By nook or by crook
Start your doomsday prepping, AC: New Horizons' clock stops in 2061
Your Animal Crossing-addicted friends will finally be released from their Sisyphean trial in 40 years, but don't be surprised if they roll it down the hill.
Picture the year 2060. Woke warlords preside over a flooded and ruined world. Robo-Martin Scorsese has just announced his fully immersive mob film magnum opus, which has a runtime of 8 hours and 36 minutes, and your one friend is still trying to get you to visit his island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
By then, though, New Horizons will be in a countdown toward the end, according to a Reddit user. AdTrue4863 posted an image that appears to show that New Horizons will prompt the user to set a date between 2000 and 2060 once you celebrate New Year's Day in 2061.
Of course, there's no reason why you can't simply set it back to 2000 and start all over again, other than your kid complaining that your Switch's clock now displays a date before they were born. Sorry kid, we all have to make sacrifices.
Generally, every Animal Crossing game has featured a range of acceptable years. The original game allowed you to advance all the way to 2031 before shunting you backward. So watch out, New Horizon fans — you only have forty more years to perfect your island's tropical charm. Honestly, though, judging by the game’s tenacious fanbase, they’ll probably keep playing it until the heat-death of the universe.
We should probably expect a new entry in the series in the next five years or so, given the previous pace. Judging by New Horizons, however, they'll probably have even less content. And no froggy chair or Raymond either. If you enjoy New Horizons and you’ve gotten more than your money’s worth from the game, we suggest checking out older entries, like City Folk. Or maybe The Sims.