Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a casual, social simulation game originally released in 2020, and rereleased on the Switch 2. Read on to learn everything we know, our first impressions of its Switch 2 release, and if it's worth your money.
Everything We Know About Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Animal Crossing: New Horizons Story
The story of Animal Crossing: New Horizons is largely open-ended, giving players the freedom to shape their island's development and progression. While there’s no rigid narrative, the game begins with a simple premise that sets the stage for the player’s adventure.
After purchasing the Deserted Island Getaway Package from Tom Nook Inc., players arrive on an untouched island in need of care and creativity. Once there, they quickly find themselves in debt to Tom Nook, the entrepreneurial raccoon, and must work to repay him by transforming the island into a vibrant and thriving community. From this point onward, players are free to decide how they want to achieve their goals, whether through resource gathering, crafting, decorating, or improving the island’s infrastructure.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons Gameplay
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a life-simulation game where players take on the role of stewards for a deserted island, gradually transforming it into a vibrant, thriving community. This is achieved by gathering resources, crafting furniture and tools, collecting various creatures and items, and carefully designing both personal and public spaces. The ultimate goal is to improve the island’s overall quality as a destination while enjoying the creative freedom to shape it as they wish.
The game offers players a great deal of control over how their island evolves. Whether focusing on decoration, organization, or preserving its natural beauty, players can take their time to craft a space that reflects their personal style. A core loop of collection, customization, and maintenance ensures there’s always something to do, with daily activities offering a steady sense of progression.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons Release Date
Animal Crossing: New Horizons was released on March 20, 2020, for the Nintendo Switch, and on January 15, 2025, for the Nintendo Switch 2.
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| $59.99 | $64.99 |
Animal Crossing: New Horizons Review [Switch 2 First Impressions]
New Horizons For a New Generation
There’s no understating the effect Animal Crossing: New Horizons had on the public back when it first released in 2020. Far from the unassuming social simulator with cutesy animals everyone expected it to be, its birth was given chorus by the quarantine restrictions at the time. It would’ve been a great game nonetheless, but it turned out to be just what the doctor ordered for millions stuck indoors for days at a time.
It’s been more than half a decade and a whole generation of consoles since, and New Horizons reenters the market, floating not on the bated breath of a captive audience, but on the benefit of a few years’ worth of feedback. Coinciding with its Switch 2 release is its massive 3.0 update, promising new content for everyone to go with its next-gen port.
So what has become of this quarantine darling’s second debut? Did it reach such heights as it did before? Well, it’s too early in its lifetime (and my playthrough) to tell, but first impressions are already looking good. Let’s make like a villager looking for a new life on your island and dive right in.
Living An Affordable Islander Life
Before we get into the trenches of what’s new, let’s establish what the game is for the uninitiated, or those who only have a passing understanding of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. New Horizons was first released in 2020 for the first Nintendo Switch, and is currently the latest entry in Nintendo’s longstanding Animal Crossing series.
Designed to be a casual and slow-paced experience, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a social simulation game, where the goal of each playthrough is to live your life however you want among cute animal villagers.
For New Horizons in particular, you opt to live on an uninhabited island along with a couple of other aspiring homeowners as a part of Tom Nook’s latest real estate endeavor. You’re loaned a bunch of bells (that’s money in this game), and you’re paying that loan back as you gather up resources, craft items, and resell them right back to Nook himself.
It’s the kind of game where the journey is more important than the destination. The experience of bringing your island up to snuff is the goal of the entire thing, and how you make that happen is completely up to you. Whether you choose to craft and resell until you’re rich, collect rare critters and specimens for the museum, or just play the stock market (yes, really), what matters is you live the island life you want at your own pace.
Now, with that out of the way, let’s talk about what new bells and whistles this Switch 2 rerelease brings with it, because there’s quite a few, and not all of them even come from the console itself.
Taking Advantage of the Switch 2’s New Functions
Let’s start with the elephant in the room, and no, I don’t mean one of the villagers. New Horizons is a rerelease, so there’s nothing new to say about its most predominant features and mechanics outside of what the Switch 2 provides it. At least that’s what I’d say if the Switch 2 release didn’t coincide with the massive 3.0 update Nintendo teased a few months back.
There’s something new for old and new players to appreciate in this package, so let’s start with the latter and highlight what Switch 2 exclusive improvements and features I’ve encountered so far. First off, graphics and framerate. The Switch 2 is the newer model, so naturally, it’s more powerful than its predecessor by an order of magnitude, and that much is visible with AC: NH, though "using the whole Switch 2" will require more effort than you might expect.
This is owing to the fact that New Horizons is, at its core, a social simulation game where the most bombastic, graphically demanding thing that can happen is purely dependent on your decoration skills. Basically, the game looks great on the Switch 2, that’s just not entirely surprising considering how undemanding the original version was to begin with.
Don’t worry, though, the Switch 2 port also brings with it new mechanics to go with the expected graphical upgrade, and it has everything to do with the Switch 2’s new mouse control function. You’re not exactly directing your villager through point-and-click as if this were an RTS, but it does allow you a greater degree of precision for certain decorating tasks, such as with the customizable patterns mechanic. You can also use mouse controls to move things around while editing your house and decor.
There’s also the megaphone item, which utilizes the Switch 2’s built-in microphone. This new item can be bought at Nook's Cranny for a decent amount of bells and can let you call out to your villagers in-game using your real-life voice. Niche, perhaps, but definitely unique.
Overall, the Switch 2 release isn’t completely unjustified and makes use of everything the new model brings. I could argue that this situation is "using a sledgehammer to crack a nut" levels of overkill, considering how much firepower the game needed in the first place, but maybe there’s more value to be found further through the casual playthrough.
Update 3.0 Was What the First Release Needed
Moving on to what else the game offers with its rerelease, there’s the long-awaited Update 3.0, which applies to both versions of the game. Although most of what the update offers is reserved for developed islands, there are a few quality-of-life improvements added that make the early game more bearable.
These changes mostly have to do with crafting. The game used to require you to build everything one at a time, which isn’t too bad if a recipe made 10 of the object at a time, like with fences. But what if the hot item at Nook’s Cranny was a Toy Block Bookshelf, and you’re planning to cash in with all your wood? Say you wanna sell 20 or so of them, you’ll need to go through the crafting animation 20 times for the Toy Wood Block component, then 20 more times for the bookshelf. With the new update, you can now build items in bulk, so long as you have the materials for them.
It’s a small thing, but it makes a massive difference for us who like to craft everything on our island. Speaking of crafting, it’s been streamlined another way, too! You can now craft using materials from your house’s storage. No need to clutter your inventory with materials anymore, just stow them away and craft to your heart’s content!
Building got a major quality-of-life improvement as well, since moving stuff around can now be done tile-by-tile for those with very specific visions for their island. Now is the best time for decorators and pack rats to return to their island and put those inventories to great use, especially since you’re not limited to the confines of reality in this update anymore.
Build the Island of Your Dreams…Literally!
This is mostly for those already in the endgame with their 5-star islands maximally themed to every niche IP known to man, but you can now do more of that with the introduction of Slumber Islands. Think of it as New Horizons’ creative mode, since Slumber Islands gives you a whole new series of islands to build on with items you don’t necessarily have. So long as they’re in your catalogue, meaning you have had them at least once before, you can add them to your Slumber Island.
This is groundbreaking—pun very much intended—for the inspired villagers among the fandom who just can’t get enough of turning their uncanilly square islands into literal works of art. No need to reset anymore to try out a new aesthetic, but if you really want to, there’s something for that now, too.
You Won’t Regretti Trying Resetti
The Slumber Islands eliminate the need to make a fresh save just so you can retry your Hawaii-themed island resort build for the third time, but these islands also rob you of the experience of grinding out that view. It’s not exactly a new feature; rather, it’s a returning one, but Resetti’s Reset Service is here to help.
Just find Resetti on your island, and he’ll give you the works on what resetting entails. You can also just ask him to clean up specific parts of the island instead of the whole thing, if you have a specific blank slate in mind. It’s too early in my playthrough for me to make use of his services, but this would’ve been a great help back in 2020.
Great to Have on the Switch 2, But the Updates Were Necessary
That’s pretty much everything I’ve gotten to with my playthrough of AC: NH’s Switch 2 version. There’s a bunch more late-game content that the update and port have certainly changed, but I’m yet to experience them in full, though my hopes remain high.
My first impressions of the game’s rerelease aren’t exactly glowing, but that’s not to say it’s an unwanted or awful port. For one thing, it didn’t come empty-handed. Overkill as it is, bringing New Horizons to…well…new horizons brought with it entirely new mechanics and refinements of past ones previously impossible. It’s a bunch of new experiences laid over a solid gameplay base, so there’s really nothing too bad about it.
The best part is that if you already had the 2020 version, you can just upgrade to this version for 5 bucks, which is around what these new mechanics are worth. The real star of the show has to be Update 3.0, though, which isn’t strictly for the Switch 2 version. The change in quality-of-life is simply too great and too helpful not mention, although that much is coincidental.
Mayhaps a continued playthrough would change my mind about what the Switch 2 does for a 6-year-old game, but for now, I’m gleefully reliving that island grind; mouse controls and megaphones or otherwise.
Game8 Reviews
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Animal Crossing: New Horizons Product Information
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| Title | ANIMAL CROSSING: NEW HORIZONS |
|---|---|
| Release Date | March 20, 2020 (Switch) January 15, 2026 (Switch 2) |
| Developer | Nintendo |
| Publisher | Nintendo |
| Supported Platforms | Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2 |
| Genre | Simulation |
| Number of Players | 1-8 |
| ESRB Rating | ESRB E |
| Official Website | Animal Crossing: New Horizons Official Website |
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