The Maddening Quest To Get My Animal Crossing Villagers To Move Out

The town of OVOXO is a quaint, idyllic town. Lots of greenery. Right by the beach. It’d be perfect, except there’s one problem: I have two penguin villagers.

…yeah, this is about to get ridiculous, but it’s a true story of how I’ve lost my bearings trying to get two villagers to move out of Animal Crossing: New Leaf.

Now, don’t misunderstand me. There’s nothing inherently wrong with penguins or anything. It’s just that I can’t help but look at all the screenshots on Twitter and Tumblr with an immense amount of jealousy as I notice all the awesome villagers other people have. Hippos! Robot frogs! Mummified stuff! Meanwhile, my town seems to have the most vanilla set of animals—lions, bears, squirrels…and not just one penguin, but two penguins. Like it wasn’t enough for me to have one boring type of villager, I need to have two.

Eff. That. Not in my town.

Naturally my first response was to talk to my secretary, Isabelle—you have the option to report “problematic villagers,” which is kind of a silly concept when you think about it. The game is so agreeable I can’t imagine anyone actually having a legitimate problem with a villager that wasn’t self-induced—you get to decide their catchphrases and are the one sending them letters, after all. Still, I used the feature to complain about Sprinkle the penguin first. Maybe I’d get results?

Interestingly, there was no option for “my perfect town does not have two of anything,” which I for one think is extremely inconsiderate of Nintendo. So instead I took the next most ridiculous complaint, attire.

You, the mayor—in all your civic glory—can bitch about someone’s clothes. Okay, fine. Maybe complaining about it will somehow get Sprinkle to move out.

Isabelle, you speak my completely unreasonable language.

…except the next day, Sprinkle the penguin was still wearing the same clothes. Um. What the heck? Do the whims of your dictator mayor mean nothing around here?? I guess not.

I started lamenting the situation on Twitter, at which point I heard stories about how a friend became cruel to unwanted villagers in his game in an effort to drive them out—notably, he covered their houses in trash.

I was told about this about a month ago, and I was struck by how cruel it was. I began to wonder, how cruel could I become in a game that leaves little room for it? You can’t even curse in this thing, but I’d heard of people doing stuff like turning their town into a prison by giving everyone a set of orange clothes. Pretty crafty. I then became consumed with doing everything in my power to be cruel to the two penguins in my town in the hopes that they’ll stop liking me and then move out. Well, everything outside of actually looking up how to make them move out. Why would I do that? That’s boring.

Here’s a few of the things I’ve tried. Nothing as genius as prison-town, but, y’know.

There’s the daily “smack them with my bug net until they get depressed” method. (Subtitle: NO I’M TRYING TO GET YOU TO MOVE OUT AAAAAA).

There’s the “try to trap them in their own house (and then later wonder how they teleported into another building)” method.

There’s the “set pitfall traps outside their house” method.

Other stuff I’ve tried but don’t have pictures of: sending nasty letters. Refusing to buy them medicine when they get sick, even if that means they’re out of commission for like a week straight. Never doing any of the quests the villagers like to send you on. Setting house visiting dates and then standing them up. Less effectively, sometimes I’ll swing an axe at them in frustration. I even took to never speaking to them at all—but this was after I’d changed Sprinkle’s catchphrase to “I’m moving!” So when I finally caved and talked to Sprinkle again, I temporarily tricked myself into thinking she was moving—I’d forgotten that I changed her catchphrase.

@!!%$%**!@$

Sprinkle and Gwen are still there. In fact, the stupid birds love me. I don’t get it. One of them calls me “Hon” and the other calls me “Little-A.” Ironically, all the villagers I like and try to please have asked to move. Maybe they’re scared of me after all this stuff I’ve been doing? Sigh.

Oh, here’s the best part. A second lion has moved into my town. Ugh. I guess a mayor’s work is never done.