@Hinph
There is a perk to paying it off. I'm just not sure if it's worth it to you.

Free, unlimited redecoration of the outside features of your house.

@ploot

Nook wants over two-million for that? Psh. Maybe if he would let me move buildings around without fees.

I'm keeping the basement. Going to decorate it like Buffalo Bill lives down there with his little dog and a thick woman in the well.

My basement is a Resident Evil-style creepy room. Eveyrthing's crumbling apart, I've got a ton of trash and mysterious bags of somethin' down there, there's a freezer and various tools and something that looks suspiciously like human remains. K.K. Dirge is blasting on the reel-to-reel, there's a moldy dress hanging on the wall, a running industrial sink and a briefcase full of ill-gotten cash.



And I'm always looking for more visitors...


Also, my upstairs is a piano lounge!

It's good! Glad I'm not the only one thinking horror basement. Haha.

I'm proud of my work so far, but it will get better...

@Hinph

Nice! It's got a distinct atmosphere to it. Any K.K. music planned for it?

@TriforceBun

If I could only get something close to resembling Goodbye Horses! Haha.

Anybody know if there's a disco ball in this game? I will be heartbroken if not.

Ha! I LOVE that the creepy room of horror has been on so many minds.


I'm going for the Warrens' room of haunted artifacts/dolls from The Conjuring.

Whoa! Great minds, eh? And my sister-in-law is doing a haunted Phantom of the Opera style gothic basement. Maybe everyone's got dark little secrets in our house...

EDIT: Something to consider for you spook-fans: apparently some of the fake paintings you can get from Redd actually change when you're not looking! Eeek!

@TriforceBun

I was thinking about that today on his ship. I bought a really creepy-looking statue that would fit right at home here, and some of the paintings weren't too far behind.

They're very Spencer Mansion-esque paintings.

@TheBigG753 Oh mine isn't a room, it's just up in the hills where you would least expect it.

@Zero

Oh, I've seen your...congregation.

A friend from church bought a copy of this for my wife and I as a Quarantine Present. :) So far I've been enjoying returning to that magical world. Of course, as I guessed it would, it is also trying very hard to steal me away from doing anything else including my work. When I got the email from him which was just a giant AC Leaf logo and an eShop code I replied "What have you done, Kyle. What have you done..."

Also my wife, who is NO STRANGER TO AC GAMES, was extremely displeased when she learned she couldn't have her own island. What the what? I don't get it, this is normal Animal Crossing. One town, multiple people. Since Day 1. Maybe it is because it is an island that everyone just assumes they would have their own? Seems so strange to me that this is the big deal it is. Well anyway, she got over it quickly enough. (Not much other choice.)

@J.K. Riki I think one weird part about this specific game that I read though is that all of the progression only goes through 1 person. So if you start playing first, you become the island representative or whatever, and then she starts playing and nothing she does really affects the overall progression of anything much. So if she, for instance, wanted to play at a faster pace than you, she really couldn't, because everything unlocking would be based on your progression, not hers.

I could be wrong though, I have no direct experience with this, I just read it somewhere. People were warning that if you plan to play multiplayer make sure the person who will *probably* play the most starts the game, because unlocking stuff and progressing throughout the main course of the game will be solely dependent on their actions.

I can't honestly say if the older games had anything like this since I haven't played multiplayer in the same village since the original, but I feel like with the original it was more anyone could do anything? But I guess there wasn't a whole big progression through a lot of stuff in the original game anyway. It just kind of was what it was right from the start.

@Zero This started with New Leaf where the first person to play was the Mayor, so there were some things only the Mayor could do (though it wasn't to the extent as NH). However I think there were less complaints about it at the time since less people share a 3DS than share a Switch, probably.

@Zero

I suppose I'm not sure what is "progressing." I know you don't have a museum at the start, but beyond that I just don't know what you'd progress. Making bridges, I guess.

EDIT:

But I will say this: I don't really want to know. I paid almost no attention to any AC stuff because I didn't expect to get it, so I'm going to take that and run with it and just enjoy, lol.

Oh I won't spoil it. Just that certain things unlock or upgrade over time based on things you do yada yada. Lots of stuff! So if one person starts the game then doesn't really play much, no matter what the other does, the village will be very limited for all of eternity.

Apparently. Again, I only read this, second-hand information.

To give an example of the "problem": I'm playing with my girlfriend Karen, and I'm the "Resident Representative". We had been waiting for a particular thing to be triggered in the game. Turns out it was triggered by our island reaching a 3 star rating, and talking to Isabelle, which we didn't know.

Well, Karen talked to Isabelle, learned we made it to 3 stars, and told me. Nothing happened. Much later, I talk to Isabelle about our rating, she tells me it's 3 stars, AND tells me this thing we were waiting for was happening shortly.

So basically, the event could have been triggered much earlier, but because Karen told me we had made 3 stars, I didn't check up with Isabelle myself, and we didn't know that was the trigger.

I think Nintendo should at the very least had Isabelle give non-Resident Representatives some sort of clue that the RR needed to talk to her to move things forward.

My wife is the town rep. She's doesn't play much unless me and/or our two sons beg her to. Basic things like bridges and ramps depend on her talking to Nook. Even the initial fish/ insect donations to Nook had to be made by her. I'm not even sure if our town has a rating. This very well may be the best A/C game yet, but they need to patch in the ability to have multiple Town Reps.

So after progressing in the game more, I have two new thoughts on New Horizons:

1) It is so far my favorite AC game since the first (which will likely never be topped, so that is saying a lot)

2) The "Resident Representative" first-player stuff makes the game super fun for the Resident Representative and is almost game-breaking for everyone else who wants to join in.

So it's kind of weird, I guess. I love how many changes they made, but those changes make it almost the least Animal-Crossing game (in spirit) that there has ever been. I feel really bad for my wife who is not the Resident Representative. There has almost become a meta-game for me where I try to make it as fun for her as possible by any way I can, like pretending I don't know stuff that I myself unlocked just because it is lame that she doesn't get to see it be a special event like it is for me when I play as RR. Kinda bizarre design choices here by Nintendo. I guess they *really* want everyone owning their own Switch and copy of this game.

@J.K. Riki

I know multiple people who have bought a Switch Lite for themselves or their kids solely because of Animal Crossing. Haha. Either they don't want to share their island or they don't want to share their time.

Of course Nintendo could have made it an option to let users on a shared console have a separate island, so I have to believe they did this intentionally.