Animal Crossing: New Horizons Player Envisions Birdwatching Mechanic

An Animal Crossing: New Horizons player posted a storyboard to the Animal Crossing subreddit about their vision of a birdwatching mechanic. Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a social and farming simulation video game developed and published by Nintendo. It’s the fifth main title in the Animal Crossing series. Animal Crossing: New Horizons was released in 2020 and rose to the top very quickly. It’s the second best-selling Switch unit and a top ten selling Nintendo game of all time.

Aside from being one of the best-selling Nintendo games of all time, Animal Crossing: New Horizons features a variety of life-simulation mechanics, such as fishing, farming, interior design, and much more. With the new 2.0 update coming out for the game on November 5, fans have been speculating what’s to come, while others share their own ideas for future updates.

One of New Horizons’ creative fans, Waybye, posted an idea on the Animal Crossing subreddit about a new birdwatching mechanic. They also featured an idea for a new Animal Crossing villager. Waybye’s new villager is Parker, a birdwatching spider modeled after the real life bird-eating spider, otherwise known as a Goliath Birdeater. However, he doesn’t intend to eat any birds; instead, he enjoys taking photographs of them and logging them into his birdwatching app. Parker is always excited to see what birds the player has taken photos of. Thus, the player can build their bond with Parker through birdwatching. The player even details Parker’s quirky relationship with an already existing villager: Blather, the museum owl, who is afraid of spiders.

See the full bird guide from Waybye on Reddit here.

The player explains in their post that birds would appear all over the island, to pair with the incoming Brewster and his new cafe. Roosters would appear on rooftops, owls would spawn in the trees at night, chickens would generate on the pathways, seagulls could be found at the beach, and much more. Even seasonal birds would spawn in the bushes depending on what flowers are blooming. The player gave brief examples of what would set the different kinds of birds apart; for example, perhaps a chicken would drop an egg for the player to cook, parrots would mimic the sounds of the villagers that the player spoke to that day, and angry swans would chase players around the pond.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons clearly has a passionate and creative fanbase. The Reddit post gained a lot of attraction, with over twelve thousand upvotes. Perhaps Animal Crossing: New Horizons players sharing their ideas will inspire Nintendo to keep working on future updates, and maybe fans will see something similar in the future.

Source: Waybye/Reddit