The game will also link to the Nintendo Switch Online app, Kotaku reports, in order to import information from previous games or chat with online friends. “New Horizons” might also have a bit more excitement than other games, as a part of the Nintendo Direct video shows a ghost roaming the village at night. Each “New Horizons” island can provide a home for up to eight players and an undetermined amount of familiar game characters such as Tom Nook, Kicks, Gulliver and Isabelle. The game will also feature a multiplayer “party play” feature where four separate players can play on someone’s island together, The Verge reports.

Players also get to decide where to put the homes of new villagers, and can even change the layout of their island by creating paths and rivers or removing hills - but only after obtaining the proper permits. Players will be able to choose where the community’s island is located, meaning they can choose when they will experience certain seasons. “New Horizons” will be the most customizable “Animal Crossing” game yet, Engadget reports. Gameplay will center around exploring, customizing, building relationships with what ACPocketNews reports as nearly 400 different computer generated villagers, crafting and decorating, reports Kotaku.

The game begins as players are dropped on one of four islands of their choosing with nothing but a tent. The video revealed some of the plot details of what exactly players can expect to be doing, as well as some exciting new features that will be part of the game’s latest edition. On Thursday morning, Nintendo posted a nearly 30-minute Nintendo Direct video giving a preview of “New Horizons” gameplay, which has already garnered 2 million views. Now after the longest gap in “Animal Crossing” release history, fans with a Nintendo Switch console can play “ Animal Crossing: New Horizons” on March 20. Since then, it has seen a 2005 update for the Nintendo DS (“Animal Crossing: Wild World”), a Nintendo Wii game in 2008 (“Animal Crossing: City Folk”) and the most recent update, for Nintendo 3DS in 2013 (“Animal Crossing: New Leaf”). The first edition of “Animal Crossing” was released in 2001 on the Nintendo GameCube console. Nintendo’s “Animal Crossing” series is a life simulation with unique and adorable graphics that places players within a small community where they can become friends with personified animal creatures, get jobs, pay for and decorate their homes and essentially just live a gentle and calm digital life.

Current version of animal crossing