Animal Crossing We wanted a Horizon as well

Zelgerath doing God's work.

I agree with Drunka's taste on this one. Some of the built-up islands look mighty impressive, but I personally prefer things to look rural and foresty with a smattering of paths and civilisation here and there. Space is nice.

JayMoyles wrote:

Can't see the likes of KK Slider coming to perform in a field - that dog's got standards.

The dog who wears no clothes has standards?

Buskalilly wrote:

I went to my friend Shana's island today and fucking hell, it was like playing a different game entirely. Paving, fences, organisation . . . it was more like a city from Pokemon than an animal forest.

It was impressive, but doing that to my island doesn't really appeal to me. The idyllic, rural, living-with-the-animals thing is part of the vibe, innit?

One of my friends has done the same. It's got a ski chalet and a music stage and she's making a baseball pitch... I think it might be nice to do that to the run-up to the airport, have an intricately designed 'driveway' if you will; and possibly even to the residential district. The rest of the island, though... yep I'd rather it was natural-feeling. In fact, I'm considering putting the weeds back once I've hit five stars.

OrangeRakoon wrote:

JayMoyles wrote:

Can't see the likes of KK Slider coming to perform in a field - that dog's got standards.

The dog who wears no clothes has standards?

Look, he won't even sniff at an island if it's got less than three stars. That dog knows what's up.

I've got parts of my island still somewhat natural with a few decorations here or there - I'm not making a sprawling town like some folks or anything here!

I will occasionally have ideas of things here and there that I want to make but I still wanna keep it rural in places, I do enjoy having a project to work on though even if I change it within about a week.

My Island has some areas where things are grouped together and I've done pathways but wouldn't wanna make it too orderly as it wouldn't feel like Animal Crossing. Curious to see how some people's islands are looking, haven't seen most since the first week.

Treesmurf wrote:

Curious to see how some people's islands are looking, haven't seen most since the first week.

Maybe we should start a little cribs series for our islands. Each week, someone is in the spotlight, everyone else visits, takes screenshots and posts their thoughts all up in here.

I'm up for that!

Balladeer wrote:

In fact, I'm considering putting the weeds back once I've hit five stars.

You can get 5 stars with weeds. I never got rid of all my weeds, hit 5 stars, and now I've grown loads more in my forest area and I'm still at 5 stars.

I've weeded the place now, it can stay that way!

Theoretically up for GNamer island-hopping, but I must warn you: there's really nothing much to see on mine. The Lady's constructing an orchard from scratch: I have a few path tiles. Speaking of orchard construction, do you ever get to adjust the beach/grass divide?

I think the border between the grass and the beach is the one thing that can't be altered.

I can invite you all round my island at some point - although it's basically my mum's island! I have done very little. Except I am a horticultural master. Why am I? I hate going anywhere near my own garden in real life.

Hidden talent, clearly, just waiting to be discovered.

Jimbob wrote:

I think the border between the grass and the beach is the one thing that can't be altered.

Boo. Seems a bit of an oversight. There's a ruddy great rock just sitting there, doing nothing, that I'd quite like to get rid of too - but presumably can't.

Presumably you don't mean one of the grey ones you have dotted around the island? Because you can eat a piece of fruit and smash those bad boys to pieces and they regenerate elsewhere in the island within the next day or two.

Rum Rapture wrote:

Presumably you don't mean one of the grey ones you have dotted around the island? Because you can eat a piece of fruit and smash those bad boys to pieces and they regenerate elsewhere in the island within the next day or two.

I saw a picture on Twitter where she had all her rocks in a nice little fenced-off rock garden. The caption was something like "I finally got all my rocks in one place!"

I now understand how painstaking that must have been . . .

They respawn at a rate of 1 a day, so basically only ever smash up one at a time if you always want max rockage.

It is a little bit of a shame the beach can't be terraformed. All of these things are fixed at island generation and can't be changed:

- The beach in general
- The rock areas on the beach
- The hidden beach on the north side
- The two river mouths
- The headland that juts out into the sea
- The fishing pier
- The airport
- The plaza/resident services

I'm pretty happy with most of mine, but my rock areas are all really small so I get a bit jealous when I see other people being able to do cool things with them! My headland though does appear to have a lot more area to it than most, so I guess that was the trade-off - and I really appreciate having the room for a lighthouse with fences on all sides

I suppose it'll help the natural look, but yep: bit annoying. Presumably easy to change, too. That's the trouble with trying to criticise this game: given the early additions of Leif and Redd, who knows what changes they're going to make down the line? In which case the early grafting might feel all the sweeter. Or I might just wonder why those additions aren't in the game in the first place.

I'm beginning to get a little sad about my total lack of scorpions.

Got this a few days ago and have been enjoying it a lot. Has made a better impression on me than New Leaf did - which I did enjoy but had mixed feelings about some of its innovations, as well as the lack of them in some areas.

First of all, it's minor but I'm glad they dropped the mayor thing. It was fine and even fun from a gameplay perspective, but I prefer your character to be just a random person in the village who takes a more prominent role from pro-activeness and not because it's randomly handed down to you.

I like how much more there is to do in these first few days, even if it is partly achieved by giving you less at the start, but the added choices and involvement you have in setting up the island more than make up for it. And though I've embraced the goalless and endless nature of Animal Crossing outside of the obvious - paying off the loans, collecting furniture for the catalogue and exhibits for the museum - it's nice to have even more to shoot for through Nook Miles.

Also liking the museum's redesign. Looks real nice.

Kriken wrote:

Also liking the museum's redesign. Looks real nice.

IT BLOODY DOES DOESN'T IT
Sorry, I still get excited about the museum - it now looks better than many real museums.

I enjoyed the museum stamp drive that was on (is still on?) recently. It gave me an excuse to wander my now substantially fuller museum, which wasn't something I've done since the first few weeks of the game.

I'd been deliberately putting off visiting my museum so I could enjoy it when it was more full, and I'm glad I did. The stamp rally was really nice.

I love museums.

In other news, to the surprise of no-one, I noticed the other day that I am over 100 hours on this game (along with Pokemon Sword).

I love the Switch.

The stamp rally was cute once, but a bit baffling that the locations are randomised each day but there is almost no point repeating it because the reward is just duplicated. I would have preferred needing to find all of the stamp locations at once, as it is I've missed out on most of them because there is not enough motivation to repeat the whole thing

Buskalilly wrote:

In other news, to the surprise of no-one, I noticed the other day that I am over 100 hours on this game (along with Pokemon Sword).

I recently broke the 135 hour mark. One of my colleagues recently broke the 270 hour mark. Coconuts!

Agreed with OR about the Stamp Rally (given that the plaques only sell for 300 apiece). Also: why do we need to be told about it every day?

Kriken wrote:

I like how much more there is to do in these first few days, even if it is partly achieved by giving you less at the start, but the added choices and involvement you have in setting up the island more than make up for it. And though I've embraced the goalless and endless nature of Animal Crossing outside of the obvious - paying off the loans, collecting furniture for the catalogue and exhibits for the museum - it's nice to have even more to shoot for through Nook Miles.

Yes! They really nailed the pacing early doors on this one in my opinion.

Trouble is, I'm now in the period where the pacing has slowed a bit. That's fine: it was always going to, that's inevitable, and I'm sure they'll drop a cool new update again soon. It's the repetition that's getting to me a bit. Again, there's only so much they can do with that, but I swear I read the 'MUSCLE MADNESS!' spiel every day. Blathers isn't helping either. Surely wanting a few more lines from my robot ostrich who doesn't have any organic muscles anyway, in a game designed to be played daily for months, isn't unreasonable?

Also: why the feck do we get bloody Leif every week and Redd once in a blue moon? And then he has a ship full of fakes? (On the plus side I did get a haunted dogu which is pretty swish.)

On more positive matters, I got my first meteor shower the other night, and duly gave my gnome a moon kingdom to rule over in the top of my house. Meanwhile The Lady's putting hours into creating her orchard and searching for the elusive golden trout. I may have created a monster...

Redd has turned up literally once on my island. I must be missing him on the odd days I've skipped playing the game.

I had Redd yesterday, got a nice painting in my museum this morning
I wouldn't want Redd to appear too often, I'm expecting this game to last me for like the next five years!

It is very unlikely I'll be playing it this time next year. Did get a painting today though!

The start of a new summer month is always great though - new stuff turning up in the water and the air! There's finally some good reasons to fish in the river now. Lots of tropical fish.

Tropical Fish are lame all about Marine or at least Cichlids.

I've not played for ages now, but might have a play tomorrow because of the update.