Old, New Horizons

While I’ve only met with my English club twice, once a brief 15 minute intro, and then the first official meeting, we brainstormed some ideas of what to do. I want to make English club as fun as I can, so I suggested some board and video games. I did a bit of research and heard that Animal Crossing can be a fun way to learn English. It makes sense to me, you can learn the names of furniture, clothes, fish, bugs, and practice daily casual conversation. So, for the first time in probably 3 years, I booted up Animal Crossing: New Horizons. 

Animal Crossing, for the uninitiated, is a social simulation game. You play as a human villager living alongside anthropomorphic animals who speak animalese, a very cute, or very annoying, synthesized language. You can fish, catch bugs, plant flowers, decorate your home, and make friends with the other villagers. It’s an open ended game with no way to win or lose, you can set your own goals and enjoy it as long as you want.

I knew it would be tough to jump back in with my old Island, and I wasn’t sure my old island of  Ki-Ki Kove would be the best island to work with. So, I heartlessly deleted my old island that I had probably spent dozens of hours on. I didn’t even do a final tour of the island to say goodbye, I figured that would just make it harder. Instead I wanted to start from scratch, I could maybe even get my English club students to help me come up with ideas. 

While I started this as a possible thing to do for the English club, on some level I knew that was a bit of an excuse. Animal Crossing: New Horizons came out during the pandemic, and became a huge source of comfort during uncertain times. While I’m feeling pretty settled here in Japan, I could still use a little bit of comfort now and then. And so, I named my island Janada, hoping it could become a mix of Canada, my home, and Japan, my new home. 

It's been so long since I first played New Horizons I almost forgot how slow it is at the beginning, you have such limited tools, and can’t even cross the rivers until a few real world days go by. Thankfully, I’m a magical time traveler so I fiddle with the date and time on my switch to try and speed things up. Even with that it still felt like progress was slow, getting new villagers to my island, expanding my house, and getting all of my tools. 

After playing for about 2 real world weeks, probably more in game days thanks to time traveling, I finally got the K.K slider concert on my island, signaling the “end” of the game. Mostly it just meant that I had unlocked all of the main features, and had gotten a decent handle on the game. If you’ve played Animal Crossing you know this is where the real work begins. After the concert you get access to terraforming, the ability to reshape your island landscape. 

I was both excited and dreading this part. I started to think of all the cool things I could do with my island, but dreaded the actual execution. Games like the sims, use a kind of edit mode, where you can see a grid overlaid on the map, and you can quickly make large scale design changes using your mouse. Animal Crossing on the other hand is painfully slow, there’s no grid, no on screen cursor, instead you manually move your villager into place and make adjustments one by one. 

It absolutely makes sense for the kind of game that Animal Crossing is, maybe this makes it more understandable or approachable for younger players. For me though, it’s frustrating and time consuming. Don’t get me started on trying to make things symmetrical or centered. Since there’s no grid available, you have to try and line things up manually, which involves either eyeballing it, or digging holes so you can count the number of “blocks” something is. 

I spent an hour or two trying to make an area for the town store that would be surrounded by the river. After tons of small adjustments and tweaks, I was all ready to move the store to its new location. Only to my horror did I learn that the town store is 7 blocks in width. My new island creation was 12 blocks in width, which meant that while my cute island was lovely and symmetrical, the store would never be centered. 

There are tons of times in real life where this kind of small thing wouldn’t bother me. I remember trying to get my couch, TV, and coffee table all aligned before eventually giving up. The picture frames on the wall near the TV, left by the previous jet, were crooked, but that didn’t bother me in the slightest. I care about my TV, couch, and coffee table, I couldn't care less about the picture frames. 

I care about my Animal Crossing island though, and if I put my town store on this lovely symmetrical island and it was off center, it would bug me every time I went there. With a big sigh and few choice words, I decided I would just have to move my house to this little island, and make a market on the opposite side of the island. 

While I have my gripes with the game, mostly around terraforming and some quality of life frustrations, it really has been a delight to return to. The music, the fun personality of the villagers, feeling accomplished even for doing small tasks like watering flowers, or fishing, it’s all very comforting, and very fun. I first played Animal Crossing on the GameCube as a kid. I don’t remember how we came into possession of it, but I assume it was at the behest of my sister. Most of the Nintendo consoles were “shared” growing up, since they often had more games that she would enjoy. Animal Crossing was one of them, and while I played a little bit, I had mostly written it off as being too boring. 

I might have played New Leaf on the 3ds, but I can’t quite remember. I missed all the other games as I either had not enough interest, or just other games to play. During the pandemic, it was the perfect time to pick up a game like Animal Crossing, and I surprised myself with just how much I got into it. It might be that I’m older and my tastes have changed, or that I started listening to podcasts while I play certain games, and this is a perfect podcast game. 

Even though I may never actually play this game with my English club, it gave me a great excuse to jump back into an old comforting game. Having the goal of mixing my old home of Canada with my new home in Japan feels like a fun idea to work towards. I can try and recreate spots from Vancouver, or try and get villagers that remind me of my friends from home. Or I can create spots that will help capture my new adventures and experiences here in Japan. 

While I’m here in Japan it can remind me of Canada, and when I return to Canada it can remind me of Japan. I may not continue to play the game everyday like I have been, but having a cozy game to return to is always a great option to have in your back pocket. Animal Crossing: New Horizons was special when it came out, arriving at a time when we all needed some comfort, but it remains special. It represents for me the potential of games to become a comforting way to relax, unwind, and enjoy the simple things of day to day life.