Animal Crossing: New Horizons isn't really the kind of game where specific moments stand out to new players. Animal Crossing and its community are all about sharing comforts and criticisms. But an interesting part of Animal Crossing has found something where those two ideas meet. It's in Animal Crossing: New Horizons' repeated use of face-meltingly bad– and great– puns.
Every time a player in Animal Crossing: New Horizons catches an insect or fish, they get a text prompt with a pun. Fishing and insect catching aren't the only place where there are puns in Animal Crossing. They're everywhere, in fact. But fishing and catching insects results in constant puns, every single one of them not for the pun squeamish.
A few pun examples should make the situation clear. After catching a centipede, players get, "99 more and I'll have a dollarpede." After catching a tiger butterfly, it says, "I've earned my stripes!" Another truly awful pun comes after catching a sturgeon, saying, "Wonder if it can perform sturgery." No pun is better than another, they're all unified in their brilliance and ghastliness.
What's especially great about the puns isn't the puns themselves, though. It's how they bring Animal Crossing: New Horizon players together. Players share their newly discovered puns online with each other as they find them. They offer each other new puns, or recollect some of the older puns from previous Animal Crossing games. It's a sincere and fun way to celebrate Animal Crossing without having to use the game's struggling multiplayer.
At the heart of the fun is, of course, the players showing solidarity as the world wrestles with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Many people are stuck at home due to quarantines or simple physical distancing in service of their own health. Animal Crossing and its puns are an outstanding outlet.
Everything that players are doing in Animal Crossing: New Horizons and everything they're sharing online is largely by intent, of course. The Animal Crossing developers at Nintendo are fully aware that the game is intended to be a sort of comfort food. A simpler and friendlier reflection of real-life without any of the stress and much more manageable progression. Nintendo's developers have even encouraged people to use the game as a therapeutic option. Though puns can sometimes have the opposite effect.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is available now on Nintendo Switch.