The new customization tools in Animal Crossing: New Horizons have led to an unexpected trend, as players have used the game as a place to make and share memorials for deceased friends and family. The Animal Crossing Reddit became populated with many in-game memorial posts after New Horizons released, allowing players to commiserate with one another about lost kin.
The Pokemon Gold and Silver town, constructed with painstaking recreations of the Game Boy game's textures.
Some players' in-game memorials use the texture editor to bring pictures of their loved ones into the game. Third-party websites let players easily turn any image into a custom QR code, which can then be scanned to add the image to the in-game pattern editor. Players like dancingfalconn have placed pictures of lost family and friends near their memorials, but many have simply used pre-existing items to create their monuments.
Reddit Animal Crossing's flowers and fencing. Other players followed suit, like yoshdee, who created a memorial for their father with a fountain, flowers, paths, and other objects.
Most of the memorials on the Animal Crossing Reddit appear to be for people the posters personally know, but some players have shared areas created in remembrance of celebrities. YouTuber Etika, who died last year.
Searching "memorial" on the subreddit brings up many, many posts. While most seem sincere, not all have agreed that the posts are wholesome. A few, perhaps-trolling comments have criticized the trend, claiming posters are using memorials as a way to earn upvotes by playing to others' sympathy. Still, while some posts - like Parks and Recreation's Li'l Sebastian - appear to poke fun at the memorials, none of the posts are outright rude, and most of the comments on memorial posts are kind and sympathetic. In a move even Nintendo itself may not have considered, the Animal Crossing community seems to have come together to encourage ing those who have died, all in the cutesy, animal-based life sim.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons released on March 20, 2020, for the Nintendo Switch.
Image Source: dancingfalconn/Reddit