Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is one of the biggest games of the past decade, and despite my assumptions that Nintendo would leave it behind with the Switch 2 generation, that's evidently not the case. Next year, New Horizons is getting a free update adding content for all players, as well as a Switch 2 upgrade, which adds improvements that make use of the new hardware's features and performance enhancements. The announcement was a welcome surprise, so I was eager to join a hands-off demo session earlier this month to get a closer look.

The presentation opened with a demonstration of the Switch 2-specific features, which are cute novelties, but few seem truly useful. Nintendo has essentially taken each of the console's new features and mapped them to a function in the game. Mouse controls are the simplest, but most exciting – players can use the mouse function to organize furniture in their house, make custom designs, and draw on the town bulletin board. The least exciting, however, is the megaphone. This new item allows you to call a villager's name into the Switch 2 microphone to bring them towards you, but it only works if you're both outside and they're within earshot. It's a fun concept, but in practice, its requirements seem too limited to be useful, especially since it takes up a precious inventory slot.

The Switch 2 also adds GameChat compatibility and increases the number of people who can visit an island to 12. That said, when a second player joins our demo presentation, there's a roughly 30-second loading screen – it would take a lot of patience to get a full party on an island. It also only works if all players are on the Switch 2 version. If you have a dozen people who really want to spend time in Animal Crossing together, it's a fun idea, but I would be shocked if this was a game-changer for many people.

Thankfully, the more exciting enhancements will be available to all players, regardless of Switch model. Slumber Islands are the main draw. They're islands you can create, terraform, and decorate to your heart's content with friends. Creative Animal Crossing players have had to restructure their entire island to make creative designs before now, so this not only gives them three additional areas to design – it also frees their home island back up for whatever they want. They also come in multiple sizes: large (roughly the size of a standard island), medium, and small, which each accommodate different scales of design.

Slumber Islands can be decorated with any piece of furniture you've acquired in the waking world, along with trees, other outdoor plants, and even villagers – the demo includes a Residents portion of the menu that allows you to spawn in characters currently living on your island into the dream versions. It seems visitors can also spawn in their residents on your island – a second demoer spawns in Bob, for example, a character not present in the host's list of residents. There are a lot of benefits to decorating in multiplayer, but it's important to note that since each island is connected to one player's account, it can only be accessed while they're there. You can't work on the island while they aren't playing, and if they decide to leave, everyone gets kicked out. It's a reasonable precaution, in my opinion, but might be inconvenient if anyone was hoping to treat it like a shared Minecraft server.

New Horizons also gains a hotel in this update. You'll have to unlock it, and it's automatically connected to Kapp'n's pier, wherever that's placed on your island. Potential residents can visit and stay in rooms you design based on preset themes – I'd estimate 20 or so – which come with a selection of items that fit that vibe. In this demo, we see the Dreamy theme, which uses lots of pinks and pastel colors with snacks and a big stuffed teddy bear. Of course, you'll also be able to create custom themes, and I look forward to seeing people get creative and weird. Designing rooms earns you tickets, which can pay for special furniture items in the hotel lobby. You can also get tickets by selling a rotating selection of craftable items to Kapp'n in front of the hotel.

Players can also put clothing on mannequins in the lobby. When visiting villagers walk around the island, they can be seen wearing these clothes, kind of like how a tourist in New York would walk around wearing an "I Love NY" t-shirt.

Finally, the update adds various crossover decor sets to the game, including Splatoon, The Legend of Zelda, and Lego. Splatoon and Zelda can be unlocked by using amiibo from that respective series, and while amiibo scans are limited by day, it only takes one amiibo from the series to unlock all the crossover pieces. In other words, one Link amiibo can unlock every Zelda item – items aren't linked to specific figures.

The demo confirmed my initial thoughts on the update. It's cool that the game is still being supported, and hardcore players will have more options to keep playing each day, but it's not quite revolutionary enough to encourage the masses to all pick the game back up. That said, any complaints about unimpressive or plain features are offset by a simple, encouraging fact: the 3.0 update is free, and the Switch 2 features are only $4.99. Both will be available early next year, on January 15.