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animal crossing controls

Animal Crossing New Horizons: Controls Guide

This article is over 4 years old and may contain outdated information

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is finally here and it’s time to explore your deserted island. But, if you go in without any prior knowledge that’ll do you no good. Here’s everything you need to know the controls in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

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Animal Crossing New Horizons Controls

If you’ve ever played an Animal Crossing game before, then the controls in New Horizons will be incredibly familiar. However, there are a few new functions and button mappings in this game that are unique to this iteration of the life sim franchise.

The biggest addition, hands-down, is the Nook Phone. This item is used for many essential functions like calling Resetti to get you out of an area if you get stuck, grants access to Nook Miles, lets you access DIY Recipes and too much more to list in this guide.

To pull up this out this versatile multitool, all you need to do is press ZL. That’ll bring up your phone and a menu of all your different options.

Reactions aren’t new in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, but mapping a controller button for them is new. If you want to do any reaction, just hit L to bring up a list of your reactions.

The last new addition to the controls in Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the Right Stick. If you want to move the camera around while you’re inside you’re house you can use the Right Stick to adjust the angle. You can also move the camera higher or lower while outside.

Now, here’s a table to show the controls that are returning in this new Animal Crossing title:

ButtonFunction
ASelect Tool, Use Tool
BCancel
Hold B While MovingSprint
XOpen Pocket
YPick up
Left & Right ArrowsCycle through tools in Pocket
Down ArrowPut away Tool
Left StickMove
Right StickMove Camera
ReactionsL
Text MessageR

That’s all there is to know about the controls in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. If you want to learn anything else about this game, then just check out our Guides Wiki.


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Author
Image of Omar Banat
Omar Banat
Omar is a UofM Duluth graduate who is obsessed with Smash Bros. Video games are life, but life is not video games. Playing Games Since: 1991, Favorite Genres: Puzzle, Platformer, Action-Adventure (mainly Metroidvanias)