Why on Earth would anyone want to come to my Island?

As I play through Animal Crossing – New Horizons, I’ve begun to notice something odd. Everyone keeps on telling me the same thing, over and over. The residents who appeared on my island quickly settled down and told me how much they love island life. And as I got my first visitor from a campsite, I end up hearing the same thing. They love this island so much that they want to live with us.

But WHY would anyone want to live in my island?

Frankly, I don’t get it. My island is very much unfinished or even that sophisticated. I have a grand total of 2 buildings and a town square that’s weirdly rectangular and has nothing on it. All my resident housing sits awkwardly on the left side of the island. The right is practically empty aside from a museum and a popcorn machine I randomly placed next to it. And the higher areas are completely inaccessible unless you build yourself a ladder and carry it around.

Simply put, my island, named Kinigi after the deadlands of my Phoviverse writings, isn’t that attractive. The only nice thing is the small collection of flowers at the entrance to Kinigi from the airport.

People are visiting anyway.

For some reason, according to the racoon guys, my island village is irresistible. We’ve got something special. I have no idea what that is, but the fact that people are attracted to the ‘island life’ is completely insane. As of writing, I have 5 critters already living, and some guy called Raymond living in our campsite, patiently waiting for their house to be built.

Why though? What is making people want to stay?

The pears are addicting.

One thing I’ve noticed is that there’s not much actual food on our island. There are fish in the river and shelled animals on the beach, but they require effort to catch and cook. On the flip side, you can shake a tree and get a nice, fresh pair out of it. When it comes to food overall, the pears are by far the easiest and most nutritious way to sustain yourself.

They’re also very tasty. Whenever I give someone a pear, they happily eat it. My character also happily eats these pears too. While you can always just plant new stuff, the starter menu and dessert menu both have pears on them. It’s easier to grab a pear from a tree than cook a meal.

As for new villagers coming by the campsite, they’ll almost certainly want to try one of those lush pears, directly picked from the trees on this nice island.

Either way, the Nook family is making a fortune.

I mean, they have to be. Everything goes through the Nook family. The flights, the buildings, the islands, all of it is a single Nook monopoly, and an expensive one at that. And in all honesty, despite you doing all the work and helping recruit people into your village, non of this is actually yours. It’s all Nook property that we are renting out. I don’t know if I am being scammed or not. But either way, the Nook empire is growing every day. We are just feeding the beast, I guess.

Eh. I’m probably looking to hard into all of this. It’s just video game logic. But still, I don’t get what makes my island appealing…