Animal Crossing: New Horizons to receive second summer update, complete with fireworks

Fireworks! Dream islands! Sparklers! Island backups!

Nintendo announced today that a second major update will be hitting on July 30th — this Thursday. With it comes a veritable bevy of fun new features. First up, firework shows will be happening every Sunday night — including customizable fireworks you design. Sparklers and glowing hats to help you light up the summer night are also included in the update.

Dream islands are a new feature as well. When approaching a bed, you now have the option to sleep; after falling asleep, Luna appears and offers to take you to another player’s island. Changes you make to their island are not saved, but you are free to explore all you want. You can offer up your own island as a dream island as well.

The biggest news, however, is the new ability to back up your island data. Unfortunately, it seems to be a cloud backup that is only accessible through a complicated system, and only if your Switch is lost or damaged. Nintendo’s description details the limitations of this feature:

Nintendo Switch Online members can enable the new island backup service, which automatically uploads island and user save data to the internet at certain times. 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. In the event of loss or damage, contact Nintendo Consumer Support about restoring the island and user save data on your new or repaired Nintendo Switch system. After your island data and individual player data is restored, you can get back to building your island community.

Nintendo

The ability to locally back up and transfer data to another system are planned for later this year.