I’m sure this will cause complaints, same as previously when I’ve “completed” Animal Crossing games, but I have a system and I’m sticking to it. Yes, on one end of the scale people would say the game is complete when you’ve achieved all the in-game stamps from Tom Nook, or when you’ve made every item in the DIY list, or filled the museum, or any number of other things perhaps in combination. On the other end of the scale, you’ve people saying when they’ve seen the credits, which for me happened about 8 weeks in when KK Slider did his first Saturday gig. My criteria, is play every day for a whole year, and so, on day 365, that’s it. I’ve seen a whole year’s worth of events, never missed a day, and the game is completed.

Finished though? Of course not.

But how was the game? Well, it was Animal Crossing. It’s probably the most different from the rest Animal Crossing, though, in a number of ways. The main two are the DIY crafting, and the island construction additions, where you create furniture and special items with the former and restructure your entire island, knocking down cliffs, making new lakes and rivers and so on, with the latter. There’s also a fair bit missing, though – no coffee shop with Brewster, no parade of shops, no second hand shop, no Lyle, Kapp’n, Tortimer or many other regulars.

Ultimately, though, it is more of the same. You plant trees, harvest fruit, collect things for your house, chat with animals, pay off your mortgage, and visit other people in their islands. And actually, that’s fine.

Some people wonder what I found to do for all this time, and I’ve not really any idea. Each day has the same routine: Smack rocks, find the buried money, plant more money, “harvest” the grown money tree, collect the bottle on one of the beaches, dig up, identify then sell all the fossils, and that sort of thing. I’ve also had a vague medium term goal in mind which I’d then spend some time working towards: Early on, this was to grow an orchard with rows of trees for each fruit, later it was to hit various Bell targets (having long since paid off Nook’s mortgage), and more recently it has been to grow every type of flower – blue roses still elude me, sadly.

Mostly, though, it’s just relaxing to wander round and do menial tasks for no real actual gain. And sure, I’ve done a year but I’m still going to play it until I get fed up, which probably won’t be for a while yet. Especially if Nintendo are still chucking new stuff in every now and again!

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