An Animal Crossing: New Horizons player took on the task of making their island the subject of a three-year project that they undertook. The player then posted the results of their project on social media, where other Animal Crossing: New Horizons players not only praised them for their efforts but also shared memories of their time in the game since its launch in 2020.
Three years ago this week, Animal Crossing: New Horizons was launched for the Nintendo Switch. Around the same timeframe, the COVID-19 pandemic began to wreak havoc across the world. As a result, the world saw an uptick in people that stayed home and shifted their focus away from outdoor and social activities to playing games and doing work-from-home jobs to minimize the risks of infection. Animal Crossing: New Horizons was one of the games that people played during quarantine as a way to maintain at least a semblance of social interaction while enjoying a virtual slice of the island life. While COVID-19 protocols have been eased within the last year, that has not stopped one player from continuing work on their island's major project.
On Reddit, a user named Filbert180 posted their island's main feature. On their island, Filbert180 took an extensive tally of all the Animal Crossing villagers that have lived there at some point since 2020. Filbert180 then noted what their signatures looked like. Then, using Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer on the Nintendo 3DS, Filbert180 used the touchscreen and stylus to recreate the signatures of the villagers. Once those signatures were made, they were used as a reference for redrawing the signatures using the built-in design editor in New Horizons.
With a bit of trial and error, Filbert180 said that they collected 67 villager signatures, but only kept 52 of them out to avoid any potential overlap or problems with the rest of their island's item placements. For their effort, Filbert180's post on r/AnimalCrossing received over 26k upvotes, and the comments applauded them for their effort. Though Filbert180 commented that they are not subscribed to the Nintendo Switch Online service, they said that 30 of their designs could still be accessed by any Animal Crossing players that searched for Creator ID "MA-0988-4683-2575" at the Able Sisters shop in-game.
While Animal Crossing: New Horizons is not receiving any more major content updates from Nintendo, there are plenty of fans that still enjoy their time on their island each day. However, as both fans and Nintendo turn to the future of the Animal Crossing series, only time will tell what projects players will come up with next.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is available now for Nintendo Switch.