Animal Crossing: New Horizonsis still enjoying a strong level of activity, despite releasing over three years ago. The game was a mega hit upon release, due, in large part, to the distraction it offered from the worldwide COVID pandemic.New Horizonswas a marked improvement on its predecessors, offering the series' widest arrangement of customization tools, and allowing fans to interact through visits to each other’s islands. In November 2021,the Happy Home Paradise DLC, was released as an expansion forAnimal Crossing: New Horizons, bringing with it a host of new features. GivenNew Horizon’s popularity, fans are anxiously anticipating the next entry in the series. When it arrives, the nextAnimal Crossinggame should take Happy Home Paradise to the next level.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons' Happy Home Paradise DLC sees villagers make specific requests of the player, who then designs their dream vacation home. These vacation home requests included furniture, unique themes, and even different seasons. In addition, Happy Home Paradise featured new villagers and hub locations, such as user-created restaurants, shops, and public spaces. The ability to showcase these creations during a user’s preferred season and time paved the way for a level of creative freedom the series had never before achieved, and future entries in the series would do well to continue this trend at launch.
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New Horizon’s Villager Islands Resolved Player’s Biggest Dilemma
Fans ofAnimal Crossinghave long shared a connection with certain villagers. Depending on their preference and commitment to creating a thriving island community, many fans sought to create an island that reflected a villager’s style or character. However, this created a dilemma, asAnimal Crossing: New Horizon’s Main Islandonly offered so much space on which to build. In order to create adequate home areas for their favorite characters, players were often faced with the task of tearing down previous creations to make room.
With the release ofAnimal Crossing: New Horizons' Happy Home Paradise DLC, players were able to create vacation homes, or islands, for their favorite villagers, without the task of managing their personal island’s limited space.Happy Home Paradise saw villagers make specific design requests, granting the player insight into how to efficiently reflect their preferences throughout the creation process. Happy Home Paradise also introduced new NPCs and previous title’s villagers, such as Lottie, who could make requests of players. Should a player want more one on one time with their favorite villager, the ability to create social spaces allowed for unique interactions and conversation.
The Next Animal Crossing Could Take Villager Islands to the Next Level
Given the immense success ofAnimal Crossing: New Horizons, many of its best features are likely to reappear inthe nextAnimal Crossinggame. Happy Home Paradise’s Villager Islands are perhaps the most vital of these new features and should be available to players of the next title at launch. Specifically, players should be able to create specific housing for their favorite villagers, without the threat of their creativity limiting other structures and spaces in their community. Not only will this help to create a more cohesive overall environment within players' created towns, villages, or islands, but it will scratch the itch of those wanting to be extremely creative with the game’s creation tools, aesthetics, and community spaces.
The nextAnimal Crossingtitle has the potential to take Villager Islands, and many of the otherfeatures of Happy Home Paradise, to the next level, by incorporating the core ideas introduced inNew Horizons, and expanding their creative capabilities. By making these features available at launch, players will be able to explore, indulge, and share their creativity on a much larger scale. Nintendo has yet to announce the next entry in theAnimal Crossingseries. Until then, fans continue to leverageNew Horizon’s unique features to express their creativity and express their connections with the island’s many Villagers.
