Animal Crossing Monopoly: Cute, But Complicated

A few months ago, Mother Duck and I accumulated a small collection of classic board games, along with one variation on a classic, the Animal Crossing: New Horizons edition of Monopoly.  (They aren’t exactly a proper replacement for games of the electronic variety, but we imagine they’ll come in quite handy during power outages, at least!)  Rather than buying property and financially annihilating friends and family unlucky enough to land on one of your exorbitantly priced hotels, the Animal Crossing variation has each player gathering and selling resources in the hopes of buying the best items.  It may seem like a simple enough concept, but as for how the game plays out, that’s another story entirely.

Updated New Horizons Island and House Tour

About a year and a half ago, I wrote a short post about a tour I created for my house and 5-star island (which I named Quackville) in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.  This partially Disneyland-themed island received some changes before the inevitable exhaustion from playing the same game (even if intermittently) over the course of two years finally set in.  While I have yet to uncover everything the newest update has to offer, I think a break is in order, and so I decided to record a second, updated tour to show off all of my (and Charlotte’s) hard work.

A Duck and an Octopus Visit Disneyland: A Quirky Dream

As the Fourth of July fireworks began to fade into the background and my mind, at long last, drifted off into slumber, I had a dream.  A silly dream.  A dream where I went to Disneyland with Zucker the octopus from Animal Crossing.

New Horizons Island and House Tour

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about my plans for Quackville, my island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.  After hours of terraforming and painstakingly attempting to make my plans a reality, my semi-Disney-inspired island is now complete, including a condensed version of Main Street USA, Frontierland, Adventureland, New Orleans Square, and Tom Sawyer Island on the left and a three-tier residential area and zen garden on the right.  If you’d like to see a tour of my island and house, you can find the video below:

I’ve Got Big Plans for Quackville

Not too long ago over on Virtual Bastion, I wrote about how I finally got a 5-star rating in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.  With that milestone now out of the way, I decided that my next goal was to terraform the island of my dreams.  After watching a whole bunch of island tours on YouTube and general brainstorming, I had a pretty solid idea of what I wanted to do.  But before I could get started…I spent several hours painstakingly drawing lines all over my island in order to create a very helpful grid, followed by a detailed map on Photoshop.  Because I’m kind of obsessive like that.

The Duck’s New Thoughts on New Horizons

The newest Animal Crossing for the Switch is here at last, and I have been having a great time with it so far.  As of writing this, I’m not terribly far into the game, but I think I’ve played enough to get a decent feel for it, so it’s time I shared my initial impressions, plus a few tips that you might find useful.

Life Update: Empty Grocery Stores and Cuddly Kitties

Hope everyone’s doing well.  Now that we’re several weeks into this COVID-19 thing, I can’t get over how quickly and unexpectedly life can change.  One moment, our top goal in life is to find a new home so we can move out of our rental.  The next, we’re discouraged from even leaving the house, let alone the whole state, and our top struggle is finding toilet paper rather than a new home.

Playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf with Mother Duck

Ever since its origin on the GameCube, Animal Crossing has always been one of those few games that both Mother Duck and I enjoy playing.  While she prefers more peaceful games like Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon, it is rare for me to play a game that doesn’t involve some grand adventure, platforming, RPG, or otherwise.  Nevertheless, Animal Crossing just has a certain level of charm that even I can’t resist.

Warning: Animal Crossing May Increase Your Blood Pressure

Maybe I’m the only one here who feels this way.  Maybe what I’m about to say is completely out there, and my sanity should be seriously questioned.  But I’ve been thinking long and hard about something lately, and I have come to the conclusion that Animal Crossing might just possibly be one of the cruelest series ever made.

Okay, I hear you all out there, looking at each other in confusion.  Yes, I can hear the noise made by mere glances.  Ducks have good hearing, doncha know.  And I also hear you saying, but Duck, Animal Crossing is the nicest game known to mankind.  All you do is relax and have fun.  And befriend cute animals.  And decorate your house with all manner of wonderful things.  And I agree, on the surface, Animal Crossing looks nice.  There are no battles to be fought.  No violence.  Nothing objectionable of any kind.

Animal Crossing House Tours

I’ve been thinking, after all these years of blogging, that maybe it was time to share something a bit more personal about myself.  Let me tell you a bit about where I live…in Animal Crossing.  From time to time, my mom and I enjoy playing Animal Crossing: City Folk, where we have, over the course of several years, amassed and spent millions of Bells.  If you’re not familiar with Animal Crossing, this is a game where you, a human, live in a village of talking animals, earn money (usually by fishing, catching bugs, or receiving various strange gifts from the villagers as rewards for doing errands for them).  You basically spend the game earning money and eventually upgrading your house to three levels, which you can decorate to your heart’s content.

Recently, we accumulated so much stuff, however, that we each had to make use of the third and fourth houses respectively to store all of these possessions.  I know, that’s all quite silly, isn’t it?  But we got two new houses to decorate out of the deal, and two new characters, as well.  In the end, our Crossing houses turned out so delightful (and were filled with so many rare or expensive items from our years of playing) that it seemed like it was time to share them with you all.  Now, this console is not connected to my capture card, so I was not able to take any screenshots, but I did take some decent quality photos, so here we go.