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How to start anew with a freshly reset island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

Animal Crossing New Horizons: How to Reset Your Island

How to start anew with a freshly reset island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
This article is over 4 years old and may contain outdated information

There may come a time where you want to reset your island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Heck, you may want to do it right now and you can, with minimal effort.

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As with most Animal Crossing titles, you have the option to delete individual player characters actually in the game. Deleting an individual player character doesn’t really help when you want to start your whole island all over again from scratch, though.

So let’s go over how to delete your entire island and start anew.

How to Reset Your Island in New Horizons

Note that this will not just delete your island, but also all player characters on the island.

To reset your island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, you need to exit the game and:

  • Go to your Nintendo Switch System Settings
  • Choose Data Management
  • Choose Delete Save Data
  • Find Animal Crossing: New Horizons on the list
  • Choose to delete the game’s data

This process should be somewhat familiar to most who have decided to start all over again in most past Animal Crossing games, but don’t be too hasty to do it.

As New Horizons offers so much island customization, totally tossing your island may not be the right course of action if you’re just not happy with how things are in the first day. There’s a whole world of customization at your disposal, starting all over might be going a bit too far.

However, Animal Crossing is all about living life your way! So don’t let me stop you. I’m sure you’re just as excited as I am to kick back with your favorite villagers.

If you’re new to Animal Crossing: New Horizons, check out some of our other guides on the Nintendo Switch’s flagship Animal Crossing title:


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Ashley Shankle
Ashley's been with GameSkinny since the start, and is a certified loot goblin. Has a crippling Darktide problem, 500 hours on only Ogryn (hidden level over 300). Currently playing Darktide, GTFO, RoRR, Palworld, and Immortal Life.