Animal Crossing for Nintendo Switch is finally happening! Everyone’s seance circles worked! We haven’t seen a new traditional Animal Crossing game since Animal Crossing: New Leaf in 2013, and it’s been even longer since we’ve seen one on a home console. With the most recent Nintendo Direct, Animal Crossing fans can finally put down their pitchforks and torches and start getting ready for 2019!
That said, we Animal Crossing fans have high expectations for this game. New Leaf had some great features, but I have a few ideas that would make the Animal Crossing experience even better!
(Nintendo)
Better Organization and Storage Options
One of the most annoying things about Animal Crossing is that you have to hover over each item in your inventory to actually know what it is, since all like-items share the same icon. This can make organizing very cumbersome and time-consuming. Simply changing the icons to match what the item actually looks like would save a ton of time and headaches.
Having sorting options in your inventory, locker, closet. etc. would also make finding items easier. This also save times with the player having to go in and move items around in the way they want them sorted. Also, we want unlimited storage.
Bigger Towns
With the roster of animals in the Animal Crossing franchise growing, 10 villagers in your town feels extremely limiting. How can we possibly pick ONLY 10?! Having more space means having more villagers! Alternatively, apartment buildings could be added to have multiple villagers living in one space… or villagers could have roommates! How many villager friendships can I end with this idea?
Outside of having more room for more villagers, it would be cool to have different “sections” of your Town. Of course, you have the standard forest section, but it would be neat if there were a few more areas where villagers could live, each having its own unique bugs, fish, plants, and trees. How about a beach area? Desert and mountain areas would also be really fun!
(Nintendo)
Better Town Customization
I don’t know about your guys, but I’m super picky when I start a new town in Animal Crossing: New Leaf. The placement of Town Hall, Re-Tail, the river, ponds, etc. all have to be JUST right. It would be even better if Animal Crossing on the Nintendo Switch allowed you to just customize your initial town however you like. Place the waterways, put Town Hall in a convenient location, and so on. Having this option makes it so you don’t have to reset over and over until you get something that works with your vision for your new town.
Also, to fix one of the biggest headache of Animal Crossing that I can think of, for the love of Hylia, let us pick where our villagers build houses! Of course, there is a way to do this in Animal Crossing: New Leaf without hacking the game, but it involves putting down custom path squares literally everywhere that you don’t want a house. Let’s make our lives a little bit easier, eh, Nintendo?
Tie in Animal Crossing Happy Home Designer Ideas
Happy Home Designer introduced a lot of ways to make designing the interior of your house easier. Going back to an earlier point, Animal Crossing Happy Home Designer makes finding certain items SUPER easy and you don’t have to go digging for them in your inventory. Everything is nicely sorted by type of furniture / appliance and have nice little icons for you to immediately recognize what the item is. Another thing that Happy Home Designer allows you to do is place items on the half marks of the invisible square grid, which helps with centering certain furniture.
Perhaps the most obvious thing is allowing us to customize our villager’s homes! We could always give villagers gifts in New Leaf and they would SOMETIMES put them in their house. Seriously, some of these animals need some major interior design help.
(Nintendo)
Better Co-Op
Co-Op already exists in some ways: you can have up to four players living in your town, so all four have individual houses, budgets, items, etc. The main wall that should be broken down in the next game is the ability for all four of these players to play at the same time. Whether it be local split-screen or online with separate Nintendo Switch consoles, Animal Crossing could use some more ways to play with your friends and family. Sure, there’s online play in New Leaf, but those friends have a totally separate town to take care of. Let’s see something like Stardew Valley multiplayer.
