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The Free Summer update – Wave 2 will come to Animal Crossing: New Horizons on July 30th. It will include fireworks and a new “dreaming” mechanic, but (most importantly) it will also include the ability to backup and restore your island so long as you are a Nintendo Switch Online Subscriber. Take a look at the details below!

Baby You’re a Firework!

I had a feeling this was coming when the first wave of summer DLC didn’t include fireworks. I can’t wait to see videos and pictures of the fireworks displays in our various towns.

Enjoy atmospheric fireworks lighting up the sky above your island every Sunday in August at 7 p.m. Get in the spirit by redeeming Bells for raffle tickets in the plaza to get various festive items that you can use. Put your personal spin on the fireworks display by using your own custom design pattern to see it shot in the air as a firework in the sky!

Sweet Dreams!

Players will be able to use a new Dreaming mechanic to visit other players islands or allow other players to visit theirs. The big difference between dreaming and visiting via the airport is that nothing you do while visiting in dreams will be permanent. It is, quite literally, a “dream.”

You can now choose to take a nap in any bed placed in your home.** While dozing off, you may find yourself in a strange realm where you’ll be greeted by Luna. Luna offers visits to other islands as a dream, and with her help, you can share your island as a dream with others too.*** She will grant those who share their island a “Dream Address” which players can exchange and use to visit each other’s island in a dream. In dreams, nothing is permanent because nothing you do is saved, so explore to your heart’s content.

The Island Backup & Restoration Service is FINALLY here!

The most important part of this update is Island backups. Nintendo Switch Online members will have their island data uploaded to the cloud periodically. They can then contact Nintendo Support to have their island reinstated in the event of a damaged Switch.

You cannot, however, transfer the island to another Switch. That ability will be added in an additional patch later this year.

Nintendo Switch Online members can enable the new island backup service, which automatically uploads island and user save data to the internet at certain times. If your Nintendo Switch system is lost or damaged, you may be able to recover your island paradise as long as you’ve enabled island backup. In the event of loss or damage, contact Nintendo Consumer Support about restoring the island and user save data on your new or repaired Nintendo Switch system. After your island data and individual player data is restored, you can get back to building your island community!**** Additional details can be found on the Nintendo Consumer Support page when the update goes live. The island backup feature is separate from the Save Data Cloud functionality offered for select Nintendo Switch games through Nintendo Switch Online. A function specific to Animal Crossing: New Horizons to move users and save data to another system is planned for later this year. Details will be announced in the future.                                                                         

The video also teased a fall update at the end. The teaser icon is a pumpkin and I can’t wait for the autumn season shenanigans!

What do you think? Sound off in the comments and let us know your thoughts!

Make sure to keep your eyes on Engaged Family Gaming for all of the latest news and reviews you need to Get Your Family Game On!

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A new, free, update has been added to Animal Crossing: New Horizons as of July 3rd. Wave 1 expands the playable space for everyone by letting you play in the ocean!

Below are the new features added in the free Wave 1 Update.

  • Swimming and Diving – You can equip a wet suit and explore the ocean around your island. You can swim and dive to look for new wild life to sell or donate to the museum.
  • New Clothing types – Wet suits, swim masks, and water shoes
  • Pascal Brings Rewarding Recipes – They’ve added a new visitor: Pacal. He is a friendly otter who absolutely LOVES scallops. You can trade scallops that you find while diving (look for the bubbles) for Mermaid themed DIY patterns.
  • Gulliver? – Gulliver gets a pirate themed rescue mission after you download the new update.       

Even better? This isn’t the only free update coming this summer! There is a second wave schedule for sometime in August! The video that accompanied the announcement for the summer updates had fireworks on the splash screen for the August update so that might be the theme? We may not know for sure, but we don’t have to wait very long!

What do you think? Sound off in the comments and let us know your thoughts!

Looking for information about how multiplayer works in Animal Crossing? Check out our guide here!

Our new player tips for Animal Crossing are here!

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April 23rd is a big day in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. A series of free updates is going to bring a number of new events and characters to everyone’s islands!

The following is a list of the events/characters Nintendo is adding via the free updates!

Leif’s Garden Shop – Nature-loving Leif will regularly visit players’ islands to sell his flourishing assortment of foliage, including shrubs and flower seeds. These decorative items will help make any island paradise a little greener.

Jolly Redd’s Treasure Trawler – After downloading the free update, Jolly Redd will occasionally show up in his boat to sell in-game art, as well as furniture with unique colors. Like in previous Animal Crossing games, players will have to figure out which art pieces are real and which are fake. After purchasing genuine art, players can donate it to the island museum to open an art gallery, which will display all types of donated pieces, from paintings to sculptures.

Nature Day (April 23-May 4) – During the Nature Day period, special Nook Miles challenges will be available that focus on nature-inspired goals, such as planting trees and watering flowers.

May Day Tour (May 1-7) – In the first week of May, players can use a one-time May Day Ticket at the island airport to head out on a limited-time tour to an island that looks different than the usual mystery island tours. A special visitor who looks familiar might also be there…

International Museum Day (May 18-31) – To celebrate International Museum Day, players can take part in a Stamp Rally. After receiving a special stamp card, players can enjoy viewing fish, insects and fossils while collecting stamps at the various museum exhibits to earn an in-game reward.

Wedding Season (June 1-30) – During a nuptial-themed June, players can visit Harvey’s island to meet the married couple Reese and Cyrus, as well as help arrange and take anniversary photos with them in the wedding-picture studio. Players will get wedding-themed items as a token of their gratitude.

Source: Nintendo

More updates will be coming as time goes on! I’m sure the summer updates will be exciting. What do you think we’ll see?Sound off in the comments and let us know your thoughts!

Looking for information about how multiplayer works in Animal Crossing? Check out our guide here!

Our new player tips for Animal Crossing are here!

Make sure to keep your eyes on Engaged Family Gaming for all of the latest news and reviews you need to Get Your Family Game On!

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By now you’ve probably seen a lot of information and reviews about Nintendo’s latest Animal Crossing game.  What you may not have seen, however, is a detailed description of the game experience from the perspective of a secondary player on a shared island. Read below for more information on our experiences with island sharing.

As you may already know, the Engaged Family Gaming household has 3 Switch consoles.  When Animal Crossing: New Horizons came out, we purchased 3 copies of the game, just in time to be stuck at home for an undetermined amount of time.  What we did not expect was that 3 consoles and 3 copies of the game would not be enough for all 5 of us to have an enjoyable Animal Crossing experience.

In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, players travel to a deserted island and spend their time creating various homes, shops, museums, gardens, etc.  Players collect goods around the island and turn them in for rewards that enable them to create more beautiful and enticing properties on their islands.  These properties encourage other animals to come join you on your island. Overall this is supposed to be a relaxing and peaceful experience where you try to build your own perfect escape.  The limitation is that you can only have one island per console and any other players joining this “multiplayer” experience must share the island. This works really well if you are the first player on the island.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t work as well for the other players sharing the island with the first player.

We originally intended for our Editor in Chief to join our youngest on a shared island.  We thought that if Mom wanted to play too, she could share one of the boys’ islands. This did not go as planned.  First, our youngest wanted Mommy to play with her. In a normal situation that would have been fine, because Mom is not known for spending a lot of time playing video games.  However, recent events had Mom looking for an escape from reality, so she decided to join the little one and devote significant time to playing. She let the little one create and name the island and do the initial setup. She then joined as the island’s Very First Relocator.  On the first day while Mom was learning the game, everything went fine. The littlest played until she was bored. She collected butterflies, caught some fish, and gathered shells from the beaches. When she was done, Mom signed on and explored the island and learned how to shake trees, collect fruit, etc.  Then Mom asked for a fishing pole. She couldn’t get one because the littlest didn’t unlock it yet. This became a problem going forward. We learned that all progression in the game is driven by the main player. The secondary player can’t help, build, or contribute to any of the community buildings. The second player can’t donate items for the museum until the first player does quests to unlock construction and gets the museum built.  The secondary player gets minimal tutorials. The fruit eating mechanic is never explained to the secondary player and the secondary player can only buy DIY patterns from Nook shopping or through the store once the first player has received or unlocked them during quests. Some items needed for building new homes never become available to the secondary player, though they may be earned as gifts or through island mechanics. This quickly became a point of frustration for our household.  So much so that our Editor in Chief has decided not to play at all because he does not want to be a secondary player. This may be because our littlest lacks focus and loves to run around in the game doing completely random quests without many objectives, but it seems to be a concern for many people we’ve heard feedback from.

These complaints don’t even take into account some of the other frustrations that can happen when siblings or players don’t agree and purposefully sabotage or troll each other.  One way to mitigate this would be to have a parent or the most motivated player be the initial island creator. This would help to ease some of the growing pains associated with the ‘gated’ growth in the game.

Since this was so frustrating, we tried playing together in local co-op.  This was even worse. In this mode, you designate a leader and the rest become followers. You can switch between leader and follower at will.  There are many problems with this mode. Since local co-op uses a shared screen, others follow you into whatever buildings you enter, and players can’t get separated.  If you get too far away from each other, the follower gets teleported to the leader. Without a split screen, this severely limits everyone’s ability to play. Using the joy con in this mode is very complicated. The follower has no access to their inventory or tool wheel.  A single button pressed over and over gives you access to your tools. Items you gather are placed in the recycle box in Tom Nook’s tent or building. Any time the leader opens a menu, any activity the followers may be doing gets paused.

We haven’t had any time to try out the online multiplayer mode, but we’ve heard great things.  The shared experience in this game mode supposedly becomes less frustrating and more hilarious.  We will let you know more about those experiences in a future article.

Overall, this is a beautiful and relaxing game, but if you really want the full Animal Crossing experience, it is best for each player to have their own console and copy of the game.  We realize that this is likely not feasible for everyone so keep these issues in mind if you are considering this game for a single console household with multiple players. This game really feels like it is designed as a single player game with a demo mode for secondary players.


What do you think? Sound off in the comments and let us know your thoughts!

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A minute-ish long trailer and a press kit are the only things we have that explain the upcoming Steam Early Access game Hokko Life. That’s fine though. We’re excited anyway.

Hokko Life is a community sim like Animal Crossing that will be released on Steam Early Access sometime in 2020. It features a focus on creativity and expression that is only going to get better as the game progresses through Open Access.

Game Features

Below are some of the core mechanics that have been announced so far. It’s going into Early Access though, so the sky really is the limit.

CRAFT

“Head to the forest or the abandoned mine to chop; mine, and dig for resources. Take what you’ve collected back to town and craft them into materials you can use in your own designs.”

It feels like every game has a crafting system nowadays, but that is because crafting is a great way to keep people engaged. It also makes exploring the map more entertaining as you never know what interesting resources you might find. I’m interested to see how deep the crafting system progresses as we move towards a full release.

DESIGN

“Gather your materials and head into the workshop to put your own spin on every item in the game. Use the design table to build your own furniture, combining different shapes and materials in a simple but powerful editor.”

The design feature is one of the most exciting bits of Hokko Life. Animal Crossing has design options too, but this is a PC game so I can imagine that there will be some very cool options. I can’t wait to build an Engaged Family Gaming themed house in my village!

PAINT

“Pop on your overall, get out those brushes and throw some colour down. You can design wallpaper, flooring and even T-Shirts for you and the villagers to wear. Get everyone in town wearing your own unique designs!”

I’m excited about the painting tools as well. It will be very interesting to see what kids come up with.

BUILD & DECORATE

“Enlist the help of the resident builder and start expanding the town. Place buildings wherever you like and get them ready for new villagers to move to town. Customize these new homes inside and out; choose designs and place furniture to make a home your new friends will love.”

Town building is one of my favorite game mechanics. I LOVE moving buildings around and lining up beautiful streets. The options shown in the trailer look great!

FARM

“Turn any plot of land into a place to grow vegetables and other plants, use your green fingers to grow and sell the best produce.”

I have to admit that i’m a little cooler on farming games than I am on some of the other mechanics in Hokko Life. I always end up stressing out about how inefficient I am being (even if I’m doing well). This has caused me to restart after three game days in Stardew Valley more times than I am comfortable putting in writing.

FISH

“Spend a quiet morning at the various fishing spots around the world of Hokko and build your fishing collection. Fish have unique habits, so you’ll need to vary your approach, with each catch providing it’s own challenge when you reel in.”

I’ve spent a lot of time fishing in video games over the years. So much time, in fact, that you might think that I would enjoy it in real life. I don’t! But, that won’t stop me from enjoying the fishing here. This is going to be less about the mechanics, and more about obsessively collecting all of the different fish in the game.

BUG HUNT

“Fluttering and scuttling about the world of Hokko you’ll find a whole range of insects for you to catch and build your collection with; keep an eye out, you never know what might be hiding in that bush!”

The bug hunting mechanics will, similarly to fishing, be all about collecting a wide array of bugs available during different seasons. This will likely be very similar to the bug hunting in Animal Crossing, but that’s more than OK.

The Trailer!


What do you think? Are you picking this one up? Sound off in the comments and let us know your thoughts!

Make sure to keep your eyes on Engaged Family Gaming for all of the latest news and reviews you need to Get Your Family Game On!

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