The Animal Crossing Nature Day event sounded like a pretty cool idea from the getgo, but it’s full of missed opportunities. This latest Animal Crossing: New Horizons event introduced some new characters and some new items, but the event itself was a little weak.
If you haven’t played Animal Crossing: New Horizons lately, then you might have missed the Nature Day event. It’s essentially a celebration similar to Earth Day with various nature-themed tasks to complete.
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The centerpiece of this event was a maze for players to run through. It was a fun little challenge that involved chopping down trees, pulling up shrubs, and smashing rocks. Ultimately, players would get to visit Rover and acquire his suitcase as a reward (along with a handful of Bell Vouchers if you explored). If you picked up any bushes or other items during the maze, you didn’t get to keep them.
Outside of this one special event and the addition of new merchants (which is always welcome), players could get 5X on special “Nature Day” Nook Miles + tasks, the highest of which is worth 300 Nook Miles. The update added a nice, refreshing batch of content overall, but the Animal Crossing Nature Day event itself left much to be desired.
How the Animal Crossing Nature Day event could have been better
The first problem is just how thin this event was. The addition of merchants and some new items is nice, but that’s the actual time-limited event stuff. Really, it boils down to the special Nook Miles + rewards and the maze.
Let’s start with the maze. After you complete it and get Rover’s Suitcase, there’s not really much of a reason to go back. It takes 20 or so minutes and you can earn a few thousand Bells at most on a repeat visit. There are numerous ways where you could spend that same amount of time and make much more money.
The maze’s rewards represent one of the biggest missed opportunities. Why not, say, give the players a random DIY recipe they don’t have as a reward for extra days? Something like that would make the whole thing worth it.
And then there are the Nook Miles + rewards. The 5x bonus on special themed events is nice, but we could already get a 5x bonus on one entry every couple of days. Either the bonus, the rewards, or both should have been higher.
Still, the Animal Crossing Nature Day event made for a nice change of pace. I just hope that Nintendo makes their future special events a little more robust and with higher replay value in the future.
