With Animal Crossing: New Horizons receiving its final major content update in November 2021, the responsibility has now fallen onto fans to breathe new life into one of the Switch’s most iconic games. The latest Animal Crossing game has been given an unofficial hard mode, with the community creating a set of rules to maximize its difficulty. Hard mode is becoming a popular way for YouTubers and streamers to replay the game without official new content.
Becoming a huge hit during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Switch's Animal Crossing has become the most popular game in the series' 22-year history, making Animal Crossing: New Horizons a Switch best-seller. By drawing so many different types of players into the Animal Crossing world, a vibrant community was created, ranging from ive fans to more hardcore ones. It is the latter group that went on to adapt the game to their play style, leading to the development of a hard mode.
Animal Crossing Hard Mode Introduced Some Challenging Rules
Created by Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ most valuable items. There is one turnip-related restriction, however, which is that they can only be sold on the player’s island, but can indeed be purchased from other players’ areas.
Hard Mode Makes ACNH's Best Villagers More Elusive
More unsurprising than the inclusion of turnip selling in the hard mode rule set for Animal Crossing: New Horizons is that Amiibo scanning is forbidden, and so too is selling the Sanrio items that come from scanning Amiibo cards that have Sanrio characters on them. Obtaining new villagers is also heavily restricted as part of this challenge. Specifically, there are limits on the number of different types of resets that players can do to get some of Animal Crossing: New Horizons' best villagers. Likewise, if villagers ask to leave, players can't beg them to stay, they have to let their friends move on.
Of course, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is far from the only Nintendo game to receive a community-created hard mode. The biggest example would be Pokémon’s Nuzlocke challenges, but similar challenges exist in the Mario and Sonic communities, and likely any fanbase that is committed enough. As fans who grew up with these games become more skilled at gaming and perhaps bored with the typical gameplay loops, they look for ways to make these newcomer-friendly franchises much more difficult. The end result can feel like a wholly different experience. Alongside Animal Crossing's hard mode ballooning in popularity, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet can be Nuzlocked, showing some players still want a challenge.
Much like with Nuzlockes, it is unlikely that Nintendo will ever officially recognize Animal Crossing: New Horzions’ hard mode in future entries. However, it will likely remain a popular format for hardcore fans for years to come, and with enough attention could become a recurring challenge run in future installments.
Source: NintenTalk/YouTube
