The second free summer update for Animal Crossing: New Horizons launches on July 30. Along with regular fireworks celebrations and the bizarre ability to visit other islands via dreaming, the update also brings one of the game’s most eagerly anticipated features—the ability to backup and restore player islands in case of lost or damaged Switch consoles.
Starting July 30, New Horizons players will be able to opt-in to the Island Backup feature, which automatically uploads island and save data to the cloud at regular intervals. Players whose Switch is stolen or lost will be able to safely download their specific data from the service to their new or repaired console, picking up where they left off. This is the special service mentioned earlier this year during discussions of New Horizons’ odd system-specific save game system, separate from Nintendo’s normal cloud save feature. Players will not be able to transfer data from one Switch to another over the cloud. A separate system to allow players to swap their data between two systems is planned for release later this year.
Now that our islands are safe, we’re free to enjoy fireworks. Every Sunday in August at 7 PM, fireworks will illuminate the night sky in New Horizons. Players will be able to spend bells of raffle tickets to win special celebratory gear. And after that, perhaps a nap?
The new Dreaming feature allows players to take a nap in any bed within their residence. During said nap, Luna appears and offers players the chance to visit other players’ islands in their dreams. Players will secure their own Dream Address, which players can exchange in order to visit back and forth. The difference between regular island hopping and dreaming is that nothing that happens in dreams is permanent, so players should feel free to wreak havoc to their hearts’ content.
Enjoy summer while you can, folks. It can only go on so long.
