For part two, I will discuss my island “Ikebukuro”.
As I figured, I probably will not travel in 2020 (or until a vaccine for the novel coronavirus is available), it kind of made me a bit saddened.
And Ikebukuro is where I usually stay when I’m in Tokyo.
So, when I heard how “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” (Atsumare Doubutsu no Mori) was the #1 game during quarantine, I decided to pick the game up.
I’ve played previous Animal Crossing games but I figured this time around, I’ll put a bit more time to it, especially now that there have been a few changes for the Nintendo Switch version.
When I first picked the layout of the island, I wanted something with water on all sides of the map but I didn’t really have a clear goal. I wanted to make money to quickly grow things in my island, so I started planting a lot of fruit trees everywhere.
Slowly, your island starts to bring in visitors and permanent people who want to live there and it’s all about planning of how you want your neighborhood to be like.
Because it’s called Ikebukuro, I decided I wanted Japanese roads and I was able to find it on Reddit. And I wanted characters to love next to each other and have space.
I also have quite a bit of themed parks…as I’m trying to find ways to get the 5-star for my island (currently at 4-stars).
I also built an area with a ton of flowers. Originally, I was going to have it like Hitachi Seaside Park but I didn’t have that much space to work with. But do have a few areas dedicated for flowers.
Created a J-Cafe with a few images of covers from J-Pop stars from the ’70s-present.
I still have a long way to go. For one, because my Nooks keeps getting the same things over and over, it looks I will need to visit homes of friends who are playing “Animal Crossing” as there are only so much I can do with some of the stuff that my Nooks gets.
Right now, the latest report was that I have too many trees, which I do have many fruit trees (apple, peach, cherry and oranges) in order to make money, as tulips aren’t generating much money for me as of late.
But I’m enjoying the game, it’s quite calming for me and helps me forget about a lot of the bad things going on in today’s world.
So, “Animal Crossings: New Horizons” has been my escape but also taking my mind off some of the ultra-heavy things going on right now.
