Fun tricks and hidden details

If you’re like me, you’re probably spending wayyyy too much time in Animal Crossing. But honestly, is there really such a thing?

Aside from protecting us from the apocalyptic hell of the real world, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is also chock full of thoughtful, little details that you notice the more you play. So we gathered some of our absolute favorite observations of the adorable stuff that make the world and the villagers who populate it feel so alive.

Of course, you can’t really “spoil” Animal Crossing per se. But some people might want to find all this magic themselves on their own time.

1. You can has pet turtles 🙂

Not only can you catch a snapping turtle (if you’re lucky), but you can actually KEEP THEM AS PETS!! Well, OK, only kinda. I’m not sure the turtles know or even like being viewed as your “pet.” But if you display them in your house or around your village, they just stand there with no water tank, hanging out, being cutie little lugs. 

Hot tip: Press A near your snapping turtle to get some, uh, love I guess!

One Redditor even claims that their villager was reading to one said pet turtle, though it might just look that way in the shot.

Just don’t think too long about the philosophical and ethical conundrum that comes with keeping animals as pets when your island is populated by sentient human-animals.

2. Villagers will rock the fuck out with you

You might’ve noticed that your villagers sing every now and again. But their musical talents are far more wide-sweeping.

If you give them the right setup, they’ll take to the mic and put on a full-on concert for you. Yas, thank you, Audie! Keep the spirit of the music concert scene alive during lockdown!

Perhaps best of all, though, if you choose to join their singalongs by playing an instrument nearby, your villagers will actively move closer for moral support and to get syncopated with the beat you’re laying down.

That’s not all, either. A specific villager named Beau can be caught yodeling in her house. Another was found to stop midway through singing and seemingly…checking her phone for the lyrics she forgot?

3. They take selfies too! (And feel bad about it, just like you!)

Generally speaking, we highly recommend you take the time to observe your villagers’ habits, since they all have their own adorably unique qualities and activities. That’s how you’ll catch golden moments like this, when Raymond snapped a selfie of himself before wincing at the result.

We feel you, Raymond! But post it! Feel cute, maybe delete later!

They’ll also snap pics of things they like, which makes us wonder if there’s an Animal Crossing version of Instagram.

4. Isabelle also does all sorts of cute things

Sadly, Tom Nook seems to keep Isabelle trapped in a never-ending 24-hour workday. Unionize Isabelle — you deserve basic human rights.

But in the meantime, everyone’s favorite assistant can often be seen toiling away the hours of her endless shift in the most adorable ways. She’ll exercise in the afternoon, chug coffee at night, sniff the flowers on her desk, accidentally fall asleep in the chair directly across from her boss.

Perhaps cutest of all, though: She looks out the window to catch meteor showers whenever one is happening on your island. Urgh. She’s perfect. Never change, Isabelle. (But do look into unionizing, please, this is not OK.)

5. Villagers who moved out can show up on your friends’ islands

This one boggled our minds, though it’s actually not new to New Horizons and also happened in previous Animal Crossing games as well.

Sometimes if your villager moves out from your island, they don’t just disappear into the Animal Crossing ether. They can actually wind up on your friends’ islands, and will give your island a shoutout when explaining where they moved from!

And if you go visit them in their new place on your friend’s island, they’ll also remember you! Because no matter how long it’s been, your Animal Crossing villagers do not forget you ?

6. Kimonos alter when you go into work-mode

There are a bunch of little cute details to discover about your furniture and clothing (like how fans blow wind through your plants and clothes). But our favorite by far is this added feature that stays true to how real-life kimonos work.

6. Those villager-shaped silhouettes in the museum have a purpose

Maybe like me when you first ran around exploring every corner of the gorgeous museum, you paused over one suspiciously ominous section. In the fossil ward, there’s a space for silhouettes of every different villager in the whole game. My first thought was, wait are we supposed to…taxidermy our villagers to complete Blathers’ sick psychopathic museum of horrors?!

Turns out, that is not the case.

Those silhouettes are actually showing how each villagers’ species’ has evolved from a particular prehistoric ancestor. When you complete that dinosaur display, you can actually catch that villager in the designated silhouette and unlock special dialogue to hear how they feel about it. Probably a little creeped out???

Also, try standing on the dots around your museum. They each have fun little unique soundscapes and widen the camera to let you soak in all your glorious donations.

7. So much drama to be found in villager interactions

Again, we can’t recommend observing your villagers enough. This is especially true whenever they interact with one another. 

Fans have caught their villagers doing all sorts of things, like kissing.

They give each other lessons on how to be, like, super cool.

And even piss each other off and fight! 

If you check in after they’ve had a fight with upset expressions on their face, you’ll even get to hear the hot gossip about what went down. This player now has to deal with a fat shamer on her island.

8. There’s rainbows :’)

Remember rainbows? Well we can through Animal Crossing.

9. You can drop wasp nests on your villagers ? But it won’t save you

We’ve covered a lot of cute villager behavior. But let’s be honest, some of our Animal Crossing villagers literally deserve to die (or just move the fuck out already, please Hamphrey take the HINT.) In those instances, when the perfect conditions arise, you can actually drop a fat ol’ wasp nest on their head.

But jokes on you because you’re still the one who gets fucked over anyway!

10. K.K. Slider takes secret song requests

If you’re not collecting K.K. Slider songs through the kiosk in Resident Services, then you are missing out on some of the greatest bops of the 21st century.

Here’s the real tip, though: Those official EPs don’t even come close to the list of secret songs you can get by requesting special songs when he plays concerts every Saturday night outside Resident Services.

Fans are still figuring out all the secret menu songs you can unlock. But we want to believe the below example is true (it isn’t), and that K.K. can break out into Wonderwall upon request. FREE BIRD! DO FREE BIRD NEXT!