With the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, players new and old are uncovering a commonly known exploit to the series: time travel. There’s no machine in the game for it, nor is it truly acknowledged in the game, but nevertheless players are able to travel through time to reach their goals much faster.
Animal Crossing games use the real date and time in-game. This means that if it is 8PM on April 3 in the real world, it will be 8PM on April 3 in the world of Animal Crossing. That is, of course, if your system settings are set to the correct date and time.
By navigating to the System Settings menu and selecting the Date and Time option on the Nintendo Switch, players can unsync their clocks from the real world and change the events of their Animal Crossing: New Horizons world. Doing this while the software is closed will allow players to travel to any date and time they see fit for their Animal Crossing experience, whether that be a single day ahead or even a season or two in the future.
Time traveling has served Animal Crossing players well over the years due to its simplicity and the benefits it brings. Animal Crossing has a finite number of activities to fulfill in a single day, leaving players to feel accomplished and to give them something to look forward to on their next day of play. Some of these accomplishments will pay off the next day, like upgrading your home or waiting for a community building to finish construction. Others may take several days, like having new trees or flowers fully grow. Time travel cuts out this waiting process, allowing players to reap the benefits of their work immediately instead of having to wait. After going to the"future" and seeing that house expansion is complete or that tree has grown, the player can close their game, set their clock back to the real date and time and continue playing as usual.
This is especially useful in New Horizons, as the game is somewhat limited early on. Since you're building your island almost from scratch, there are many features and characters that require you to wait and play on different days. And, once shops open and special visitors start popping up, there'll be more time-sensitive events to keep track of. For example, Nook’s Cranny is open every day from 8AM to 10PM. So whether you're a few minutes late to sell items or you want to skip that day of construction on the Museum, time traveling can be a solution.
Time traveling can also be used to quickly fill a player’s Critterpedia or Museum. The Critterpeida is an in-game catalog of all the fish and bugs a player has caught, and the Museum is a wholesome may to walk through this collection and get great photo opportunities. Some fish and bugs only appear at certain times of day, during different seasons and under specific weather conditions. Some of these critters are quite rare even when they can be encountered, so time traveling can ease the stress of waiting for or missing the perfect moment. There are also certain items and resources and DIY recipes that are only available during certain seasons, so changing the date can all you to take advantage of those.
New Horizons did remove one incentive for time travelers. In previous Animal Crossing titles, players could time travel to holidays, such as Bunny Day or Jingle Day. However, New Horizons will add these events as free DLC updates throughout the year, meaning players who change the time and date to 6PM on December 24 right now will be greeted a normal Winter evening.
Time travel allows players to remove the only real tedious aspect of the game: waiting. While Animal Crossing continues to bring exciting new features and events for its players day after day, time travel gives players the opportunity to experience these benefits without the downtime. Even without the ability to skip to holidays, there are still plenty of reasons for players to want to time travel.