Nintendo Tree House – Animal Crossing: New Horizons | Everything You Need to Know!

When people talk about their desert island game, Animal Crossing is brought up because of the nearly endless gameplay and chores you can do! Plus your debt to Tom Nook will never be paid off and he owns you forever. In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the desert island game comes to you!! You play a character who’s hired by Nook Inc. to colonize a desert island and create a brand-new town from scratch! Unlike being dropped into an already existing town, this time you can make the town in any way you want to!

The demo began a little bit after the beginning the game, so we didn’t start from scratch – just nearly from scratch. Like usual, the weather of the world lines up with your internal Switch clock. And for the first time ever, if you play in the Southern Hemisphere, your weather will line up with you as well!

During the Tree House presentation, Nintendo showed off three major features and I’ll walk you through all of them one by one.

First!

Nintendo showed off the expanding freedom of your character as you create a town from nothing. The opening of this game reminded me a lot of the start to Stardew Valley. You arrive on an abandoned lot and your job is to clean everything up plus make it your favorite dream town.

The tent you start out reminded me of a lot of the spot you find yourself in to begin Pocket Camp for iOS and Android. Like in Happy Home Designers, you can move your furniture and, for the first time ever, you can move your furniture and place it outside of your tent and eventual house!

Just like in previous games, in order to craft new items you need to gather the amount of resources necessary to do so. On top of that, you can buy new items (with the help of Tom Nook of course).

DIY recipes are the things you can craft for the world based on which items you have. For example, in the presentation, they made a log bench.

The DIY App

In order to access the DIY app you need to use your “Nook Phone” (because of course you do). You can also meet Tom Nook at his tent in order to craft items and sell resources or crafted goods to Timmy.

By doing all of these things you’ll unlock “Nook Miles” (he’s a monopolistic bastard) which works like an “airline mileage” program (their words not mine). The more you do, the more rewards you get. You can also sell any and all item you pick up in the world. So unlike in previous games, everything has some sort of monetary value – even weeds!

Second!

Multiplayer!

For years we’ve been able to visit our friends' Animal Crossing towns, but we’ve never been able to directly interact with them in real-time. This time around, Nintendo is changing that! With a feature called “Call an Islander”, you can bring a friend into your game at any time to play along with you. You both can either chare a joy con or they can use their own Switch.

In New Horizons, you can have up to eight players with you on a single island as they gather items with you, trade items with you, and help you craft new items. They didn’t mention whether there were multiplayer exclusive crafting items or if there were other bonuses for playing together but working together in real-time with up to eight friends seems incredible enough!

Having a real multiplayer system in Animal Crossing and Pokemon this E3 is a major step for Nintendo in the direction of the future. They seem to have finally figured out how to make multiplayer work in their biggest titles and they’re embracing it!

You can also take photos with your friends to commemorate big moments (or hilarious ones) and you can all meet new animal friends together

Hamlet with two players

Third!

Long-term support. While this game is delayed until March 20, 2020, they promised to support this game for a very long time! That means potentially years down the road.

They also didn’t mention if there is a Pocket Camp tie-in, but I have a feeling they will tell us there is a reward for playing Pocket Camp in a future Animal Crossing Exclusive Direct.

The thesis of this Nintendo presentation was: in New Horizons, you can do everything you couldn’t do in previous games. They succeeded in delivering that message!