An Animal Crossing: New Horizons player shared an incredible animated short that hilariously depicts in-game time travel. The game has a very large creative community, with players frequently sharing their creations both within Animal Crossing and outside of it. Selling over 37 million copies since its release in 2020, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is one of the best-selling Nintendo games of all time.
One of the things that makes the Animal Crossing series unique is its time mechanics - hours pass by in the game just as they do in the real world. The game gets its date information by syncing up to players' Nintendo Switch calendars and matching it accordingly. This mechanic can be frustrating for some players, particularly those eager to start designing their island, as there are some in-game milestones and changes that will need a day to be completed such as moving in-game homes or the opening of new businesses. As a workaround for this issue, some Animal Crossing players will use time travel - changing the Nintendo Switch's calendar settings to new dates - to have changes completed immediately.
Animal Crossing creator Densle posted an incredible animated short to their YouTube channel titled "Time Traveling Designer," which depicts what the user's time travel is like for the other island residents. The short begins with the protagonist asking Tom Nook to move resident Dotty's home, who Tom Nook then calls in the middle of the night. Nook tells the protagonist the move will take a day, to which they respond by closing the game and changing the time on their Nintendo Switch. From there, the creator depicts in beautifully detailed animation the user's persistent time traveling as it essentially breaks the villagers' world - buildings fly through the sky and huge changes occur in an instant as residents watch in fear.
There have long been memes about confused villagers having their Animal Crossing homes moved in the middle of the night, but this amazing animation takes that humor to an entirely new level. The extreme chaos the time-traveling protagonist creates on their island is incredibly creative and perfectly executed, and manages to be both hilarious and dark at the same time. It's hard to say how the creator themselves feels about time travel in Animal Crossing - while the sinister main character could very well be a representation of the unscrupulous and greedy motives of time travel, it could just as well be an absurdist take on an in-game mechanic.
The creator's amazing attention to detail, design and visual storytelling come together to make a truly spectacular tribute to Animal Crossing. Time travel is a hotly debated topic within the game's community, with some considering it cheating and others seeing no issue with how players progress their islands. Regardless of a player's opinion on time travel in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, this animated short is sure to be incredibly enjoyable for any fan.
Source: Densle/YouTube