Despite having plenty to play at the moment, I’ve recently found myself thinking about returning to either Animal Crossing: New Horizons or Minecraft. There’s just something about building your own stuff in games I just can’t help but find compelling (when it’s done well), so it’s hard to stay away from those sorts of games for very long. The thing is though, building stuff takes time, so I need to choose one or the other, and I’m kind of torn to be honest.

On the one hand, I’ve long been a fan of Animal Crossing, and I really enjoyed New Horizons last year. My friends and even some family have all gotten back into it recently, so there’s been a lot of pressure to jump back in and enjoy the island life with everyone once again. The thing is though, I kind of have a problem when it comes to New Horizons. See, I really do like the robust customization mechanics and crafting available in the game. It was really fun planning my island and making it just the way I wanted. The thing is though, it takes way too long to get things done.

I don’t think that the crafting and island terraforming mechanics work well with Animal Crossing’s real time clock. Sure, you can jump the clock forward and make the days speed by, but that kind of undercuts the whole “shared experience with our friends” thing. The same goes for getting new villagers to come to the town. Unless you’ve got all the Amiibo cards, it’s a craps shoot. Then there’s acquiring enough money/resources to do the things you want to do.

Unless you want to leave everything up to chance, you have no choice but to hit the online market and try to make a deal with someone. That aspect can definitely be fun too, but it sucks to have to rely on it. I suppose that all this is to say that I’m not exactly thrilled at the prospect of starting that whole process up again. There are just too many barriers between me and the actual fun of New Horizons (something that wasn’t a problem in past Animal Crossing games btw).

As for Minecraft, it’s 100% a “make your own fun” kind of game. You drop in, give yourself a project, and go until you’re satisfied. I do enjoy dreaming up projects and building them in Minecraft, and I even like sticking to normal mode as much as possible in order to make it happen. There are no barriers between me and doing what I want to do in Minecraft; all I have to do is start digging, and I can go as far as I want for however long I want.

The only issue I have with starting up Minecraft again now is that I’ll be doing it solo. Everyone else is either in Animal Crossing or not readily available, so there won’t be any collaborative projects like there were in the past. Minecraft is nice as a solo game. It can even be a ton of fun when played alone. It’s just that friends are what give it it’s true zest as far as I’m concerned, and I wonder just how much I’ll wind up missing that should decide to return.

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So yeah, I’m still pretty torn. If I do start one up, I’ll probably go with Minecraft since it’s a lot easier to just jump in and start playing, but who knows. What would you guys do? Which game do you prefer?

Image from the PlayStation store