Nintendo Switch: 5 must-buy games for younger kids this holiday season

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Animal Crossing is a franchise that has been around for over twenty years and there’s a solid reason for this. In the newest version, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, your character moves to an island in a world with animal-like people and are immediately put in charge of almost everything.

This game will feature everything from hitting rocks with shovels, paying off loans, moving furniture, and doing chores and somehow does it without ever not being fun. And, as a bonus, thanks to its recent 2.0 update there are more than twice as many things to do in the game. Considering they even added farming and cooking into the mix.

With so many things it’s hard to find something not to latch on to. While I obsessively maintain my island, my 8-year-old is obsessed with finding fossils to donate to a museum and fishing. Meanwhile, my 6-year-old is constantly using the game’s designer suite to custom make furniture. There are so many creative tools all in one space.

Play for long enough and you even get the option to fully landscape your island. Putting rivers and ponds, cliffs and stairs, and all sorts of other things all over your island.

And. If they get through it and it starts to feel stale after, well, I’m still waiting for that to happen even though it came out a few years ago, they released paid DLC called Happy Home Paradise that allows you access to a new island where you can design homes for a variety of different characters. It’s like playing with Legos and it’s fantastic.