017 gloomville

Animal Crossing: New Horizons has been the real star of 2020 for me. I am still engrossed as I was on March 20th when I pulled off the wrapper and pushed the cartridge into my Switch console. I haven't taken the game cartridge out since. It goes without saying the game could not have come out at a better time!

I rate Animal Crossing: New Horizons ★★★★★. Trust me it is well-deserved. Nintendo really knocked it out of the park with this one!

Animal Crossing: New Horizons has given me another world to escape to. While the graphics are simple and colorful, the game has opened up a new platform to connect with other people all across the globe. I've made new friends in the UK, and I meet new people every day. Currently I am a member in a forum dedicated to the game, and I advertise wares in two Discord channels. It's a lot of fun and the community is immensely helpful. I just showed up one day and now I'm part of the family.

Adding Animal Crossing tags/accounts to my social media has also been very positive. I'd much rather see their memes, save their designs and connect to play in-game than have contacts try to sell me real-life amenities... Don't judge me, the Internet is my escape from the mundane! 🎮🌈💀

PROS
☾ Attractive game with simple but very cute graphics
☾ More cute villagers than I can fit in my island!
☾ Fun themes to decorate: woodland, '90s fun, Japanese village style, the list goes on

☾ Visiting friends islands and admiring their creativity decorating

☾ Active online communities

☾ The Bell Tree forums, a laid back forum I found very resourceful when I was starting out
☾ Nookazon website and Discord channels are the most useful to find rare DIYs, villagers and materials

☾ The ability to host events people love and want to come back

CONS
☾ Isabelle's introductory dialogue greeting is unnecessarily long and repetitive
☾ Dialogue scroll takes too long during take off and landings
☾ Menus could be much more concise to waste less time
☾ Shopping doesn't let you pick how many bundles you want

☾ I got scammed once already, paid for a villager and then got ghosted on for the trade
(User Knviess 2461—8834—1029) 💀
☾ The game gets repetitive when it comes to harvesting necessary materials
☾ Items available seem limited, pending releases feel necessary

☾ Small rooms in the house

☾ Not enough storage space







GLOOMVILLE

A couple of days ago I achieved a 5 star rating on my island, as well as an S rank over 10,000 points in my home interior. It took a bit of experimentation to figure out exactly what I wanted, but now I feel very proud of my work. Now the mail I am getting related to the inside of my house is talking about feng shui. It compliments the placement of some of my items but mostly leaves me feeling confused. I hope to bump into an Animal Crossing feng shui master that can help me make heads or tails of the new way of thinking about furniture arrangement.

My island is looking pretty good for its theme park attractions. People coming in have a lot of fun, and I have a steady build up of Nook Mile Tickets that I use to buy more items and diys necessary to enhance Gloomville. Currently there are no plans to uproot flowers for the skull waterfall terraforming. I estimate that project may take a full week to complete, and I do not yet know how much it will end up affecting my island until I dive into it.

My favorite time of day is night time. The mush and nova lamps give my island a pretty etheric feel, perfect for stargazing and wishing. I have found that this is when I have the most fun in-game!

HYBRID FLOWER BONANZA TREASURE HUNT
What started out as a casual flower hunt is now a full industry in-game.  After every event is done I hire a cleaning crew to help with straggler items and flowers, buried flowers, island layout arrangement of trees and flowers, and general help procuring flowers that have previously sold out. After a few hours of work the restocking process begins and regularly takes at least half a day to three days to complete.

Once my flower fields are filled in, I pick out any weeds and tidy up if any flowers have bloomed out of place. After a thorough look combing through the entire island, I open the gate and welcome anywhere from 10—15 visitors coming to shop for flowers. Some of them take two to three trips. The feedback so far of what I've got going on in my island has been stellar, and I just love making people happy as they play in my island.

VILLAGERS
I ended up with Bunnie, Raymond and Marina in my island. It's tough because I want like 15 villagers and I can only have ten at a time.  While the game is flexible in that regard, with less people playing it seems harder to find desired villagers. I expect I will need to make my mind up on a final villager roster eventually. So far I have been rotating villagers quite a lot. I let Peanut, Sprinkle and Lucky go. When they leave, you miss them. I'll likely be moving them back in at some point. That's just part of playing the game.

I should have realized that my list of dream villagers from early March would change. Some villagers you get more attached to than you originally thought. That was the case for me with Drago and Marshal. I don't think the game would be as fun if you had the same 10 villagers forevermore. That said, there are some villagers I'm never moving out. Sorry Pietro. 💜💖🧡💛💚💙

Animal Crossing: New Horizons has especially been there for me during this horrible pandemic. And so has my sketchbook; today I worked on a spread in which the challenge was filling the entire page in. It was a study in values and background texture. Due to the nature of brush pens I am allowing myself to play casually, using this time to experiment. If a mark doesn't come out perfect or a drawing doesn't quite fit what I'm going for, it serves as an example being made out of my mistakes. I am embracing the imperfections and accepting them as part of the process. I am on the last four pages of an old sketchbook, with my Tim Burton studies sketchbook well underway. The satisfaction of being creative is enough to fuel my interest to continue... and so I do.

Every day I get up I'm grateful to have these amazing worlds to retreat to. The outside world is too stressful to be focused on all day. I'd much rather make happy memories with my friends and do something productive.

TOURING

Something I love doing now and then is visiting someone else's island. I also enjoy screen shots my friends and other players take while shopping at or hanging out in my island. I hope you enjoyed screen shots from my Animal Crossing adventures!