Video Game Blog 009: The Return to Buntown!

I already did a full post on the entire Animal Crossing series, which was a lot of fun. Seeing as how Animal Crossing: New Horizons had a massive update in November, I decided it was worth travelling back to Buntown to talk about the welcome additions.

Welcome back to Buntown! (Credit: Nintendo)

Of course, this is just your return to Buntown… I never stopped playing. I have actually played every single day since I got the game in April of 2020. Cocoa still plays, although for a long time she was busy with schoolwork and so only checked in once a week or so.

The game has had periodic updates since release, but was completely silent for months before the announcement of one final huge update and the Happy Home Paradise DLC. Many fans got tired of waiting and most of us assumed the developers were done with the updates. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case.

Puck is in his jammies drinking coffee. (Credit: Nintendo)

One of the things the update brought to the game was the fan-favorite character Brewster and his coffee shop the Roost. This has been a staple in the game ever since the second installment, Wild World. In each game except for New Leaf, Brewster’s shop is in the museum, as he and Blathers are old friends. The game includes a brief quest to get Brewster to move to the town and once he opens shop, you can come in for coffee, see villagers taking a break, and invite characters with amiibo cards. The Roost serves another purpose, in that it actually brings back Resetti the mole and his brother Don, who sometimes stop in for coffee. Brewster is a pleasant, soft-spoken bird who comes to like you the more you visit, giving you presents and the occasional shot of “pigeon milk”. (Don’t ask.)

Katrina is awesome. (Credit: Nintendo)

Another big addition is the expansion of Harv’s Island. This was originally just a place to take pictures, but now Harv has built it into a hippie commune where various animals set up shop once you donate enough bells. Redd, Kicks, Leif, and Sahara get their own shops here. We also see the return of the alpacas Reese and Cyrus, former Mayor Tortimer, Harriet the poodle, and Katrina the fortune-telling cat. You can also invite amiibo villagers to hang out at Harv’s Island.

Stop singing and watch where you’re going, Kapp’n. (Credit: Nintendo)

Another welcome returning character is the kappa Kapp’n. For a fee of 1000 Nook Miles he will ferry you to a special island. As with his previous appearances, Kapp’n sings nonsensical sea shanties as he sails.

Just like the islands you visit from Nook Miles tickets, these change every time and feature some exclusive content, like vegetables, new recipes, and new crafting materials— glowing moss and vines. The seasons can change on these islands, allowing you to get fish, bugs, and crafting materials that may be out of season.

These islands are also a good source for Gyroid fragments, which are another fan-requested inclusion. Gyroids have been in the game since the beginning and their absence from this game was odd. (Except for the donation Gyroid Lloid who appeared when you were collecting to build bridges and ramps.) Planting and watering Gyroid fragments on your island allows a new Gyroid to sprout the next day. Gyroids also show up the day after a rain or snowfall, buried like fossils.

There is also a special rare island where it turns to night and shooting stars fall. The rocks give out star fragments, some of which are the rare zodiac fragments. This is a good place to stock up on those crafting materials and get celestial recipes you may have missed.

Getting a new recipe. Also, they finally added my real life hair style to the game. (Credit: Nintendo)

A sweeping addition to the game was vegetables and cooking recipes. You can now plant and harvest crops and learn recipes from your villagers. The food can be given as gifts, used as decorations, or give you energy like the fruit. The cooking recipes are stored with your crafting recipes, but you need to build a kitchen to cook. (I built a communal kitchen near the Bad Bears Jail.)

Streeeetch. (Credit: Nintendo)

And finally the update has also brought back stretching. By tapping on the radio outside the community center, you can invite your villagers to do some stretches with you.

The update adds more things, such as new dialogs, new crafting recipes, new decorations, new Nook Miles stamps, new K.K. Slider songs, more reactions, expanded design features, and more. There is also a very handy feature where Isabelle announces the day’s visitor in her daily announcements. All in all, the new features add a lot of replay value to the game, more reasons to play every day, and expands the world of Animal Crossing in nice ways. It’s great to see some of the old characters return, to have more to craft, and more ways to customize the island. When you add in the paid expansion Happy Home Paradise (which I may cover in a future post) the game’s lifespan has been extended quite a bit. Typically I stop playing an Animal Crossing game once I’ve paid off all my home expansions, but New Horizons has so much content, that I kept going with it, playing every day, and never tiring of it.

New friends! (Credit: Nintendo)

For Christmas we got some choice amiibo cards, so the Buntown in New Horizons and the one in New Leaf will be getting some new residents. We got a new bunny named Sasha, a new penguin named Chabwick, a robot octopus named Cephalalobot, and some cat named Raymond that apparently is a fan favorite. (Our shiny cards were Kicks and Orville.)

Although we’ve been pretty happy with our residents, it will be interesting to swap a couple out. (Rosie for sure, and the maybe Sterling or Flurry. We’ll see.) We’re keeping the bunnies and penguins for sure. And Bob isn’t going anywhere. Bob is my cat bestie. We’ve been hesitant to swap villagers because it’s a huge time investment to travel to islands and find a suitable replacement. We don’t leave it up to chance anymore… Not since the Greta incident.

And now for a few fun recent memories from the game.

Flo loves toilets so much. She’s usually reading on hers when we visit. (Credit: Nintendo)

Abba and I never knew each other in High School, so I threw us a Bear Prom. (Credit: Nintendo)

We’ve been trying to get this robot since we started playing. It took us a year and a half to get the rocket recipe! (Credit: Nintendo)

And then there was the time I saved K.K. Slider’s life. He never noticed. (Credit: Nintendo)

Thank you for reading the further adventures of SoraRabbit and Abba on Buntown! I really do love this game, and I’m glad to have more content for it. I hope you enjoyed the return visit. I’ll be back in the next two days for one more wrap up post and then it’s on to 2022!