Animal Crossing: New Horizons

I had an emergency at work this week, which meant I had a very hectic morning. Not unusual in itself, but I missed my 8 am session of Animal Crossing New Horizons.

What made that day different was I never twigged I hadn’t played Animal Crossing. So my Nook Miles ABD streak was broken, Unfortunate, but not the end of the world.

Usually, I realise at the end of the day I hadn’t fired up my Switch and choose to play or not. Missing this has me wondering how much longer I will be playing Animal Crossing again.

I have needed to take an afternoon and clean up the island of Game Room for weeks. There have been plenty of Sunday afternoons I could have sat on the couch and I still haven’t attempted it.

One of my villagers has moved on, and I am making no effort to get someone else to replace them. Curlos isn’t a bad character, only very meh. This is my attitude to Animal Crossing New Horizons as a whole right now, as I am not progressing anything.

If I sat down for an afternoon and cleaned things up like I have been talking about, I would have things to do. I could move to Happy Home Paradise, and start working toward new goals.

Like a lot of gaming, it boils down to motivation and desire. I enjoy the 8 am Animal Crossing New Horizons session. But is it the game I enjoy, or the regular stress-free break?

Let’s see what happens during the next week. I am going to try and take my breaks, but change from Animal Crossing New Horizons to whatever I want to play. It could be interesting what I pick.

I want to make up my mind on Animal Crossing New Horizons. It’s been weeks, and I haven’t taken any time to clean up Game Room. Villagers have come and gone, and I am in no rush to fill the empty home on my island.

But I log in once a day, and at the very least hit the ABD to keep my miles streak going. At the most, I do the 5 Nook Miles tasks. But I don’t spend any of the miles. Or go shopping. It’s been weeks since I went with Kapp’n or flew to an island.

So what is it about Animal Crossing New Horizons that stops me from moving on this time?

Sifu had taken over my nights, and this week Pokemon Legends: Arceus took that role. My island of Game Room has become a good intention – I want to spend time there, but any excuse will do to not make that time.

So this coming weekend, I am going to sit down and play Animal Crossing New Horizons for an afternoon. After Board Game Arena, I am going to curl up on the couch with my Switch and sort out the flower situation.

I considered doing it this week, but we have a few things to get sorted by the weekend. See? Any excuse. Adulting over gaming – who would have thought!

If I don’t sort out Game Room, I will uninstall Animal Crossing New Horizons and leave it be. I have had fun with it twice now, and that’s a pretty good run!

So my plan this week was to sit down after Board Game Arena and try and clean up my island of Game Room. With this in mind, I continued to fire up Animal Crossing New Horizons every day to try and keep things going.

Firing up the game on Friday night, I realised I had missed the ABD miles bonus on Thursday. I couldn’t tell you if I played the night before or not. Now, we are talking about a video game. Missing a bonus isn’t the end of the world.

But when I saw the streak had broken, something in my mind broke a little. That was when I decided that I had enough of Animal Crossing New Horizons.

The reboot of the site in 2022 meant taking down my previous Animal Crossing play sessions. This means I am unsure of how clear it is that this is my second play of Animal Crossing New Horizons. I don’t mean I didn’t play for an extended period and picked the game back up, I mean I started from scratch twice.

I only dabbled in the Happy Home Paradise DLC, which I do think is a little unfortunate. I got into decorating my home more this time around, and the couple of homes I decorated when the DLC came out was fun. There may be more fun there to be had, but not this time around.

What did surprise me is I am not sad about leaving any of my villagers this time around. I wasn’t picky with who wanted to come live on Game Room as I wanted to pump up the population. That might have had something to do with this disconnect from those on my island. But right now, there is no one I want to say goodbye to and let them ‘move on’ so to speak.

With all that in mind, Saturday morning I wrote up this journal entry and deleted Animal Crossing New Horizons from my Switch. I look forward to seeing what the next Animal Crossing iteration looks like and giving it a try. But for now, this ends my run with this version of the game.