Animal Crossing: New Horizon featured a Bunny Day holiday as an in-game Easter parallel, but Nintendo can implement new features to improve this event for 2023 (or future games in the series). Animal Crossing‘s Bunny Day has a complicated reputation in the ACNH community, tormenting players with endless eggs in the water, underground, and in trees. However, its greatest downside comes with the arrival of Zipper, a rabbit mascot that bounces back and forth eternally in front of Town Hall. Many players have expressed their dislike for the character, and Zipper has long haunted Bunny Days in ACNH. Thankfully, there are several ways Nintendo can improve this event for dedicated players sticking around another year.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons features annual events that mirror real-world holidays, allowing players to celebrate important milestones in-game. This mechanic includes birthdays, Toy Day, May Day, Nature Day, and more, corresponding with unique merchants and loot spawning throughout the islands. Unfortunately, while these events allow players to decorate their house and islands with thematic decorations, they become repetitive with no new incentive or rewards each year. Nintendo recently announced ACNH’s development would cease after the Happy Home Paradise DLC and 2.0 update launched, but there are dozens of potential methods to improve Bunny Day with relatively little effort.
In its current state, Animal Crossing: New Horizons‘ Bunny Day event spawns eggs in different locations, with different types corresponding with different recipes. For example, players might use an earth egg to craft a Bunny Day bed, while a sky egg could craft a Bunny Day balloon. Additionally, Nook’s Cranny sells Bunny Day-themed items in a special corner of the store each day, allowing players to purchase objects like topiaries, flags, trees, and candies. Unfortunately, Nintendo’s abandonment of ACNH meant players couldn’t unlock additional items or experience new content. Dedicated players who unlocked most or all the content from previous Bunny Days might’ve experienced some disappointment at the event’s return, resulting in Animal Crossing fatigue.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons Should Add Bunny Day Cooking Recipes
The Animal Crossing: New Horizons 2.0 update introduced farming and cooking into the island paradise game, ensuring players could pursue more creative routes of developing their islands. While players can utilize different crops to match the seasons, holiday events noticeably lack festive seeds or plants. However, Nintendo can remedy this by implementing more ways for players to utilize eggs and obtain other Bunny Day-themed items to decorate their island with. Bunny Day features similarities to Easter, which has many traditional recipes associated with its celebrations. Foods like ham or roasted lamb may not be the greatest choices in a game with Pig and Sheep Villagers, but other celebratory opportunities exist.
Planting ACNH‘s Bunny Day eggs into the ground and treating them like crops could provide unique ingredients to craft items like Bunny Day baskets of candy, edible or colored eggs, chocolate bunnies, or other candies and goods. This could allow players to set up traditional, celebratory feasts and decorations outside of the items provided for Bunny Day, but it could also encourage more public celebrations. Giving each island resident a unique Bunny Day basket or a candy collection could sharply increase friendship levels with these characters, allowing players a quicker way to obtain their unique items. Additionally, it could activate unique dialogue with each Villager, making the event feel more ceremonious and immersive. Placing a table for Villagers to eat a Bunny Day meal together could also create more organic scenes and interactions on player islands.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons Can Let Players Decorate Bunny Day Vacation Homes
ACNH’s Happy Home Paradise DLC expanded the game’s decoration mechanic by allowing players to decorate and design vacation homes for Villagers. Each character has unique styles and preferences, forcing players to utilize different items and themes in each house. However, seasonal events and special days don’t interfere with these orders and seem like a significantly overlooked opportunity. Since most of Bunny Day’s features concern hunting for eggs and crafting corresponding items with them, the logical conclusion would be to utilize them in other homes and the player’s own. Featuring Zipper as a temporary addition to Happy Home Paradise could be the perfect method of implementing Bunny Day into the DLC.
Once players complete ACNH‘s Happy Home Paradise DLC, they unlock the ability to decorate and expand homes located on their player islands. This allows players to decorate everyone’s houses for the holidays, but doesn’t give much incentive to redecorate nearly a dozen homes in unique styles. If the next Bunny Day event in Animal Crossing: New Horizons (or its sequel) features improvements or edits, it gives players daily goals or milestones to make their islands (or towns) more festive. Unlocking unique dialogue, encountering secret, celebratory events, or increasing the festivity in each character’s personality could all be rewarded to players that festoon their residents’ homes with the new decorating mechanic.
ACNH Should Feature An Easter Egg Hunt With Villagers
Animal Crossing: New Horizons‘ Villagers have many personalities that influence their day-to-day activities, likes, dislikes, and fashion. However, Nintendo could use these personality traits in seasonal events throughout the game’s lifetime. For example, Stardew Valley features an Egg Hunt that younger town members partake in, with each of their personalities and ages influencing how many eggs they obtain. If Nintendo developed a similar event for Animal Crossing, players could compete against their neighbors to obtain the most eggs in a limited amount of time. Similar events already occur with the Fishing and Bug-Catching contests held by Flick and CJ, which could be translated into an Egg Hunt held by Zipper. However, this character’s removal could contribute to a more enjoyable experience, and another character could have the Egg Hunt instead.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons Doesn’t Need Zipper T. Bunny
Zipper is Animal Crossing: New Horizons‘ worst character, or is at least in the running for that position, and fails to bring much to the seasonal event. Instead, players must watch the unnerving rabbit bounce to and fro for over a week. Despite being a Villager zipped into a suit, Zipper’s eyes, mannerisms, and dialogue are disturbing and annoying. Nintendo could develop another Bunny character to take Zipper’s place, especially considering several ACNH Bunny Villagers are extremely popular. Additionally, a character capable of egg-laying could replace Zipper and introduce new activities that aren’t as intrusive to the game’s daily gameplay loop.
While Nintendo ceased development on Animal Crossing: New horizons and and is likely turning its attention towards an Animal Crossing: New Horizons sequel, the current Bunny Day event is monotonous. Seasonal events are likely to increase player counts in any game, but excitement for this event decreases once the reward pool becomes obsolete. Nintendo failed Animal Crossing: New Horizons on several fronts, but its seasonal events are its most obvious shortcomings. Animal Crossing: New Horizons and its Happy Home Paradise DLC are available now on the Nintendo Switch.
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