A New Switch Game Has Unseated ‘Animal Crossing’ For The EShop’s #1 Spot After Three Months
New Horizons
Nintendo
To say that Animal Crossing New Horizons has been a dominant force in the industry since its release over this quarantine period is nothing short of an understatement. It’s been a massive success for Nintendo on the Switch, its best-selling game by far in this period.
And now its reign is over.
After spending three months as the number one game on the Nintendo Switch eShop, Animal Crossing New Horizons has finally been unseated by a new title. That would be Mojang/Microsoft’s Minecraft Dungeons.
Naturally, it helps that A) this is Minecraft, the most popular current series on earth that kids and adults alike absolutely adore and B) the game is only $20, as opposed the full price of Animal Crossing at $60, as are many of the other games in the eShop top 10.
Minecraft Dungeons is a spin-off of the original game and serves as an introduction to the dungeon crawler genre made popular by Blizzard’s Diablo series, among other titles. For $20, you’re only getting nine levels that you have to repeat over and over again on different difficulties, but there’s more than enough to keep players engaged for a few dozen hours, possibly a few hundred if you’re really dedicated, as there is no easily-reached level cap.
Minecraft Dungeons
Mojang
I have previously written about advice for players just starting the game, so you should check that out if you haven’t yet. To sum up my main points were:
1. Properly understand and manage your arrows so you don’t run out.
2. Know that you should leave gear behind when you outlevel it, and do that often.
3. You can get all your enhancement points back by dismantling gear, which you should be doing frequently.
4. The best way to farm for higher difficulties is to do the max difficulty of any level you’re currently able to beat, as that will drop the highest gear.
5. Health regen is minimal in this game so I would always keep a healing totem around. Since this, I’ve discovered that the actual best source of healing in the game is Radiance, the heal-on-hit skill for weapons, which is a must-have.
I do think that Minecraft Dungeons struggles once you get to the ultra-endgame, as you’re not able to position yourself to get many builds because of the way Enhancement points work, but it’s possible that’s fixed down the road. There are two DLCs coming to Minecraft Dungeons, a jungle one and an ice one, and they will each add three more levels to the game, according to early reports.
I would expect to see Minecraft Dungeons high on the eShop list for a while, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Animal Crossing could reclaim its throne at some point, given how popular it remains, and how new content offerings could bolster it down the line.
Follow me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Pick up my sci-fi novels Herokiller and Herokiller 2, and read my first series, The Earthborn Trilogy, which is also on audiobook.
Read More
