What it's like to return to Animal Crossing: New Horizons after years away

“What in the world was I thinking when I did this?”

If you’ve ever returned to a game like The Sims 4 or Stardew Valley after putting it down for a long time, you’ve probably found yourself asking a question like this at least once. Maybe you stopped playing Cities: Skyline in the middle of a convoluted construction project and returned to it with no memory of what you were thinking. Maybe you seriously messed up your Minecraft server as a kid and left the world in a state of chaos. Only you can solve the mystery of your own brain.

Ahead of Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ big 3.0 update, which launched on Wednesday, I fired up my save file for the first time in over four years, and my “What have I done?” moment came fast. I started by reacquainting myself with my quaint island, patting myself on the back for making such cute yards for all my villagers. I caught up with a few familiar faces who were still in town living their lives. Everything was just as I remembered it.

And then I stepped into my house’s basement.

I was met with a surreal creation that I had little memory of. A giant neon “welcome sign” on one side, a pool on the other, and a skeleton in between. Behind them was a wall of servers ominously pressed up against the wall. There was no radio setting the mood with a jaunty K.K. Slider tune. It’s a surreal nightmare that instantly reminded me that I was going through it the last time I’d visited my little island getaway.

It’s an experience that a lot of players are likely to have soon enough when they return to New Horizons for its latest update. In addition to getting an upgrade on Nintendo Switch 2, the life sim will get a whole swath of new features that are sure to entice nostalgic players back to a game that some have no doubt touched in years. That’s a loaded experience, considering the fact that the game’s peak popularity coincided with the first year of a world-altering pandemic that still carries trauma for so many. To return now is to open up a digital time capsule and unpack the emotional baggage inside. What memories would I find left behind in a place that once was a magical escape? Would my island still feel like home?

Since the series’ inception, returning to an Animal Crossing game after a long break has always been a bit stressful. The older games don’t solely revolve around you. Time passes while you’re gone and the consequences of your abandonment can be severe. Cockroaches take up residence in your apartment, weeds fill the town like an invasive species, and sometimes you find that your favorite neighbor has moved before you could say goodbye. It can be a nerve-wracking experience that keeps you from revisiting your town out of preemptive shame.

I felt a bit of that when I came back to Big Sky, my island named after a Kate Bush song from her 1985 album Hounds of Love. It’s an immediate reminder of what my life was like back in 2020, even before I can explore the town. At the time, I was at the height of my Kate Bush phase — and it shows in-game. My home has a wall full of recreations of all her album covers, my town flag is an iconic photo of Bush surrounded by dogs, and my town theme is a jingly adaptation of the violin melody of “Cloudbusting.” I remember the person who once lived here. Is that still me?

The shame sets in quickly. As soon as my character exits his front door, groggy from a long sleep and with a serious case of bedhead, I’m faced with the horror of a blinking mailbox. It’s the true villain of New Horizons in the absence of Mr. Resetti. (The angry mole will return in the 3.0 update, but not to scold players for resetting their console.) I bravely open it up and find a few letters, including a gift from my in-game mother I haven’t been in touch with for years.

The march of time isn’t as brutal in New Horizons as it is in previous games. Roaches will still make their way into your home, but at some point, the game gets the hint that you’re no longer active. Somehow, it’s even more morose. Letters from your mom stop coming and the town bulletin board empties out, as if life halted for everyone when you were gone. Your villagers won’t have left town either; they can’t move on without your explicit permission. I walked around town praying I wouldn’t bump into any old friends, afraid to face the possibility that I held them back. If only they could understand why I had to leave.

Returning to your village can feel a bit like visiting your real hometown after years away. The landmarks remain unchanged and the pace of life is the same, but something just feels surreal about it. It’s like you’ve stepped onto a version of your memories rebuilt on a film sound stage. It feels both too precise and too unreal. New Horizons carries that same feeling largely thanks to its emphasis on exterior design. The wrestling ring I built outside of Lucha’s house, the quaint playground near the river, a camping site at the top of the island — everything feels like it’s constructed from movie props.

I begin to see my town less as a home and more like a museum. It's a series of self-portraits preserved in amber. The meta game becomes about visiting every sight in town and trying to remember why you made them. I stumble into a nice part of town at some point, with two classy houses surrounded by thick fences. It takes me a moment to remember that I’d built a gated community as some sort of satirical commentary on class inequality at the time, something that was very much top of mind for me in 2020.

And my creepy basement? Let’s just chalk that one up to cabin fever.

The inescapable reality of New Horizons is that it’s bound to be inseparable from time it launched for many players. It landed on March 20, 2020, immediately following the moment when the COVID-19 pandemic reached a boiling point and forced the world into mass isolation. I remember it well: I had just started a dream gig at Polygon days before lockdown began. Just as quickly as I set up my desk in the office, I was told to pack everything up and work remotely. New Horizons came out a week or two later, just as I was coping with the disappointment and reckoning with the fact that the pandemic was more serious than I had thought. Things got a little weird in my brain, and that’s certainly reflected in my interior design choices.

Over the course of the next few months, I played New Horizons for well over 100 hours. It didn’t just become a home away from home in that time, but an outlet for my anxiety. With my social interactions cut down, I put my effort into building beautiful yards for my villagers. Just because I was cramped in a one-bedroom apartment didn’t mean that they had to be too. I crafted the kind of communal spaces that I could no longer go to in real life. Visiting Big Sky in 2026, I now realize what I was doing more than five years ago: I had started a restoration process in which I tried to reconstruct a lost reality.

Weeds are annoying, but they can be plucked; you can’t uproot painful memories so easily. If you stopped playing before COVID-19 vaccines rolled out and lockdown restrictions eased, you might find a past you wish you could forget about saved in New Horizons. A cheery town could become a monument to despair, reminding you of who you were during a terrifying moment in history. I remember the feeling of isolation, my relationship with the partner I was living with cratering as I sold turnips, the friendships that atrophied as we stopped visiting each other’s islands. It’s much scarier than finding a roach in your living room. At least there’s an easy way to deal with those. One squish and they’re gone. How do you resume life in a past you’re not sure if you’re ready to revisit?

After walking around town avoiding villagers, I finally worked up the courage to talk to an old neighbor. I caught Rodeo, a crusty old bull who I always thought hated me, milling around. I struck up a conversation expecting to be scolded for disappearing years ago. To my surprise, he didn’t rib me about it. (Chalk that up to the fact that modern Animal Crossing games aren’t nearly as mean as their predecessors.) He just seemed happy to see me. To a digital character, I was still the same friend, even if I now felt like a stranger in a strange land.

That’s the utopian beauty of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Even when the real world is terraformed, even when it shapes you into a drastically different person too, you’re never left behind. You can still resume your daily routine and get back to fishing. You can still get a coffee at The Roost. You’ll still be welcomed with open arms by old friends who don’t ask where you’ve been. You can always come home.

Later in the day, I went back to my house and took a second to marvel at some of the rooms I’d built. Some were unfinished, lacking some key appliances I’d meant to install but never got around to before I fled town. What good is an adorable, retro kitchen without a refrigerator? Maybe it was finally time to pick up where I left off.

Just then, there was a knock at my door. Rodeo walked in and asked if we could hang out. We talked for a bit, played a round of High Card, Low Card, and he even gave me a new shirt. He said goodbye eventually, returning to his daily routine without wondering when he might see me next. Whether it’s two days or 20 years from now, I know he’ll be ready to catch up like time never passed.

I open up my inventory and look for a fridge.