Animal Crossing: New Horizons
2020 Game of the Year Contenders
Peering in from the outside, Nintendo’s latest entry in the uber-popular Animal Crossing series, New Horizons, may just seem like a simple diet version of games like The Sims or Stardew Valley, but once you dive into this world and discover the intricacies that make it tick, it’s hard to get out.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons offers players hundreds upon hundreds of hours of playtime and all of that time is spent decorating your island, designing the bedrooms in your home, and making your space the best it can be.
It’s an awfully simple premise that’s easy for any type of person, even those who aren’t familiar with video games, to comprehend. Mechanically, sure, there are issues that prevent Animal Crossing: New Horizons from being the best that it can be, like the annoying online infrastructure and the inability to craft multiple items at once.
But because that Animal Crossing: New Horizons released during the Coronavirus pandemic, the situation only helped to bolster the popularity of the title, making it one to remember once game of the year nominations starts up.
This is a game that broke the mold and hit that sweet spot for many people, which only happens every couple of years –remember Pokemon GO’s 2016 launch? Animal Crossing definitely didn’t hit the highs of that phenomenon, but boy does it come close.
