There’s a lot one can do in Animal Crossing: New Horizons once they find themselves on the deserted island they’ll soon be calling home. They can collect all sorts of items, explore alongside other players, and devise ways to get rich quick. With all that becomes available to them in a short amount of time, players might not immediately realize that they can let their characters sleep.
Fortunately, this is something the game teaches them pretty quickly, but what it doesn’t immediately tell them is how it affects their character, or whether or not this mechanic will be useful to them in the long run.
How To Sleep
Players’ first in-game day serves as an introductory tutorial section where they, along with the rest of their island’s new residents, learn the basics of Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ gameplay while gathering supplies, setting up camp, and choosing a name for the island. Once all of that is taken care of, they are then encouraged by Tom Nook to head into their new tent and get some rest.
The tent is empty when they first step inside, but by this point, players will have received a foldable cot from Tom Nook, which serves as their first bed. All they have to do now is open up their inventory, select the cot, place it wherever they choose, walk up to it, and hop in. This brings up a notification asking if they would like to sleep, and choosing yes causes the screen to fade to black before the player wakes up to a brand new day, ending the tutorial section.
Is Sleeping Useful?
While sleeping is incredibly useful in real life, here it doesn’t really do anything beyond moving players past the tutorial. Most notably, sleeping doesn’t advance the in-game clock, which moves in real-time with the Switch’s system clock once the tutorial is over. This will likely disappoint players who were hoping to find ways to complete projects and unlock items faster that don’t involve time travel via messing with the Switch’s clock.
As such, players are better off finding other things to do while they wait. Luckily, to reiterate, there is plenty for them to do while they wait for things to become available, like visiting other players' islands, mining for iron nuggets, or paying off their moving fees.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is available for the Switch.