Nostalgia— a sentimentality for the past. Whether it’s a familiar smell from your mother’s cooking or a video game you loved playing during your teenage years, it’s a warm fuzzy feeling. That emotion is what this town is based on.
Introducing SnowBelle, this town is based on the nostalgic feelings I, and many others feel towards Christmas from our childhoods. Christmas when we are children is both so magical and whimsical— the excitement to open presents, to see a fresh blanket of snow to create snowmen or snow angels in, to be with family and feel the warmth of the fireplace, to see the pretty Christmas lights illuminating the houses and trees everywhere. That’s what I want this town, SnowBelle— to feel like.
Town Creation
After planning this town out for it’s theme, I had to decide on a town name. I had been recently replaying Pokemon X at the time and thought SnowBelle was perfect for the town name! Unfortunately, I forgot about the 8 character limit for AC:NL so the town name has to be shortened down in game to “SnowBell”— regardless, it’s official town name will still remain as “SnowBelle” here!
When I made this town I decided to create it on the correct date of 4th September so I can remember when the town was created.
My original animal residents had a few good bunch, I adored Ribbot and Pekoe a lot.
After planting the town tree for SnowBelle, I went off to start completing my encyclopaedia. I’ve never completed one in any of my ACNL towns so it’ll be nice to maybe try in this save file. A large majority of bugs and fish are vastly caught in the summer so at some point I will need to time travel back in time to catch them all, same for spring time too or I could perhaps maybe do local WiFi with myself to get seasonal bugs instead as SnowBelle is a winter town. Meadow is permanently spring, Chestnut is permanently autumn and Serenity is permanently summer.
I snagged a yellow butterfly and Ribbot unexpectedly caught me doing so and started clapping, Angel didn’t look too impressed with this screenshot timing tho. xP
A Blanket of Snow, New Look & Debt
After getting the town tree planted I decided it was time to let the frosty weather take it’s white blanket of snow sleep over SnowBelle. I paid Tom Nook his 10k Bells to get my home built so that I’m no longer in a tent and paid off my home loan debt again the following day— whilst sporting Angel’s new look.
At first I wanted Angel to have black eyes and her long hair down but I decided that her eyes will be green instead to match the evergreen plants during winter time; her hair is now in a ponytail too which I think makes her outfit look a lot cuter!
Because it’s now December in game, I have to catch all of the new winter bugs. I went on to catch many until I came across catching the dreaded Mole Cricket.
I absolutely loathe catching this bug. Not only does it make the worlds most annoying noise, it’s time consuming trying to just locate the darn thing. I struggled a lot catching them in my first ACNL town, Meadow because of how tedious they are. Having to dig up tons of spots just to locate it is a nightmare.
But after a good 10 minutes of frustrated digging and a million holes later, I managed to catch it! 😀
And it went immediately to the museum shortly after because I was not willing to go through a million more holes dug to get another one. xP
Fish Hunting & Deep Diving
I unlocked Tortimer’s Island shortly after time travelling a few days and swiftly made myself head on over there to catch some summertime fish and sea creatures that I needed to get for both the museum and my encyclopaedia.
After swimming several laps around the island building I managed to catch a lot of sea creatures I needed and even coming across a giant isopod! I don’t think I have this in Meadow’s museum as I never knew this sea creature was an island only sea creature! 😮 (Edit: I do have this in Meadow’s museum! xP)
I also managed to catch a giant trevally, it’s also an island exclusive fish that is somewhat rare. I miraculously managed to catch 4 of them before venturing back home to SnowBelle completely satisfied with my progress on my encyclopaedia!
After Kapp’n had traversed me back to SnowBelle with his boat I immediately spotted a giant fish shadow whilst it was snowing. I knew it was probably a Coelacanth. I eagerly I took out my fishing rod and attempted to catch it..
And well.. I was right! It was indeed a Coelacanth! I was super surprised I managed to catch a Coelacanth this early into my gameplay on this town considering on Meadow it took me a bit of a while!
And because I did a lot of deep sea diving catching deep sea creatures I ended up getting my first two badges from Phineas! The seafood maniac badge and the seafood encyclopaedia badge!
