Animal Crossing: New Horizons — Fireworks, dreams, and save backups coming with Summer Update Wave 2

The second summer update for Animal Crossing: New Horizons is launching on Thursday, July 30, 2020, and bringing with it several new exciting features, including fireworks, dreams, and backup saves. There are even more activities to share with friends and several seasonal moments to share. Learn more about each of these upcoming updates below.

The fireworks shows will start every Sunday evening at 7 p.m., and Redd will be waiting in front of the Resident Services building to sell you raffle tickets that can unlock festive items. Players will even be able to customize their fireworks and create designs that blow up in the sky. It's a great time to invite people to your island and enjoy the summer night skies together.

In addition to fireworks, Luna the tapir, and dreams are making their way to New Horizons. This feature was first seen in Animal Crossing: New Leaf with the Dream Suite and allows players with a Nintendo Switch Online subsription to nap in their homes and then visit a dream version of other players' islands from around the world without requiring the exchange of codes or even needing the host player to be present during the visit. What's more, since this is a dream version of the island, you can do anything you want on another player's island, and it won't actually affect the real one.

This is a great way to see what other players have created in dream form. Players get to decide if they want to share their dream island with the rest of the world, and if they choose to do so, Luna will give them a "Dream Address," which you can share with other players.

The last big bit of news from the summer update is that Nintendo is creating an Island Backup & Restoration Service accessible to anyone with a Nintendo Switch Online subscription. This will be something completely different from the Save Data Cloud functions used to backup other Nintendo games. Still, this is huge news since up until now, your island was tied to your Nintendo Switch, so if your gaming system got lost, stolen, or damaged, you could lose all those hours of hard work put into your island. While we're definitely in need of this service, it sounds as though it won't be perfect.

Nintendo states that those who use the service can backup their island save data "at certain times." Additionally, the gaming company has stated that "if your Nintendo Switch system is lost or damaged, you may be able to recover your island paradise as long as you've enabled island backup." This careful wording makes it sound like there isn't a 100% guarantee that you'll always be able to save or that you'll always be able to recover all of your island's info.

Nintendo is reportedly also working on creating a service that will specifically help players move their New Horizons save data to a new Switch system. This would be for those who have both systems in hand, rather than for those who have lost or damaged their original console. We'll be sure to cover this service once more is revealed.

As an end to the Summer update video, Nintendo reminds us that even more updates are scheduled to release before the end of the year and alluded to Halloween-inspired fall festivities. We'll be sure to cover these upcoming events as they get revealed.

Summer dreams

That's everything that was announced with the Summer Update Wave 2. We hope you enjoy the fireworks with your friends and animal villagers. We're also plenty excited to check out the new dream island feature so we can ogle all of the gorgeous creations players from around the world are creating. Maybe we'll see you and your island in dreamland.