Turnips are very sensitive to time paradoxes.
March 27, 2020 12:21 PM   Subscribe

Animal Crossing Fans Are Fighting Over Time Travel [Comicbook] “While Animal Crossing: New Horizons players tend to be united in their love for the game, if there's one area in which players vehemently disagree, it's on the topic of time travel. Time travel is a practice in which players adjust the Nintendo Switch's internal clock in order to jump ahead in time and gain access to things that they shouldn't yet have access to. Nintendo has taken strides to prevent players from accessing the game's holidays early, but it seems that there's little they can do to stop time travelling altogether, and it's resulted in some strong disagreements in the fan community, as a result.”

• How to time travel in Animal Crossing: New Horizons [Polygon]
How To time travel on your Switch:
• Close Animal Crossing: New Horizons by pressing the Switch’s Home button, highlighting the game’s icon, pressing the X button, and clicking “Close” in the dialogue box that appears.
• Go to your Nintendo Switch System Settings (the gear icon on the home screen), scroll all the way down, and select “System.”
• Select “Date and Time,” and turn off the setting that says “Synchronize Clock via Internet.”
• Change the date or the time to whatever you want.
• Reopen the game, and the date and time in New Horizons will match whatever you set it to in the Switch’s system preferences.
**Be careful about skipping too many days at once, as skipping forward weeks at a time will yield the same results as not playing for weeks at a time. Your villagers may move out, and weeds will move in.**
• What happens if you time travel backwards in Animal Crossing New Horizons? [HITC]
“For those in fear of time travelling backwards due to worries that the progress made will all be lost, you needn't be concerned as Animal Crossing New Horizons isn't that cruel. Travelling back into the past will not result in you losing buildings, villagers, or DIY recipes you've earned by transporting to the future on several occasions. Having time travelled into the future and past on a couple of occasions to see what would happen, the most problems we had was just weeds. There are reportedly greater issues if you time travel well into the future i.e. years, so we wouldn't recommend doing that. But, if you time travelled a couple of days or weeks into the future and now want to time travel back to reality, there's nothing for you to fear. In fact, time travelling backwards can be helpful as there are certain bugs and fish that can only be caught at certain times and you may be busy during these periods. So, although some consider it cheating, time travelling forwards and backwards can help you work around your real-life commitments and schedule.”
• Why Time Travel In Animal Crossing Is A Bad Idea [Gamespot][YouTube]
“Time skipping may seem like a good way to speed things up in Animal Crossing, but if you aren't careful it can screw up your island. Here's why you shouldn't time skip. Given how long it takes to develop your island, you may be tempted to set your Switch clock forward and skip time to unlock things more quickly. We wouldn't recommend that, however. As Jake explains in the video above, time traveling may be an alluring way to get your town up and running, but you should resist the temptation and let the game unfold naturally.”
• Animal Crossing: New Horizons developers think playing without time travel's best in the long run [GamesRadar+]
““Because the Animal Crossing series is tied to the real-time clock, there are users who want to play late at night or who want to play early in the morning,” Kyogoku said. “By giving those users an option to craft, we thought this would be a new way for them to play and to acquire [craftable] items.” New Horizons also handles seasonal events like the upcoming Easter-inspired Bunny Day differently; while you can still travel to any time of the year by updating your Switch's system clock, the events themselves will only begin once an online update adds them to the game. Kyoguku said this "wasn’t our way to shun away time travel by any means" though it does have the effect of reducing its appeal. “We think that in order for the players to play for a very long time, and also for players to share the experience with their friends or family, we do think that playing without traveling would probably be the ideal way,” Nogami added.”
posted by Fizz (62 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
I guess that means that once the Nintendo servers eventually go down, or you just don't have an internet connection, you don't get holidays.

I miss the old days of unconnected consoles where if devs wanted something in the game, it had to be in the game's data from the get-go. None of this "we decide what you get / you don't really own the game" stuff.

Anyway, ignore my grumpiness. I don't have a switch and I'm jealous of all the fun people are having with the new Animal Crossing right now! I guess I'll go play the gamecube version...
posted by signsofrain at 12:38 PM on March 27, 2020 [15 favorites]


I feel like the time-traveling is antithetical to the point of Animal Crossing, at least to me, but people can play however they want. I'm enjoying the pace of the game -- for me, it's meant to be an escape (and I'm also not doing any of the social aspects of it so far because I don't really want to).

There was also an article I saw that was "How to make your friends better at Animal Crossing" and I'm like ... there's no being "better" at Animal Crossing. If you want to live in a tent forever and just use the flimsy tools, those are valid choices. If you just want to look for fossils the entire time, that's cool. Yeah, there are certain tools that are useful (like the ladder) you only get after you accomplish certain things, but the beauty of Animal Crossing to me is that you don't have to do anything you don't want to do.

If time travel makes AC more enjoyable for people, that's fine. It would make it less fun for me.

(I do think it's turned it into a strange competition, though, which, once again, to me, is against the spirit of AC, but once again, whatever.)
posted by darksong at 12:39 PM on March 27, 2020 [18 favorites]


I time-travelled/skipped and it was fun for a while but I was worried about missing out on the season events so I demolished my old town last night and started fresh. I'm going to play the way that Nintendo intends me to play and just roll with the days and any waiting or downtime. It's not that big a deal, there's plenty to do and discover and I am also just enjoying the chill environment, just living in that little reality for while.

Also, this time I got cherries instead of apples and I'm glad.

Play the way you want, time-travel/skip or not. This is very much a game about doing what you want, when you want, on your own terms. And I like that.
posted by Fizz at 12:46 PM on March 27, 2020 [6 favorites]


Over on Tumblr the thing that's going around is that people there are super chill and happy about their first peach tree or whatever and meanwhile on Twitter AC people are all "what, you haven't made a trillion bells and ascended olympus to kill the gods yet? Whatever, loser" It appears to have a grain of truth to it.
posted by Mizu at 12:47 PM on March 27, 2020 [14 favorites]


In his "Jimpressions" review of Animal Crossing, Jim Sterling nailed my general take on Nintendo as game makers. Here's a paraphrase of his narration from the video:

"A Nintendo second is an indeterminate amount of time that IS brief, but is always slightly longer than it needs to be."

Nintendo games are so very, very full of these Nintendo Seconds. I understand the desire for escapism, but the infantilism of so many of their games makes their appeal head-scratching for me. Nintendo games swing so far into early childhood levels of entertainment and presentation... even though these games are mostly aimed at adults.

I like to play video games. I also like to read. I sure as hell don't want every book I read to be full of Cormac McCarthy levels of grim nihilism, violence and misery, but that doesn't mean I reach for a Curious George book when I want a break.
posted by SoberHighland at 12:48 PM on March 27, 2020 [8 favorites]


I want to say that if you feel like you need to be the best at Animal Crossing to have fun you're playing it wrong, but really, the only point of Animal Crossing is to have fun. There's no overarching plot, no goals beyond a few meaningless ones and whatever ones you set for yourself. If feeling like you're doing better than everyone else is how you want to have fun, then godspeed.

But then I saw someone on Twitter who felt the need to berate everyone not using Time Travel and exclaim loudly how he would get the most enjoyment out of the game because he's more efficient. Stop that. Don't be a dick, what the fuck is wrong with you. Go play your game the way you want to play it and don't shit on other people if they play it differently.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 12:50 PM on March 27, 2020 [16 favorites]


Nintendo games swing so far into early childhood levels of entertainment and presentation... even though these games are mostly aimed at adults.

Adults do dumb childish things like enjoying pretty melodies and looking at rainbows, too. Personal preference is personal preference, but when you make the move from "this isn't for me" to characterizing other people's enjoyment in dismissive terms, there's space to basically reexamine your assumptions about what adulthood should be expected to cut out of human experience. It's okay to not like stuff! But the lesson there shouldn't be "adulthood means not liking the stuff I don't like".
posted by cortex at 1:06 PM on March 27, 2020 [57 favorites]


"A Nintendo second is an indeterminate amount of time that IS brief, but is always slightly longer than it needs to be."

To me, this feels like a statement from someone more interested in the destination ("I beat the game!") than the journey ("I'm having fun in this game!"). And I mean, look, different strokes for different folks and all. To me, though, the idea that the problem with Nintendo games is that they're not fast paced enough kinda misses what's so lovely about so many of their games.
posted by tocts at 1:28 PM on March 27, 2020 [11 favorites]


i want the chair made out of a peach
posted by poffin boffin at 1:31 PM on March 27, 2020 [20 favorites]


"Wait for the real time clock to advance" is a bad game mechanic in general. (And oh, so abusive when combined with microtransactions to speed the clock up). But the Animal Crossing version of it is pretty gentle. After the second day I didn't have the playtime to keep up with all the possible unlocks if I maxed out the 24 hour cycle.

But then I'm not trying to powergame my way through Animal Crossing. This is a silly game where you build dollhouses and play dress up and extract resources from nature to satisfy your rent-seeker Tanuki boss. I get it when folks are so excited about a game they want to go faster and "win", so time travel away, but I'm enjoying the game at a slow pace.
posted by Nelson at 1:35 PM on March 27, 2020 [1 favorite]


yes but do you have the peach chair
posted by poffin boffin at 2:04 PM on March 27, 2020 [16 favorites]


I caught a Coelacanth on day 6 of owning the game and I am still happy about it.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 2:04 PM on March 27, 2020 [14 favorites]


I have the peach chair. Well, I am capable of making the peach chair although I don't actually have one. I made one but I had to give it away for an incoming resident. I may make my own peach chair, though.
posted by darksong at 2:14 PM on March 27, 2020 [1 favorite]


I have peach chair capabilities and many peaches, I will cheerfully make peach chairs for anyone who wants one.

I am not time travelling. I’m not totally against playing for efficiency - I’ve spent so much time in Stardew Valley at this point that speed running it is now how it’s fun for me - but I’ve had this game for ten hot seconds, I’m happy to let it unfold and be casual calming fun.
posted by Stacey at 2:36 PM on March 27, 2020 [2 favorites]


I remember getting AC on the original Nintendo DS on a friend's insistence. I got as far as finding out that to sell turnips(?) you had to log on at like 9am on a Saturday (real time). I said fuck that and sold the game. I knew I could have fiddled with the DS internal clock, but it was the principle of the thing. 9am! On a Saturday!
posted by EndsOfInvention at 2:53 PM on March 27, 2020 [4 favorites]


Stacey I will 100% take you up on that peach chair. May I interest you in a pear bed or pear wardrobe in exchange?

Right now I've got a little sign up by the airport that says "FREE SWAP", although I think I'll be changing it to "FREE OR SWAP" and then plopped some things around the sign that I'm cool with people taking, and if they want to give me stuff that's where they can leave it. But it's bothering me that I have to be logged in and open the gate for visitors to come by. Ideally I'd be able to upload a version of my island to some mystical cloud and people could pop in and out while I'm asleep. Then I could wake up and check out what random trash folks have left me to peruse.
posted by Mizu at 2:55 PM on March 27, 2020 [5 favorites]


i want the chair made out of a peach

Yeah, well, I want Froggy Chair
posted by pullayup at 2:55 PM on March 27, 2020 [4 favorites]


Animal Crossing was almost tailor-made for the current world. Here is a game where the worst you really have to deal with is being stung by a wasp or bitten by a tarantula. (Well, your favorite villager could move out, that does suck.) It's a game about being in a weird place and making friends. Doom, it's not. It was never going to be, that was never the point.

Thankfully, the AC and Doom fanbases are cool with each other and the many memes of Isabelle and the Doom Guy trading places in each others' games have been a delight.

As for time travel or no—I have a friend who does a bit of it and jumping over to their island is like seeing into the future. I'll get there eventually, but I played the original GameCube game for years. The only time travel I will really ever need is one day at a time. You can speedrun Animal Crossing but I have no idea why you would do so.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 3:07 PM on March 27, 2020 [5 favorites]


Oh no, Mizu, I think I was just *at* your island before I saw this! (And if so, I bought an amazing poncho from your Mabel, so thanks for that.) Let me go make a chair and if your island is still open I'll bring it back, if not, I think I can mail it to you now that I've been to your island? I'll investigate. I did leave some fruit in your swap pile.
posted by Stacey at 3:18 PM on March 27, 2020


this new assassins creed game sounds wild
posted by um at 3:20 PM on March 27, 2020 [15 favorites]


I’m another peach chair source...but there’s also a peach surprise box! Hit me up; friend code in the swap post.
posted by Nancy_LockIsLit_Palmer at 3:25 PM on March 27, 2020


Real time progression is my FAVORITE part about animal crossing. I waited ten years for Kingdom Hearts III and then powered through it in two weeks and was so depressed afterwards. Beyond being good for those of us who hyper-focus, real-time progression means you have things to look forward to in the morning. I love going to bed knowing tomorrow maybe something will have been built, or a new villager is going to move in, or at the very least I'll have new shop/Nook catalog items to peruse! I love that I'll be discovering new things for at least a year as the seasons change. I love that I'm encouraged to play more during the day, and less late at night (except for the occasional bug to fill out the museum). I love that it encourages me not to do Every Single Thing That Can Be Done That Day because it helps me recognize I have limited time and decide how to prioritize.

I'm totally cool with people time traveling for any reason, but it mystifies me. I think I did it once on New Leaf because I missed a holiday because of Bad Life Circumstances and was just really really sad about that, but that was back, not forward.

Though I do feel a day behind everyone else because I didn't place Blathers' tent the day I got it because I wanted to put it across the river and was waiting to get the vaulting pole... luckily I looked that up the next day...
posted by brook horse at 3:42 PM on March 27, 2020 [12 favorites]


I'm play-revisiting Escape Velocity: Nova right this minute and it strikes me so hard what a world of difference it is when the game design is intrinsically modifiable. In the Escape Velocity series, the universe of the role-playing space trading combat game is fully changeable and rewritable through an intentionally designed plug-in architecture. The plug-ins (which ranged from cheats to total replacements) that the EV community developed over time never took away from enjoyment of the original, canonical game and its storyline. So I would turn the argument upside down, and advocate that artificial scarcity is nothing natural, and to suggest that "the game" can "unfold naturally" is an ideologically or philosophically constraining presupposition on the gamer's role. Of course, a key difference is that multiplayer games need some sort of common ground as to what constitute an exploit. On the other hand, where money is involved, industry practices like grinding, IP restrictions, artificial scarcity, randomness/gambling are all worth recontextualizing as mechanisms to extract time from and capture the attention of gamers.
posted by polymodus at 3:53 PM on March 27, 2020 [5 favorites]


I can make a bamboo thing where like a baby rises out of the bamboo- think it's a riff on princess kaguya but it straight up looks like bamboo baby jesus. I put my friend code on the MeTa for friend codes so like- if you friend me and stuff I will craft a bunch of those weird weird bamboo babies.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 4:12 PM on March 27, 2020 [5 favorites]


Oh, this thread took a fun turn. I will happily make Cherry Lamps or Cherry Speakers for all who want them. Friend code is 4422 9181 8433.

After playing New Leaf for upwards of 700 hours, I'd been more or less living for the release of this game, only to be disappointed by it at first. But now that I'm finally unlocking a few more things, I'm finding more to like. It's just striking how unevenly finished the game is. Things like the mystery islands and interactions with neighbors are unusually shallow, and most of any given day feels devoted to crafting and re-crafting the same tools. On the other hand, the museum is an absolute marvel and the graphics are beautiful, so it's obvious that huge amounts of work and care did go into the game. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens in the planned updates other than just holiday events. Right now I'd settle for a villager to ask me to deliver a shirt that belongs to someone else. (Well, no, I also want unbreakable tools back.)
posted by jinjo at 4:19 PM on March 27, 2020 [7 favorites]


Yeah, the museum is absolutely insane. Someone put all of their love into that and then some.
posted by the liquid oxygen at 4:30 PM on March 27, 2020 [6 favorites]


I already know how this article ends—I read it tomorrow, three months ago.
posted by not_on_display at 4:43 PM on March 27, 2020 [9 favorites]


I got a weird bamboo Jesus! It's wild.
posted by tofu_crouton at 5:02 PM on March 27, 2020 [3 favorites]


I knew I could have fiddled with the DS internal clock, but it was the principle of the thing. 9am! On a Saturday!

Well, 9 o’clock on a Saturday is when the regular crowd shuffles in.
posted by _Mona_ at 7:51 PM on March 27, 2020 [15 favorites]


Omg cherry lamp please, I wanna live that fruit salad life!

I've figured out how to turn off auto-sleep on the switch on TV mode so I'm just gonna start leaving my gate open and pop my avatar in bed for long periods of time. I've left a note on the bulletin board about it. Do people read the bulletin boards?
posted by Mizu at 7:54 PM on March 27, 2020


If that was you in your bed- I left you a bamboo doll jesus in front of your house
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 9:01 PM on March 27, 2020 [5 favorites]


“As Jake explains in the video above, time traveling may be an alluring way to get your town up and running, but you should resist the temptation and let the game unfold naturally.”

Why?
1) You'll get weeds. Lots and lots of weeds, if you skip months or more.
2) Your villagers will be upset; you'll lose your ongoing relationships with them.
3) Some villagers may even move out; traveling back in time won't change this.
4) This particular version of AC doesn't have the holidays built-in with the calendar; you have to wait for them to be released.
5) "I used to do time travel because I was an impatient brat and I regretted it."

Errr... none of that explains why it's bad to jump ahead to butterfly season or king crab season or whatever. The timejumping game is a different one from the day-to-day one, but it's just as valid a method of play.

We're not getting New Horizons; I'm happy with New Leaf (which I haven't played in months because my 3DS battery won't hold a charge, and that's a nuisance) and I have no interest in a game that's locked to the device that purchased it.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 9:02 PM on March 27, 2020


when can I start a 2nd island :(
posted by cocotine at 9:18 PM on March 27, 2020


I enjoy the museum. The first time I went I thought "Wait, am I going to get lost in here?"
But nothing so far has matched the surprise and satisfaction I got as when I caught an oarfish.
posted by LostInUbe at 9:22 PM on March 27, 2020 [5 favorites]


I made myself a Cool S shirt
posted by cortex at 10:32 PM on March 27, 2020 [10 favorites]


My only beef with time travelers (and I am one) is that they flood all the big AC discussion groups with spoilers. I can ignore the bragging, but don't spoil my favourite game, dammit. I want to discover things at my own pace.

(I have a variety of orange craftables and can trade with anyone who wants em. I think I have a clock, a side-table, a hat, a dress, and a wall pattern.)
posted by Stoof at 11:34 PM on March 27, 2020 [5 favorites]


This game sounds like everything I love. Plus, it has time travel!
posted by iamkimiam at 11:38 PM on March 27, 2020


i don't have the game or a switch i just want a chair made out of a big peach
posted by poffin boffin at 4:08 AM on March 28, 2020 [10 favorites]


The store on my island is selling peach chairs today, come on over. I don’t have the game or a switch either.
posted by moonmilk at 4:41 AM on March 28, 2020 [6 favorites]


I am not one for these backdoor time travel shenanigans but if people find it fun, by all means! The main thing is for the Timewalkers to avoid spoiling us Unsullied.
posted by adrianhon at 4:42 AM on March 28, 2020


This game is pretty good you guys
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:49 AM on March 28, 2020 [1 favorite]



SW 6848 9235 5395 - Visitors always welcome, I'm setting up a gifts/swaps area. But I don't have a massive surplus or anything ;)

This is the ideal game for my lockdown coping needs. I'm strongly not-timetravelling because I think the daily routine of the island, and the drip feed reveals, are exactly what I need from it. You do the chores, do a few of the easy nook miles tasks, spend some loot on some island beautification or improvements and then things slow down as night falls and you put it away knowing tomorrow will come with nice new things. If I could just jump ahead and get to tomorrow, or next month, right away I know it'd still be fun... but not for me. Not now.
posted by samworm at 5:04 AM on March 28, 2020 [2 favorites]


The timejumping game is a different one from the day-to-day one, but it's just as valid a method of play.

Yeah, any analysis of whether time travel "ruins" your game has to take into account how much fun people are having with the game mechanic of monkeying with the dates and "cheating" itself.

No reason that the minigame of hacking your Switch should be considered any less valid/fun than any of the other minigames. Modding games is just another form of creative play.

(All assuming you aren't doing anything that rains on somebody else's game through multiplayer, of course.)
posted by straight at 7:09 AM on March 28, 2020 [1 favorite]


(I've been playing No Man's Sky and using a save editor to change the appearance of my spaceships but with the rule that I don't just use ships other people have discovered seeds for, I have to find a ship and buy/salvage it -- and use the editor to capture the seed that generates the appearance of that particular ship -- and then use that appearance for one of my spaceships if I don't like the stats on the cool-looking ship I bought. Sometimes I break my rule.
The mechanics of using the editor to do this are remarkably similar to the mechanics of crafting, building, and upgrading stuff inside the game itself.)
posted by straight at 7:24 AM on March 28, 2020 [3 favorites]


I think the first time I played a game with irl-clock based events was Nethack. A friend introduced me to it in college, and well, that was the beginning of me losing some crazy amount of hours of my life. First to just wandering around not understanding, and then later to reading pages and pages of user-made documentation to figure out the workings of the game. Then one day it was a new moon (bad luck in Nethack), and I was like "ug, I really want to play, what should I do".

Anyways, now I have kids, so I can't sink that much time into anything right now, but certainly "staying up late to get a little more video game time" is out for me.

I guess this is a long winded way of saying: gaming is often about surprising and delighting the users, and time-based mechanics certainly can do that, when they're not too annoying. I hope everyone's having fun doing this, and I look forward to joining some day.
posted by Phredward at 8:12 AM on March 28, 2020 [1 favorite]


Other people time traveling isn't really an issue (who cares how others play the game?) unless they're posting spoilers and shit all over r/animalcrossing while people playing at the intended pace are over there because it's a game with many social aspects and people need an online meeting place.
posted by Navelgazer at 9:30 AM on March 28, 2020


I always have been of the opinion that doing something to the hardware or doing something to the software outside of the game to get an advantage "in" the game is not good sportsmanship in general, and I'm not impressed when people are doing it, but at some point, if you own the game and it's solo, eh.

What actually bugs me in the opposite direction is when a company will come and say that hey, we know you figured out how to do something with "out of the box" thinking in the game, but we'd prefer you not do it, as it's cheating. To those companies, too bad on you for not doing a better job programming your game. If it's in the game, it's within the boundaries of fair play. I guess I'm primarily here thinking of online games like World of Warcraft who would ban people for using particular fighting strategies, as if mind reading of Blizzard's intentions should be one of the prerequisites for how people play the game. On the other hand, fix your bugs if you don't like that people figure out something in-game workarounds, and lick your wounds until it's done rather than passing blame onto people who get a bit more creative.

In other words, I'm not impressed at people who "hack" games by injecting things from outside. I am impressed by people who figure out how to use the in-game-universe rules to figure out hacks and workarounds that even the developers didn't intend, as it becomes like a game within a game. However, if it's a game breaking bug, I do prefer that it gets patched and leveled out at some point, because then I don't like playing a game that is no longer difficult or fairly leveled. I've never been good at self-imposed restrictions within a game if I know that there are others who can beat it by taking shortcuts. I think it's because it doesn't feel like an accomplishment any more to do it the right way, if you can't distinguish at face value from those who take shortcuts.
posted by SpacemanStix at 12:33 PM on March 28, 2020 [1 favorite]


> and meanwhile on Twitter AC people are all "what, you haven't made a trillion bells and ascended olympus to kill the gods yet? Whatever, loser"

There are people who play video games, who have toxic, gatekeepery personalities, and they tweet mean things at others? And Twitter just lets them?

I'm shocked, I tell you! SHOCKED!
posted by fragmede at 12:38 PM on March 28, 2020 [2 favorites]


I generally only have time to play at night. This means that my island adventures are all in the dark -- which is fine for the most part, but I'd like to see the sun once in awhile. I'm considering messing with my Switch's clock (I don't know how) to remedy this. Other than that, I love the slow pace of the game. I just get lost in it and then like an hour has passed and I'm like "but how did that happen? I was just collecting oranges and weeds!"
posted by treepour at 3:49 PM on March 28, 2020 [2 favorites]


I just get lost in it and then like an hour has passed and I'm like "but how did that happen? I was just collecting oranges and weeds!"

It's almost like a metaphor for life or something
posted by some loser at 4:02 PM on March 28, 2020


I've done some time travel at various points in my other Animal Crossing games (original and New Leaf) but haven't done any and don't plan to in this iteration, mostly because I don't want to suck all the juice out of the game too soon. I have enough other things to play/read/make/do, and it's nice to just relax on my AC island for a little while every day.

Oh, and easiest option if you're playing late but want to cross animals during game-daylight: change your time zone setting in the Switch settings menu. Shouldn't break anything as long as you're not causing yourself to backtrack in time before your last save game, and would give you the offset you probably want here.
posted by asperity at 4:10 PM on March 28, 2020


I made myself a Cool S shirt

You're just showing off your toilet paper stockpile. Two whole rolls!
posted by hypnogogue at 7:31 AM on March 29, 2020


just returning to the thing about infantilism vs adulthood upthread if that's okay: this is something i've been thinking about for quite some time. on the one hand we seem to have an unprecedented slide into things associated with the infantile (the cute, the soft, the slow, etc. — although the equation of such things with the infantile or childish often seems to mask an underlying misogyny, though also that itself is highly reductive, as if misogyny ageism ableism racism and so on can be fully separated each from the other) that may be called "escapism," or regression, or whatever; on the other, the hegemony of a popular cultural sphere in which the hard, the fast, the "real," and especially the sexual (pre)dominate (though always in a form that aestheticizes these things in a way that totally undermines their "realness"). where was i going here o yeah, that you know i have myself made every attempt to resist, in the face of this crisis, "escapism" and regression; seriously, i've been spending all my time reading logics of worlds by badiou or reading thinkpieces or working on essays, but animal crossing is my favourite game!, the only game i would play (i haven't played one or had a console in close to a decade), and i think animal crossing does a lot to actually disrupt desire for escape and forces a slowness (i guess not so much necessarily anymore with TIME WARP). i'm definitely biased as well because violent games, especially shooters, make me queasy and sad, though i don't mean that as a judgment or condemnation of those who like them. if i'm making some kind of "point" perhaps it's that anti-escapism or confrontation with reality can also be a form of escapism and escapism can be a form of confrontation, and that the childish can be more adult than the so-callled adult, which childishly imagines itself to be adult (as if maturity were something one is passively subjected to by the passage of time instead of an active process always prone to regressions betises and dementia (praecox)). or something? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
posted by LeviQayin at 1:15 PM on March 29, 2020 [1 favorite]


I am not one for these backdoor time travel shenanigans but if people find it fun, by all means! The main thing is for the Timewalkers to avoid spoiling us Unsullied.

There's so much not ok with this comment I done even know where to start.
posted by RolandOfEld at 1:16 PM on March 29, 2020 [1 favorite]


I have a room full of toys for my inner child, and a room with a fireplace and coffee table and hanging plants and things for my inner adult. And a black room full of neon palm trees and flamingos for my inner Trapper Keeper. All things in balance.
posted by darksasami at 6:10 PM on March 29, 2020 [3 favorites]


Lol, I time travelled yesterday after talking here about how I wouldn't. But I time traveled backwards. I was so excited to buy my turnips on Sunday! So I was super mad when I learned that the turnip girl only sells turnips on Sunday morning; I was in church(*) I can't play a video game to buy video game turnips. So I set the clock backwards Sunday evening to buy my turnips and grumbled at the frustrating game design.

I think this game would work better for me if it still had the "wait until tomorrow for things to unlock" design, but not the "time in game matches time outside" part. Maybe have the time of day in game randomize every time you start it, or provide some in-game way to skip the clock around without it being too cheaty. I guess just changing the system time is a reasonable enough workaround but it's unaesthetic.
posted by Nelson at 4:08 PM on March 30, 2020 [1 favorite]


I think this game would work better for me if it still had the "wait until tomorrow for things to unlock" design, but not the "time in game matches time outside" part.
I agree and particularly with holidays: I don't need holidays in my video games when I have holidays in real life! Stop giving me FOMO because I don't have time to play the game on Christmas Eve or any other time when I'm much more likely to be traveling or busy.
posted by Glier's Goetta at 2:08 AM on March 31, 2020


I'm loving the current Bunny festival. It appears you can play it any time, as much as you want, until Bunny Day. Which presumably corresponds to Easter, but I haven't checked. I'm really curious if any of the more static things will regenerate while I'm not playing or if I need to wait until tomorrow.
posted by Margalo Epps at 3:23 PM on April 1, 2020 [2 favorites]


I like the cherry blossom festival, but I'm not as big of a fan of Bunny Day. Eurogamer writes "There's something rotten about Animal Crossing's egg event" and I agree. It's so much drudgery for furniture I don't want. Hope this is now how everything will be going forward.

In the old GameCube version, they would sometimes have sports days, with animals playing tug-of-war or racing, and those were a lot of fun. (And had the best music.)
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 12:59 PM on April 3, 2020


I actually kind of dig the incredibly ugly fancy hat recipe you get after you figure out the recipes for all the horrible egg outfits. But it's a slog to get there, for sure.

My islanders talk a lot about how much they like Bunny Day, though, so I'm going along with it for them.

I love how often my islanders seem to be running around with each other, it's super cute. They don't seem to have noticed my "encourage" reaction, or else I haven't timed it right so they're looking.
posted by asperity at 10:31 AM on April 6, 2020


I made myself a Cool S shirt

Is that a cool-s shirt or a cool s-shirt? Linguists want to know!
posted by straight at 3:11 PM on April 6, 2020


The former, naturally; it is a shirt bearing The Cool S, coolest of all known esses.
posted by cortex at 4:08 PM on April 6, 2020


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