Playing {Indoors} Just Got Easier: A Look at Animal Crossing: Pandemic Edition

Just when you thought the Animal Crossing universe couldn’t get any more interesting, Nintendo just dropped a new Pandemic Edition last Friday. The premise of Pandemic Edition builds on the existing New Horizons universe but adds a critical new plot twist: Tom Nook—the plump racoon who created all these islands—has been experimenting with live viruses in his spare time. (Why he’s doing this is never explained).

After a mishap at his workbench, Tom becomes patient zero for a new “Nookovirus” that is now spreading like wildfire across all the islands.

Tom Nook before his untimely demise in the lab.

Here are some of the new Animal Crossing: Pandemic Edition features that we are the most excited about:

New Behaviors

Previously, characters had been limited to walking, running, and dancing around. In Pandemic Edition, characters have two new behaviors that make them even more lifelike: sneezing and coughing. It’s actually really adorable to see them flail their little heads back and let out a big achoo! The downside is that sneezing and coughing are the number one ways that Nookovirus spreads. Also, in our demo edition of the game we found the sound of the hacking cough a little too tinny for our tastes.

DIY Testing

Everyone knows you can’t control a pandemic if you don’t know who is sick. In Pandemic Edition, you can craft your own Nookovirus test kit using one of the many workbenches placed around your island. All you need is five apples, two bamboo shoots, and a small vial of Tom Nook’s blood. You can get the latter from his dead corpse, which is left rotting in the main tent—but be sure to bring your PPE when you go to collect it!!

Some people have found hidden stashes of face masks, but it’s still unclear how effective they are at reducing Nookovirus spread.

Runaway Inflation

Due to the Nookovirus pandemic, most non-essential businesses on the island—looking at you Blathers—have been shuttered. But since people haven’t stopped growing bells on their money trees, we have a whole new kind of epidemic: runaway inflation! That antique wardrobe that once sold for 37,000 bells? That’s gonna cost you a cool ten trillion bells now. On the other hand, it’s really easy to pay off any remaining debts you owe Tom Nook (because of inflation, but also because he’s dead).

Does that look like 6 feet of separation to you?

Vaccine Development

Plague Edition offers you the opportunity to help in the effort to stop the Nookovirus by volunteering for vaccine trials. With Tom Nook dead, the vaccine effort is being headed up by his trusty raccoon employees Timmy and Tommy. Neither of them know anything about the virus, or science, but they are more than willing to boil vats of different fruit concoctions and inject them into the arms of any willing volunteers. As long as you bring fourteen cherries and a striped sea bass.

Tommy and Timmy: They aren’t exactly operating on instructions from the CDC

Terraforming Trenches

If your vaccine trials don’t go well, there’s one other way you can help out. There are a lot of dead animals scattered across the islands and too few places to put them. If you have a sturdy shovel and you’ve gained the ability to terraform, you can help by digging burial trenches. Bonus, mango trees planted over burial mounds will grow fruit 5 times faster!

This is the morbid reality we must face on the island right now.

Snitch App

Prefer helping from the comfort of your island home? There’s an app for that! Next time you turn on the game check your Nook phone for a new app called Snitch. This app allows you to report any neighbors who appear to be out and about in clear violation of the islands’ stay-at-home orders.

The Snitch app is anonymous: No one will know who told the authorities!

As we continue to play the game we will update the list of features. In the meantime, good luck playing and let’s all do our best to bend that curve!