Hello everyone! It's been a while.
From about the end of March 2020, I got sucked into a black hole otherwise known as Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
For those who are a bit confused as to why this could possibly be relevant to my "Tokyo Time" theme, it's because the game itself has a lot of Japanese themed items. I have a background in design, and it just all made perfect sense for a bad gamer like myself to play a game you cannot possibly suck at. It was almost, and probably is, the perfect game to recreate a Japanese retreat - because I can't travel, I can bring it in a virtual setting and visit (or in this case, live) there.
At first, it was all confusing, and it was all via the instruction of a rather daunting raccoon by the name of Tom Nook (as tanuki is the Japanese word for raccoon), who would boss you around to give him (eventually) a rather obscene amount of money in a currency called "bells", to upgrade your humble tent to a two storey house with basement, and fragments of your soul to labour away and collect materials to build two shops and a museum.
It all seems quite boring, but it's actually kind of fun. You can play as little as you like, or as much as you like, and it really appealed to me because it was just that my kind of game.
The first three weeks were enjoyable for me, albeit lonely, as I didn't have any friends to play with. It was just me, churning tasks to earn Nook Mile Points, redeeming them for Nook Mile Tickets (NMT), and heading out to mystery islands to farm tarantulas that were in season at the time, and to collect various materials my island was lacking.
After the three week point, my husband told me that his high school friends were actually playing too, and eventually we directed the conversation to Whatsapp, and I was added into a Whatsapp group, dedicated to the game.
I quite impulsively purchased a Nintendo Switch Online (NSO subscription) so I could fly to different islands and visit others, and my game completely changed from there. I was promptly given the fruits I was missing, and my new friends were all amazed at how much progress I had made, as most of my time went into designing my actual island. I only then realised my friends all lived in rather bare and disorganised islands, as most of their time went into purchasing turnips (a form of a stock market in the game), and selling them in queues, so financially, they were all much wealthier than me. And here I was, still visiting mystery islands, hoping to return with a bagful of tarantulas to make a pretty penny.
I won't go into too much detail because there are literally so many things to discuss about the game, which I will write about in future posts - but getting an online subscription really changed my game so much.
I'll update my blog later on posts such as:
- How to make bells on Animal Crossing: New Horizons
- How to get villagers moving out
- How to get villager photos
- Custom Designer App
Who else jumped onto the Animal Crossing: New Horizons bandwagon? I'm still playing every day, though I admit not as long as I used to (I've finished my island, so it's just only changing my villagers, getting any seasonal DIYs and receiving villager photos. I have about 4 or 5 things left to complete my critterpedia, so there's not a lot left for me to do...).
I'll be back real soon with another post. Thank you for reading!
Yours,
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