Sydney Lohr, Associate Editor 

Remember when Animal Crossing: New Horizons was one of the biggest crazes during the 2020 lockdown? Back in the COVID-19 days, Animal Crossing wasn’t just a game; it was the game. If you weren’t spending hours trying to get your island to the prestigious five-star rating and hyper-fixating on the turnip “stalk” market, what were you doing? 

Most of us peaked at this point and then fell off shortly after the 2.0 update the following year. Since then, Nintendo has gone quiet about the state of the game. As the years passed, fans began to accept defeat, assuming that Nintendo would never allow another update to see the light of day. 

At least, that’s what we thought. 

Unexpectedly, the game just dropped one of its biggest updates ever last month, nearly six years after its initial launch, and the internet collectively lost its mind all over again. 

Yep, you read that right. Six years later. 

Nintendo even said the 2.0 update in 2021 would be the last major update ever. Yet here we are. The 3.0 update is out and introduces significant additions, with a new hotel at the heart of it.

 

What’s Actually New? 

Before we get into why you should care, here’s the rundown: 

The brand-new Resort Hotel on your island’s pier, run by Kapp’n’s family, has been added, along with hotel tickets that can be traded for exclusive items. 

Bulk crafting and quality-of-life upgrades have also been added. This includes being able to craft tools and furniture in stacks rather than one at a time, a home storage expansion of up to 9,000 items, and the ability to store trees, flowers, and shrubs in your home storage 
(goodbye to the flowers littering my beaches right now). 

Resetti’s new Reset Service helps you keep your island nice and tidy. 

Slumber Islands and dream world features allow you to design additional islands with friends and play with fewer limits than before. 

New Nintendo crossovers include LEGO, Zelda, and Splatoon items that you can place in-game. 

But I would dare to say that the headline isn’t just “new stuff.” It’s the hotel. 

Why the Hotel Actually Matters 

Imagine this: 

You boot up New Horizons, expecting the same old thing from years ago. Maybe a chance to catch your 1,000th sea bass, or to be visited by the worst possible campsite villager imaginable (I’m looking at you, Hazel.) 

But now there’s this massive building right on your dock that wasn’t there yesterday. That building is the Resort Hotel, and it’s here to completely change the game. 

Instead of gathering resources and terraforming your island all day, you’re now designing rooms. If you have experience with the Happy Home Paradise DLC and enjoyed it, get ready for an experience even grander and more meaningful than before. 

While working for the hotel, you have the opportunity to earn new items called Hotel Tickets. These are obtained by decorating hotel rooms with various themes, such as “seaside,” “ranch,” “modern,” and more. 

Once you’ve earned tickets, you can trade them for exclusive items that don’t exist anywhere else in the game. 

On paper, this addition might seem small, but the hotel turns your island into a place with purpose again. 

Not just cute flower fields and quirky villagers, but a destination. 

The hotel allows you to embrace your own little tropical resort as something you actually have to curate. This added gameplay element actually feels perfect for 2026, when everything feels chaotic and uncertain. 

The Nostalgia Will Hit You Hard 

If you were in high school in 2020, you probably remember the Animal Crossing craze. 

There were countless memes, island tours, a surge of custom design codes, and inside jokes that only made sense if you played the game. 

Seeing New Horizons get a genuinely huge update almost six years later feels like a weird yet comforting homage to freshman year of high school. 

A lot of players are saying it feels like a second chance at the cozy warmth the game initially brought during lockdown. Not because the game got better, though in my opinion it did, but because it gives us a reason to return to something that once brought us so much comfort. 

It’s far more creative, less competitive, and something you look forward to showing off to your friends. 

Why You Should Care (Seriously) 

As much as I wish I were in a position to write a paid ad for Nintendo, I’m not. 

That just goes to show that I wholeheartedly believe this update isn’t just small tweaks and quality-of-life changes, but a reminder of why we all loved the game in the first place. 

At its core, New Horizons is calm, creative, an outlet for community, and a place to forget the real-life chaos happening during a time when things feel more hectic than ever. 

With everything going on in the world right now, these are the exact qualities we need in a game. 

So, if you haven’t picked up Animal Crossing: New Horizons since graduation, maybe now’s the time. 

The island has changed a bit, but the heart of it is still waiting for you.