as you wait for them to take the bait.
7 Froggy Chair
Another big thing about Animal Crossing is the ability to decorate the inside of your house with a large variety of furniture options that are available. It’s what a lot of players spend their bells on and there are certain pieces of furniture from past games that fans are hoping will make a comeback in New Horizons, like the Froggy Chair.
The Froggy Chair is in a set of furniture (along with a Lily-pad table) that has been available in 4 different games since the original Animal Crossing. People really want it in New Horizons. Sadly, the Froggy Chair hasn’t yet made its appearance in the game and the thought of it possibly not making it has upset the fandom as a whole.
6 Cheers
Probably Animal Crossing’s biggest appeal is all the different villagers that you can have live in your town. There are so many different villagers, that no two towns have the same population and really hardcore players go to great lengths to make sure their place is filled with villagers they specifically want.
It could be based on villager Personalities, or on the type of animal they are. Whatever the reason, players really do come to love their villagers, and their villagers come to love them. Despite the other characters being animals, the game really… humanizes them and makes them NPCs you actually care about.
5 Big Fish
Fish in Animal Crossing have always been rendered as realistically as possible and sized to scale with what their size would be in the real world. It’s made for some hilarious and surprising revelations when players see exactly what was tugging on the other end of their fishing poles, and that sentiment is especially true with New Horizons and catching an oarfish.
Oarfish first came to the series in New Leaf and make their return to New Horizons. When talking to Blathers about it, he mentions that oarfish as depicted as being messengers of the gods in different legends and maybe behind stories of sea monsters.
4 Blathers
Speaking of Blathers, anyone who’s played the game before knows about the scholarly owl that runs your town’s museum as its curator. He’s very knowledgable about all the specimens you bring him for the museum, giving you information on the fish and fossils you might find.
But he is absolutely terrified of bugs, and though he also takes those and puts them in the museum, he is visibly less enthusiastic about. Which makes sense, since he was traumatized as a child by a mantis egg case erupting on his desk, releasing thousands of baby mantises.
3 Iron Nuggets
Plenty of new and old players alike probably found themselves really struggling to find iron nuggets. Iron nuggets are new to New Horizons and they’re a crafting material that you get from hitting rocks. Until you’re able to craft the vaulting pool or a ladder, there is a limited amount of iron nuggets you can find.
You can get lucky and receive them from balloon presents or Villagers. You can also mine for iron nuggets if you buy a Nook Miles Ticket and travel to deserted islands. Using a combination of all 4 of these methods will help get you the 30 iron nuggets you need.
2 Time Travel
If there is one thing that can divide the Animal Crossing community, it’s the subject of Time Traveling. There are parts of the community that feels like it’s cheating, other parts are perfectly fine with it and even feel like its necessary. However, you play the game is completely and totally up to you and what you want out of the game. There’s positives and negatives to Time Traveling, though New Horizons seemed to discourage the practice since there’s no in-game way to change the time.
1 Custom Designs
There has been a lot of creativity shown with the release of New Horizons as players have played around with the Custom Designs app that’s available on their NookPhone. This app is exactly what it says on the tin, it allows you to create your own custom designs for clothing and furniture in your house.
Add in the fact that players can customize their homes (and even the island itself with the Island Designer app), there are few limits to what you can create, even if there should be. Animal Crossing as a history of allowing players to make their places truly creepy. There’s already a player who recreated the horror movie Midsommar on their island!
NEXT: Animal Crossing: 10 Reasons Tom Nook Took Up Island Real Estate
