Animal Crossing: New Horizonsis a relentlessly wholesome game. When it was released in 2020 it became the game of choice for many quarantining gamers. The game’s simple focus on going outside and interacting with other villagers and players was serendipitously exactly what many players needed at the time, and the title quickly became a popular comfort game. But withAnimal Crossing’s cute art style and gameplay centered around endlessly improving an island village, it doesn’t take much for players to start casting shades of dark over the game’s bright facade.
AsAnimal Crossing: New Horizonsis so cheerful and pleasant most of the time, players quickly notice the quirks that don’t quite fit with the game’s presentation. Usually this comes in the form ofa creepyAnimal Crossingvillager interactionor lingering questions about theAnimal Crossingworld that goes unanswered.
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But it’s the player’s ability to feely design the island and influence the actions of their villagers that means the creepiness ofAnimal Crossingcan be ramped up when the player leans into it. Reddit user TommoQuelloNonFigo05 has done exactly this, sharing a short clip of them and their island villagers alldressed as Luigi from theSuper Mariocrossover withAnimal Crossing. These Luigi cultists are seen in the basement of the player’s house, seemingly ritualistically burning another player that is dressed like Princess Peach while dancing.
The scene is of course a joke set up with another player invited to TommoQuelloNonFigo05’s island, but it is an example of theAnimal Crossingcommunity’s surprisingly dark sense of humor for a game so cheerful. Recently there was also a trend ofAnimal Crossingfans making parody anti-piracy screens for the games, these fake scenes began as funny but very quickly skewed towards creepy.
It’sAnimal Crossing’s relentless cheeriness that makes the game subject to such dark humor, after allNew Horizonsfamously released on the same day asDoom Eternal, hilariously linking the two completely different games forever. A ritualistic burning inDoomwould seem downright blasé, but not inAnimal Crossing,with its cute art style that makes even the creepiest player-made situations appear more like a pantomime recreation than the real thing.
Animal Crossingplayers will continue to resist and question the games wholesome presentation by coming up with fan theories as tohow theAnimal Crossing’s world is secretly darkerthan the game lets on. In a way this kind of fan theorizing does add to the game’s world, especially when the game does feature some unusual and strange elements, like ghost characters and alien Easter eggs.
Animal Crossing: New Horizonsis available for Nintendo Switch.
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