Category: Video Games

Attention Everyone: Animal Crossing: New Horizons has a jump button now!

You can also walk backwards, and sideways!!!

Why am I freaking out over this? Look. This is almost as exciting as when we all learned New Horizons would give us the ability to sit down on the ground.

This comes as a part of Animal Crossing: New Horizon’s 3.0 update, which dropped a day early today, giving access to a new Hotel area, loads of new decorative items, some quality of life features like bulk crafting, and Dream Islands you can build alongside friends. But as players have discovered since, it’s also added a subtle new feature to aid in construction and placement: essentially, a controlled way to step in the cardinal directions in very precise ways.

This feature is now tutorialed as part of obtaining the Construction App, though it’s possible it may be available prior to that, and it’s very easy to activate. You can use it any time by pressing the L button. Pressing it once will snap your character into place with a tiny little hop. Holding it down and moving the stick in a direction will let you take exactly one step in that direction, effectively the size of one “square” of space. This is ideal for activities such as precise furniture placement, or lining yourself up perfectly to hit rocks or even catch bugs.

So, sure, it’s not actually a huge deal – just a fun quality of life feature. It’s not like a REAL jump (and you can already jump small gaps automatically anyway). But Animal Crossing’s audience has historically gotten very excited about little touches like this, such as the wave of excitement when sitting on the ground was confirmed to be in the game, or the love for any number of other tiny details players have found over the years.

Anyway, if they ever add jump attacks it’s over for you people.

There are other small details in the new update worth celebrating, such as the ability to save individual custom designs to Slumber Islands (effectively giving you even more slots), and the fact that former Islanders visiting the Hotel will remember you.

We’ve got a comprehensive guide to the 3.0 update, including how to unlock everything and what’s included, as a part of our Animal Crossing: New Horizons Wiki guide. If you’re just getting back to New Horizons today after a long hiatus, we also have a number of tips for people getting back into the swing of things.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Umamusume: Pretty Derby’s anime film spinoff, Beginning of a New Era, released in theaters in Japan way back in May 2024. And now, it’s coming to the U.S. for a one-night-only theatrical release on February 27, 2026.

As shared by Crunchyroll, the film will hit select, to-be-announced theaters in the U.S. for a one-night screening next month, and shared an English-language trailer and poster alongside the news. Tickets will be available at a later date via the official English website, though it’s unclear how broad a release this film will actually get.

After about 10 hours in Hytale, the new survival crafter from some former Minecraft modders, there really isn’t a better way I could describe it other than to say it’s basically Minecraft 2. From the block-by-block breaking and building, to the stylized environments and enemies, to the procedural world generation, this feels like the, “What would we change if we had the chance to start over again?” version of the now legendary 2009 classic. Many games have been influenced by Mojang’s trendsetter, but this is more of a cover song than a subgenre from what I’ve seen so far (though I’ve got plenty more to play before my final review). And while developer Hypixel Studios’ lawyers might not love hearing me say that, I honestly don’t think it’s a bad thing. Even in Early Access, it’s a good cover!

All of the gameplay will be pretty familiar if you’ve put any time at all into Minecraft, but with some streamlining here and there. You no longer have to begin your journey punching trees, for instance, since basic tools are made with sticks and rubble that can be collected easily with your bare hands. Also, breaking the trunk of a tree will cause everything above it to collapse and drop its resources, which was almost enough to win me over on its own. I still to this day hate having to chop upwards to hollow out a tree in Minecraft!

Movement is also a lot more modern and fluid. You can jump up to three blocks high and pull yourself up, which feels like such a huge quality-of-life improvement over the one-block jump limit in Minecraft. It’s even possible to take a running leap at a ledge, hit the side, and pull yourself up. We’ve got proper parkour now, and I don’t know that I would ever want to give it up.

It also just runs better than Minecraft on my Ryzen 7 3700X, 32GB RAM, and RTX 4070 Ti-powered system. Even with the draw distance cranked up, my framerates sit comfortably above 60. We’ll see how long that lasts when I start building elaborate megastructures, but for now it’s like butter.

Combat is fine. There are a handful of different weapon types, from swift-slashing double daggers to a classic sword and shield setup with more defensive options, and every one has its own unique charge attack and a special meter that can be filled up to release a devastating finisher. I’m impressed with the enemy variety so far, with everything from goblin bomb-throwers to really terrifying lava toads that can catch you with their tongues and pull you in for a very painful bite attack.

Building can be a little bit fiddly. We have more pieces to pick from, like proper roofs that make Minecraft’s classic stair tricks redundant. But sometimes I had to do silly stuff like building a dirt “mold” to make sure all the pieces were facing the right way. Still, once I got the hang of its quirks, I was able to start making some pretty neat-looking stuff.

There’s very little direction in this Early Access version of Hytale, currently. The main hub area, the Forgotten Temple, is a rotunda of literal Under Construction signs. I even stumbled into some dungeons out in the world where I’d be excited to throw the doors open only to find one of these disappointing barriers. It’s not clear what the larger, overarching goal is supposed to be, although I’m happy enough to build cool stuff and seek out new ores for higher-level tools at the moment. But I’m not sure if there will eventually be a story or bigger bosses to find or anything like that. I haven’t run into them yet if they exist already.

Overall, I’m quite enjoying my time with Hytale so far, though. Even if it is just Minecraft again, it’s an enjoyable rendition with some thoughtful tweaks and additions. It’s almost like someone’s wishlist of things Mojang will never do, or can’t do with its legacy tech. I plan to put in at least a few dozen more hours before I give it a final evaluation, but check back for more updates on my progress in the coming week.