Fan-Made Fun in Animal Crossing
As I finally reach a three-out-of-five-star island rating, my Animal Crossing avatar pumps their fist into the air, excited to have fun and continue ranking up, with this screencap taken in Las Vegas, N.V., Monday, Sept. 21, 2020. (AP Photo/Brooke Galsky) While the main goal of Animal Crossing: New Horizons is to have fun by building up your island and taking it easy, as shown here, some players use their creativity to find even more ways to have fun.
October 13, 2020
“Animal Crossing: New Horizons” has been making a recent resurgence in the online world thanks to its thrill-seeking players.
Along with being the Holy Grail of 2020 quarantine, AC:NH is a calming game full of endless exploration and designing. While that’s great for players looking for some morning comfort, there isn’t much to do in the realm of contesting.
This lack of competition has led some Animal Crossing players to create their own in-game minigames, mostly based on our real world, but with some added quirks.
A popular game, “King Tut Musical Chairs”, puts a twist on the classic musical chairs by introducing a unique setback.
“There’s a new item in [Animal Crossing], the King Tut mask. It makes you fall over when you’re running, and I thought it would be a cool idea to have Musical Chairs with this element added,” gaming YouTuber Kang Gaming said during a video, crediting Twitter for coming up with the original idea.
Since running is such an integral part of Musical Chairs already, it’s no wonder that this plunging possibility makes this minigame so popular and intense.
Additionally, YouTuber Taikichi sparked a Twitter-famous Animal Crossing minigame that parodies both soccer and football.
Since players can’t move items when they’re playing together, nor can they kick items at all in-game, Taikichi created a game where one player stands still as everyone else pushes them into the goal areas.
As gaming YouTuber Failboat, being the designated ball during his video including the minigame, dubbed it, “Soccer, but I am the ball.”
The other widespread minigame is called “Sumo”, created by Failboat.
In Animal Crossing, items called pitfalls can be buried into the ground. If someone walks on them, they fall in and have to scramble their way out of the dirt. Failboat then used these to border a pseudo wrestling ring where the minigame takes place.
“Two players enter and must muscle the other person into the surrounding pitfalls. Bury your [opponent] three times and you win,” Failboat explained during a video.
However, not all minigames were difficult to translate into the game. “Hide and Seek”, first uploaded to YouTube by Jon Cartwright, and “Treasure Hunts” by the Nintendo Minute YouTube channel were both easily implemented.
Even then, other YouTubers found new rules to add.
“The seeker must hit a hider with their net for them to be considered caught,” YouTuber octolinghacker narrated in YouTuber Fyrus’s hide and seek video, “Hiders are not allowed to use tools once hidden.”
All in all, the ingenuity of Animal Crossing’s user base is astonishing to see. And given that the game itself is a practice of creativity, it’s no wonder that players were able to apply these skills and create even more amazing memories with each other.
