Dive back into Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Put down most games and your character will stay frozen in time, just waiting for you to come back. Close Animal Crossing: New Horizons though and your island goes on without you. Because Animal Crossing works in real time and reflects the different seasons, you’ll find all kinds of changes on your island when you return. This means a stack of fun things to add to your to do list when you load it back up. While your bedhead thankfully doesn’t stick around as it did in previous titles, you can always use this as an excuse to refresh your look for the new year. Before you go on to refresh your whole island…  

In the video above we cover all the different things to discover when you go back to your island after some time away. From the gentle guilt trips when you catch up with all your neighbours - sorry Bam, it won’t happen again - to a solution to solve your weeds issue in one go, we’ve got everything you need to know. And once you’ve got everything back in order and tidied away all those rogue Christmas decorations for another year, it’s time to start on some fresh projects. The Animal Crossing: New Horizons 2.0 updated last year added hundreds of new items to make sure that your island looks better than ever. Add in the Happy Home Paradise DLC and you’ll even be able to individually decorate all of your villager’s homes. Welcome back!   

Louise Blain

Louise Blain is a journalist and broadcaster specialising in gaming, technology, and entertainment. She is the presenter of BBC Radio 3’s monthly Sound of Gaming show and has a weekly consumer tech slot on BBC Radio Scotland. She can also be found on BBC Radio 4, BBC Five Live, Netflix UK's YouTube Channel, and on The Evolution of Horror podcast. As well as her work on GamesRadar, Louise writes for NME, T3, and TechRadar. When she’s not working, you can probably find her watching horror movies or playing an Assassin’s Creed game and getting distracted by Photo Mode.