Sea Life and Nintendo have brought their globally-renowned Animal Crossing: New Horizons collaboration back to Australia for a new season, with light tweaks making it stronger and more fun than its previous iteration.
The exhibit runs to 23 August at Sea Life Sydney, and arrives at Sea Life Melbourne later in 2026.
To celebrate its opening, ScreenHub was invited to attend an after-hours preview, complete with an appearance by everybody’s favourite secretary, Isabelle.
Sea Life x Animal Crossing – quick links
The brilliance of the Sea Life x Animal Crossing collaboration
As in the first iteration, this collaboration adds Animal Crossing: New Horizons theming to Sea Life exhibits and locations. Exploring the many biomes within Sea Life Sydney, you can spot plaques and standees of various Animal Crossing characters, many of which have been chosen for their relation to the sea.
There’s a fresh cohort this time around, with standees for Lily, Aurora, Alfonso, Flip and others. Of course, there’s also a standee for Isabelle in addition to a live-action character actor in a furry suit, and a Tom Nook standee to shake your head at (for reasons of being a landlord, and putting you in so much in-game debt).
Blathers also returns to explain a variety of the exhibits, with special posters showing off real-life sea creatures that also appear in the Animal Crossing games, alongside some fun, digestible facts for all ages.
The stamp system, which returns from last year, is the most notable change here.
Previously, you’d roam around the aquarium collecting ink stamps on a sheet. Now, you get a special branded activity booklet complete with trivia and fun facts to find, and you’re imprinting it with embossing stamps. It’s a clever change because the ink would run out or dry up fairly frequently in the past, making some stamps unclear.
You really need to press to get your imprint crisp and clean, but it makes for a novel activity – and if you manage to find every stamp station (it’s really for kids, so the stations aren’t particularly hidden) you can get a special ink stamp for completion, and collect a 2026 Edition postcard.
It encourages another level of engagement with Sea Life exhibits, in a way that makes learning feel very approachable and achievable for young kids.
Games and science are a perfect match
It’s for this reason the Sea Life x Animal Crossing: New Horizons exhibition feels so important. Gaming is becoming more a part of the lives of children, with gaming technology becoming more accessible in each new generation.
Kids are now hanging out with their friends in online spaces. They’re learning through gaming, and it’s part of their language.
Pairing the world of games – in this case, Animal Crossing – with the realms of science to create an accessible and exciting place to learn is a slam dunk.
Animal Crossing has the added benefit of being a naturally kid-friendly series. If visitors don’t specifically know the characters of the series, they’ll still enjoy seeing a cute little puppy, or a frog, or an octopus with an angry face. Its cuteness is more important here.
The added layer of gamification, via the booklet activities and stamps, means kids can ‘play’ the exhibit in a similar way to how they’d play games. It’s all about giving them a goal, encouraging their learning as they achieve that goal, and then rewarding them for their time and attention.
Disguised learning is still learning, and there are plenty of opportunities for it here.
Visitors wander through wetland terrain, and see one of Animal Crossing‘s many friendly villagers enjoying their natural habitat. They venture through the impressive underwater tank, then see Alfonso the alligator, who might occupy this territory in the real world.
Sea Life Sydney is particularly well set-up for this journey, with wide open spaces to roam around in, and plenty of interactive elements like clickable screens, plaques and other hands-on learning opportunities (like the rock pool, which I sadly can’t stick my hand in because I’m allergic to molluscs and crustaceans).
After enjoying a brief run in 2025, it’s genuinely wonderful to see this collaboration back in Sydney.
While it’s technically promotion for a now-six-year-old Nintendo Switch game, it goes well beyond being a simple marketing activity, introducing plenty of clever activities and great learning opportunities for kids.
If you missed it the first time, now’s your chance to indulge in a spot of Animal Crossing fandom, and see some very cool fish.
