Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Check in during winter and snow covers your island. Come back in summer and fireflies show up at night. Animal Crossing New Horizons runs on real-world time, syncing its seasons, holidays, and daily rhythms to the actual calendar.

Building an Island
Players start with nothing but a deserted island and gradually transform it through crafting, terraforming, and decorating, with nearly every design choice left entirely open-ended. Terraforming alone lets players reshape rivers, cliffs, and paths however they like, so no two islands end up looking the same even when players start from an identical layout. Animal villagers move in over time, each with distinct personalities that shape daily interactions, from cheerful morning greetings to the occasional grumpy comment about the weather.

What Sets This Apart
Local and online multiplayer let friends visit each other’s islands, comparing builds and trading items along the way. No other game syncs quite so closely to real life as this one does — a real holiday on the calendar often triggers a matching in-game event, and shops keep different hours depending on the actual time of day.

Who Will Enjoy This Game
People who find genuine calm in slow, low-stakes routines — checking on crops, chatting with a villager, decorating one more room — will find this island genuinely restorative. Anyone looking for a game with no fail state or time pressure, where progress happens at whatever pace feels comfortable, will settle into the daily rhythm quickly.

Add this to your collection today and start building your island paradise on Switch.