This page details the highlights of the Animal Crossing New Horizons Direct (Nintendo Direct, Animal Crossing Direct). Everything currently known about Animal Crossing New Horizons will be summarized here, so be sure to check the full list of ACNH features!
List of Contents
| Broadcast Time | Feb 20th 06:00 a.m. PT / 09:00 a.m. ET |
|---|---|
| Broadcast URL | Youtube (External Link) |
| Time Needed | About 25 Minutes |
| ・Choose your Designated Island | ・Choose the North or South Hemisphere |
| ・4 Seasons on the Island | ・Decide Your House's Location |
| ・Decide Where Other Residents Live |
In Animal Crossing: New Horizons you get to choose the island you want to live on.
After you've chosen your island, you will be asked to choose between the Nothern and Southern Hemispere.
Which Hemisphere Should You Choose?
The seasons are reversed for the Nothern and Southern Hemispheres. For example, when it's summer in the Nothern Hemisphere, it will be winter in the Southern Hemisphere.
 Spring |
 Summer |
 Fall |
 Winter |
Just like the previous games, there are four seasons on your island in Animal Crossing: New Horizon.
You can freely choose where to place your home on your chosen island.
It's also possibly to choose where the other residents will live. If there is a resident you like, a good idea would be placing their home close to yours.
| ・About Resident Services | ・Customize your furniture |
| ・About the Airport | ・Your Nook Phone |
| ・About the Island-Wide Broadcast | ・Nook Miles |
Part of the island's facilities include Resident Services, which as the name implies, provides various services to the folk inhabiting the island.
Fishing Poles, medicine, and other daily goods can be purchased via Resident Services
In addition to buying goods, you can also sell the items that you don't need here at Resident Services. Even items like clumps of weeds can be sold now, and you can also use them as materials for DIY tools and furniture.
At Resident Services, you can receive various advice from the Toom Nook and the Nooklings Timmy and Tommy.
There is also a DIY Workbench located in Resident Services. The Workbench is free to use initially, but it's not yet known whether or not use of Tom Nook's Workbench will remain free. It does look like you can craft your own DIY bench to take with you, however!
How to Get DIY Crafting Recipes | List of Recipes
You can use DIY Item Customization to change the color of furniture. Just keep in mind that you will need materials every time you want to craft something.
DIY Item Customization also alows you to decorate furniture with your own custom designs.
Another island facility introduced is the Airport.
You can access multiplayer options at the Airport. Here you can choose between local wireless and internet to invite friends! You can also travel to other islands from here.
How to Play with Friends (Multiplayer)
Through online or local play, you can play together with up to 7 others, for a total of 8 players.
The Airport also offers a Postal Service, which will allow you to send mail to other residents!
After moving to the deserted island, every new resident is provided with a NookPhone. This phone includes apps, such as the DIY Menu, Nook Mileage, and Island Builder.
Each day, Tom Nook will make an island-wide broadcast, where he will provide residents with information about the day's ongoing events, as well as living advice.
Through the Nook Mileage program, which can be accessed through your NookPhone, you can build up points for completing different types of activities. These points are known as Miles, and can be saved up for various purposes.
What Should You Spend Nook Miles on First?
Like Bells, Miles can be used as a form of currency when paying back your loans.
The miles you save up can be later be exhanged for special items (similar to shopping points that could be earned in previous titles). These items cannot be obtained elsewhere, so saving up miles will likely be an important element of New Horizons.
In addition to exchanging Miles for exclusive rewards and accessories, you can spend your Miles on tools and other useful abilities. The Tool Ring can be obtained in this manner, which will allow you to quickly access your tools and switch them out. This items is essential to your time in Animal Crossing, so you will want to get this one as soon as possible.
| ・Passing Out from Wasp Stings | ・Wisp is Back |
| ・Gulliver is Also Back | ・Rescue Service |
Unlike other Animal Crossing games, too many stings from a wasp will make you pass out. While this is unlikely to have a big effect, it is probably still best to avoid it.
Your face will swell up when stung by wasps. However, at Resident Services, you can buy medicine to immediately cure this swelling.
In the Animal Crossing Direct, Wisp was confirmed to appear in this game. In the video, they were talking at night, so his appearance is likely limited to the late hours.
Gulliver, the washed up sailor, returns to this Animal Crossing game. Given New Horizon's deserted island theme, he is a great match for the this game's setting.
Through your NookPhone, you can use the Rescue Service to warp home. It looks like it might cost you Miles to use the service, but this is currently not confirmed. From the music playing when you access it, it seems as if Rescue Service will be operated by Mr. Resetti, so you are likely to meet him through using the service.
| ・Building a House | ・Storage Space |
| ・Home Decoration Screen | ・Island Tours |
| ・Number of Users Per Island | ・The NookLink App |
The tent that you receive as your initial home can be upgraded into a full on house.
Just like in previous Animal Crossing games, your house can be expanded multiple times to add more and more rooms.
In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, your house has a built in storage space, which means that you can put away furniture and equipment that you aren't using from the items menu.
In New Horizons, you can decorate the inside of a room much easier than ever before. Rather than having to put furniture directly in the spot you want it and then pushing it or pulling it into place, you are given a bird's-eye view, where you are able to move furniture and decorations around the room much more freely.
Nook Miles can be exchanged for tickets that will allow you to tour a distant island.
Since you can bring back the items from these island tours, this will likely be a great way to earn money or collect extra DIY materials.
During these island tours, you may have a chance to meet other residents. Currently, it is unknown whether or not you will be able to invite them back to your island.
In New Horizons, up to Switch 8 users can have their own living space and account on a single island. Each user will need to have their own account on the Switch that is being used, so if you want to do Party Play, make sure everyone has an account to get started.
While 8 users can all live on one island, Party Play only allows for a maximum of 4 players at once. Party Play will consist of both Leaders and Followers. The Leaders will control where the camera moves to, while Followers will need to stay within the same screen of the Leader.
If followers find any items, they will get sent to the Recycle Box at Resident Services.
A feature called NookLink will allow your to connect your real life smart phone to your Animal Crossing: New Horizons account. More information on NookLink is coming soon.
NookLink services are planned to launch sometime in March 2020.
Through NookLink, you can scan QR codes from Custom Designs made in Animal Crossing: New Leaf and Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer and use them in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
NookLink also allows you to use your phone to chat in-game in Animal Crossing: New Horizons!
Another feature you can use from your smart phone through NookLink is the voice chat. Since you don't need to type, this feature makes commucation for online play super fast and convenient!
| ・Bringing in More Residents | ・Adding Extra Facilities |
| ・Remodeling Resident Service | ・Various Visitors |
| ・Planned Events | ・New Species |
| ・Free Updates | ・Adding Bridges and Slopes |
| ・Island Designer |
As you develop your island, Tom Nook will help you invite more residents.
Just like your own home and the home of the initial residents, you are able to decide where future residents will live.
It's possible to invite residents directly as well. Be sure to invite them to your island if you spot one of your favorite characters!
 Museum |
 Nook's Cranny |
 Able Sisters |
 Campsite |
Just like with residents, you'll be able to increase the island facilities as you develop your island. The facilities confirmed in the Animal Crossing Direct were the well-known Museum, Nook's Cranny, the Able Sisters' shop, and a campsite.
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The inside of the Museum have gotten some serious upgrades and now looks even more like real aquariums and museums!
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Nook's Cranny seems to be roughly the same as in previous games, with the additional of a cabinet. We may be able to see more changes if it becomes possible to upgrade the store.
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The Able Sisters' shop also does not seem to have changed a lot, but the addition of a fitting room makes choosing your new threads a lot more fun!
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Like in New Leaf, the campsite will allow residents from afar to visit you, also giving you a chance to invite them to stick around for good.
Resident Services start out in a tent, but you will eventually be able to upgrade it into a town hall-like building.
Once upgraded, you can request remodeling for your house, much like previous games in the series.
Also like in the previous games, you can change the roof color of your house.
At the upgraded Resident Services, you can move the location of island facilities. This means you can bring remotely located buildings together, making it less important how your island is initially laid out.
Expanding the Resident Services will also make the ever helpful Isabelle join you!
Once Isabelle joins you, she will help you with all matters concerning the island's development.
Like the previous Animal Crossing games, New Horizons will have events you can participate in. We think doing these events 8 people together is going to be a lot of fun!
In the Animal Crossing Direct, we also saw a new animal species. While the lizard-looking Bug-Off event holder is named Flick in English, the Japanese name Rex
seems to be leaning more towards dinosaurs.
It was announced that seasonal events like Halloween and Christmas will be free updates. It's unknown whether there will be event differences between New Horizon and older games in the series, but it might be a good idea to look into the events of previous games to refresh your memory.
 Bridges |
 Slopes |
In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, in addition to bridges to cross rivers, you can build slopes to go up hills.
Once you have developed your island enough, Island Designer will be unlocked, making it possible to freely change your island.
Using Island Designer you can freely make paths. In the previous games, you had to make paths by saving patterns in Custom Designs and then use those to make paths, but now you can easily make paths just by using the feature.
Once you have the Waterscaping permit, you can use the Island designer to make paths across rivers. It's unknown if there will be any downsides to using this, but it seems like this makes the need to create bridges quite low.
On top of using Waterscaping tools to modify rivers, you can build and remove cliffs using the Cliff-Construction permit.
With Waterscaping, you can extend rivers and even make waterfalls by using it on top of cliffs.
In Animal Crossing New Horizons, It is possible for multiple users to live on the same island. Up to eight people can have their own houses on the same island, but it will first require you to make separate profiles for each user.
While it is not yet know if any type of split-screen multiplayer will be available, you can play with up to four players at once via Party Play.
Like previous Animal Crossing games, you will be able to use amiibos with New Horizons. Of course, this includes the amiibo cards.
List of amiibos and Compatibility
In addition to being able to play with your registered friends, you can also meet and play with users who are not registered on your friend's list, via a temporary password.
However, while on other islands, tools like Axes and Shovels cannot be used, unless the user is registered as a best friend.
Do You Have to Pay for Online? (How to Play Online)
Animal Crossing is not compatible with the Nintendo Save Data Cloud Service. However, there will be a feature to be released at a later date, which will allow for recovery of saved data when it has been lost due to unforeseen circumstances.
The previously delayed Special Edition Animal Crossing Themed Nintendo Switch Set and Carrying Set pre-order release date has been officially set as as March 7th. It will go on sale March 13th, a week before the release of the game.
Active Animal Crossing Edition Switch Giveaways
There will be several free updates for Animal Crossing, which will allow you to take part in various seasonal events.
The first update will take place on March 20th, the day the game is released!
Update Information & How to Update
A new Television Spot was released on 1/1/2020 to promote the upcoming release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
| Head Back to News & Updates |
Animal Crossing Direct Summary
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Pre-Order Bonuses
Demo Information
System Requirements
ACNH Edition Switch Giveaways
Nintendo Direct
New Features
List of Villagers
List of Special Characters
List of New Characters
How to Delete Save Data
Update Information
How to Pre-Load
Unchangeable Features
Spending Nook Miles
Picking an Island Name
Best Island Layouts
Changing Hair and Face
Best Tent Location
Choosing a Hemisphere
How to Use the Camera
How to Play With Friends
amiibo Compatibility
Online Play
Nook Stop Explained
NookLink Features
How to Get DIY Recipes
