In Animal Crossing New Horizons, everyone actually creates their own island, but playing with friends makes it so much better. MeinMMO author Eilyn Rapp experienced this and played with real friends for the first time.
What is Animal Crossing New Horizons? ACNH is a kind of life simulation where a player moves to a deserted island and creates something there. The neighbors are animals that move in one after another.
The goal is to make the island a lively place that is also “visited” and receives a good rating. Essentially, Animal Crossing would be a single-player game revolving around a character. However, New Horizons offers multiplayer features that sometimes make it feel like an MMO.
Playing together makes ACNH so special
This is how you can play together: The game itself offers features that let you play with others. You can:
- Receive visits through online features
- Visit other islands: either directly with a code or as a dream
- Send maps/gifts “via mail”
While you can visit each other, there are restrictions when a “stranger” is on the island. Your visitors can look around and interact with your residents, but as help on the island itself, it works rather poorly.
Everyone helps everyone
This is how the multiplayer features are also used: Not only is it suitable for visits, but you can also play with other players. Often, trade takes place for items needed for your island. This otherwise takes a long time if you want to collect them alone on the island.
However, in the Animal Crossing community, it often happens that you receive items as gifts without the other person expecting anything in return, like bells or Nook Mile tickets (valued currencies). This is something I’ve mostly experienced myself.
For me, it has always been clear: If I don’t need something and can bring joy to someone else, I never ask for anything in return. I simply enjoy helping others, and it seems I’m not alone in this.
In the Animal Crossing community, I am in the right place
This means playing with friends for me: It brings me great joy when someone is happy about something I gave them. This is how I came to the right community and found some friends.
As I noticed how open, helpful, and understanding the players of Animal Crossing are, I got more involved outside of the game, in social media like Twitter and Discord of ACNH. At first, I just dipped in occasionally to find inspiration, but that changed quickly.
I befriended a person who created a Discord server for ACNH players and was promoted to a mod there. The server grew quickly, and soon I had a whole group with whom I could exchange ideas about the game or hold small parties in the game.
Shortly thereafter, Twitter and Discord became my retreat places where I could share pictures of my island, ask for help, or discuss my favorite residents. Friendships formed that go far beyond the game, and I now can’t imagine my life without them.
It is the first time that I am truly part of a community, and now I can finally understand what that means. It makes playing so much better and easier for me. After 9 months, I am still excited about Animal Crossing New Horizons and I am sure it is because I have found true friends with whom I can share this passion. For this, I even turned my back on the Halloween event in Fortnite, although that has always been my highlight of the year.
What about you? Have you also found friends in a game that you can’t imagine being without?
