Animal Crossing: New Horizons released last week, providing people a nice slice of life in the midst of this ongoing pandemic. However, after a few days of playing as the second player on the Switch, there’s a clear imbalance between the first player (in my case, my sister) and anyone else that plays the game.

So, one of the few discouraging things about the game is that there can only be one island on a Switch system. All users on the Switch get different houses on the same island and the only way to have a separate island is to have another Switch. This also means that the first person playing the game gets to name the island and pick out its specific design, so other players have no control over its identity.

This feels like it exists to justify the game’s local co-op, where island mates can play together and switch leader control between each other to get things done together during the same session. In fairness, the local co-op works well. However, sharing an island means that you don’t get sole control over designing the island. There’s bound to be creative differences when it comes to exterior furniture and the late-game terraforming. As somebody that values creative control, I’d honestly much rather have my own island to design than to share one for the sake of co-op.

Another problem that quickly became apparent to me was the progression. So I’m playing the game and I see people unlocking Blathers’ museum. I’m catching a lot of things so I want to get around to unlocking it. The method to do so is apparently to talk to Tom Nook and donate things to him; I said, “alright, I’ll do that.” However, when I tried doing so, Mr. Nook over here just want to talk about my home.

As it happens, only the first player that started New Horizons can progress through it. Only they get the dialogue that opens up more of the game, which leaves other players to flounder around until the first player gets around to actually doing the work. It’s sincerely annoying. You might say, “oh, why not just go on your sister’s account?” You don’t understand. She already gets mad when I take up most of the local fruit and rock garbage for my own needs, she wouldn’t want me to be screwing around on her account.

Having to share the same island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons is already kinda bleh, but to have all the important parts locked behind the first player’s progress on top of that is aggravating. If Nintendo is not going to fix the former, at the very least, they really should fix the latter.

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