animal crossing new leaf – Trekking with Dennis

The Next Animal Crossing: A Wishlist

Let’s do something we haven’t done for a long time: talk about Animal Crossing!

For some context, Animal Crossing: New Horizons briefly became my most-played Nintendo Switch game… before being overtaken by Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. I enjoyed the game in 2020 and into 2021, but I felt it was far more limited than it should’ve been and I burned out on it more quickly than I expected. When I compare New Horizons to its predecessor – a game I was still playing from time to time when New Horizons was released – I think it comes up short.

Nintendo also didn’t give New Horizons the level of support and updates I would’ve hoped for. In true Nintendo fashion, they abandoned the best-selling Switch-exclusive title after little more than a year, giving a handful of free updates (some of which re-introduced items and features that had been added for one holiday season, then removed), and one piece of paid-for DLC. Neither the free updates nor the paid DLC addressed what I considered to be New Horizons’ most egregious flaws and missing features.

Concept art for Animal Crossing: New Horizons showing five different character designs. — Concept art for some of the villagers in *New Horizons*.

It was a real shame to see some of New Leaf’s best elements – things which gave that game genuine longevity and kept me returning to it – stripped out of New Horizons. And while some of the things New Horizons added did improve the overall Animal Crossing experience… the trade-off wasn’t really worth it. Losing minigames and Tortimer’s island basically meant multiplayer wasn’t fun and offered very little to do besides having a wander around… and honestly, that got boring pretty quickly. Some players have crafted great islands, don’t get me wrong, but if all I can do is look around… let’s just say it reminds me of being dragged around stately homes and botanical gardens by my parents when I was a kid. And no, that is not a compliment!

So with New Horizons and New Leaf in mind… what should the next Animal Crossing look like? The tl;dr? The best of both worlds – while also learning from other recent games in the casual life-sim space. That’s what I’d want to see from the next game in the series, which is surely already in development for the Nintendo Switch 2.

Promo screenshot for Animal Crossing: New Horizons showing a player character snoozing in a decorated room. — Could a new Animal Crossing game be imminent?

There are rumours flitting around that a new Animal Crossing game might be teased as early as this month, with 2026 being talked about as a potential release year. I think it makes sense for Nintendo to line up a new Animal Crossing relatively early in the life of the Switch 2, especially if the more expensive system isn’t selling quite as well as its predecessor. Attracting that large “cozy game,” casual playerbase would make a lot of sense, so 2026 sounds plausible to me.

With all that being said, my usual caveats apply! I have no “insider information” about the Animal Crossing series. I’m not claiming to know when the game will be released or what new features might be included. Everything we’re going to discuss today is a wishlist from a fan, and nothing more. It also goes without saying that all of this is the subjective, not objective, opinion of just one person. If I recommend a new feature that you think sounds awful, or I miss out something you believe should be obvious… that’s okay. There ought to be enough room in the Animal Crossing community for polite discussion and respectful disagreement.

With all of that out of the way, let’s take a look at my Animal Crossing wishlist.

Wish #1:
More options in the character creator.

Promo screenshot for Animal Crossing: New Horizons showing various hairstyle options. — Hairstyles in *New Horizons*.

New Leaf and New Horizons don’t exactly have a ton of character creation options. There are a handful of eyes, noses, mouths, and hairstyles… but a modern title on more powerful hardware could expand this by a lot. We could see dozens of hairstyles, new hair and eye colours, and facial features, all of which would help us create unique and personalised characters. The new game will almost certainly stick with the familiar Animal Crossing art style, but even within that framework there’s a ton of room to do more.

I’d like to see different body types – villagers of different heights and weights. There could also be new facial hair and makeup options, too. I felt New Leaf’s customisation options were solid enough on the 3DS – but I gotta be honest: I expected more from New Horizons coming more than half a decade later on a much more powerful system. The Switch 2 really ought to be able to handle many more character creation options, and isn’t the point of a life simulator to, y’know, simulate your life? A lot of folks want to be able to put themselves into the game – so Nintendo really ought to make that happen!

Wish #2:
Learn from the successes (and shortcomings) of similar games.

Still frame from the Disney Dreamlight Valley Skull Rock Update trailer showing the player taking a selfie. — Taking a selfie in *Disney Dreamlight Valley*.

One of my favourite games of the last few years has been Disney Dreamlight Valley – despite its monetisation issues. Dreamlight Valley is itself inspired by Animal Crossing – but it’s also a game that took the life-sim formula and did more with it than any Animal Crossing title so far. In particular, being able to easily move buildings around by hopping into an editor mode on the fly is something the next Animal Crossing series could really use. Imagine if, instead of having to go to Tom Nook, wade through dialogue, wait 24 hours, and only be able to move one house at a time… you could just move any of them any time you wanted? And imagine if, instead of being permanently stuck with wherever you happened to site the museum or the shop… you could pick them up and move them around as your town expands. That would be neat, huh?

Then there are things like unique villager quests that could be a lot of fun. Other cozy life-sim titles, like this year’s Locomoto, also have better editing and customisation tools that I think Nintendo should take a serious look at. I don’t play a ton of these types of games, so I don’t know every new feature that might be kicking around out there, but there are bound to be others that I haven’t seen or can’t call to mind right now! The long and short of it is that Nintendo shouldn’t just look inwards at New Leaf and New Horizons, but outwards at other games in the genre. There are plenty of games on the market in a similar space – and some are a whole lot better than Animal Crossing right now.

Wish #3:
Proper menu/inventory icons.

Promo screenshot for Animal Crossing: New Horizons showing the player's inventory. — Pockets in *New Horizons*.

When I played New Leaf on the 3DS, I didn’t really mind that there was only one inventory icon for furniture, and one for clothes. But on the Switch? You’d have thought each individual item could’ve gotten its own unique icon. At the very least, it should’ve been possible to see at a glance whether I’m carrying a wardrobe or a teacup. These are pretty basic quality-of-life things that would make navigating menus, storage, and inventories so much smoother. It would be way easier to find crafted items, gifts, tools, and the like if each item had its own icon.

There’s no real reason why each item can’t be given its own inventory icon. It would’ve been possible on the Switch, so it’s certainly going to be achievable on the new system. It’s a pain the arse to scroll through storage and inventories, trying to find a particular item of clothing or piece of furniture – and there’s just no need for it any more. On older hardware? Sure. But now? It’s time to have a proper, well-organised inventory!

Wish #4:
Item durability needs to piss off.

Promo screenshot for Animal Crossing: New Horizons showing a broken watering can. — Ugh.

I don’t think I’ve ever played a single game – not one, ever – where I’ve thought to myself “gosh, I’m glad my tools/weapons break. That just makes this game so much more fun!” And I’ve definitely never been playing a game and thought “you know what would make this better? If my tools and guns randomly stopped working while I’m trying to use them!” I can’t think of any game where item durability is implemented well and actually makes sense – except, perhaps, for Minecraft.

New Horizons had pathetically awful item durability. I get that maybe your bottom-tier, basic tools wouldn’t work as well or last as long as proper ones. But come on… even the top-tier golden tools break after a handful of uses. And it’s such a pain in the arse to be halfway through a big task – like watering a flowerbed or breaking a money rock – only for your tool to break. And with no status indicators nor any way to keep track, tools seemed to break completely at random. I get the idea behind it… but it wasn’t fun. I don’t play a game like Animal Crossing for realism, and I definitely don’t play it to get frustrated when my pissing watering can breaks.

Wish #5:
Either use announcements properly or don’t include them.

Promo screenshot for Animal Crossing: New Horizons showing Isabelle's morning announcements. — No, Isabelle. No, it fucking doesn’t.

Isabelle’s morning announcements were absolutely useless most of the time. She’d let you know about big things, like events, but she’d also not let you know about everything… with her stupid little “oh, that doesn’t count as news” really pissing me off more and more as time went on. The town noticeboard wasn’t much better, with even basic things not being posted there. If you’re going to include a feature – or two – in a game like this specifically to make announcements about important events and things going on… use them. Otherwise they’re just a waste of time.

I’d like to start my play session with a proper announcement of what’s going on. But Isabelle wouldn’t tell you if a special character was visiting, or if it was the last day to see a certain event. And the noticeboard hardly got anything added to it. I’m pretty sure I missed seeing characters like Gulliver and Redd a few times because their visits weren’t made obvious. If you don’t have a lot of time to play, getting a roundup of what’s happening that day can be really important, and when there are built-in features especially created for this purpose, it just seems ridiculous not to take advantage of them.

Wish #6:
A proper third-person camera.
(As a togglable option)

Promo screenshot for Animal Crossing: New Horizons showing a villager walking through fruit trees, with a tent in the background. — The standard camera angle.

This one might be controversial! Animal Crossing games have all had the same kind of top-down/isometric camera angle. But having played Dreamlight Valley, as discussed above, one thing I believe would really add to the immersion would be a proper over-the-shoulder third-person camera. Being able to explore the world from that perspective would be a game-changer – literally – and I think it would add a lot to the Animal Crossing experience.

However, because this would undoubtedly be controversial, I think it should be included as an option, not as something mandatory. The standard Animal Crossing camera could also be present for folks who want the more “traditional” experience. The rest of us can have fun exploring our villages a bit more up close and personal!

Wish #7:
Multiplayer mini-games.

Screenshot of Animal Crossing: New Leaf showing a player shooting balloons on Tortimer's Island. — Balloon hunting on Tortimer’s Island in *New Leaf*.

The reason I was still playing New Leaf years after its release – and the reason I don’t play New Horizons any more – is the multiplayer mini-games on Tortimer’s island. Being able to fire up New Leaf and play those games with friends was a ton of fun, and it kept me engaged with the game for way longer than I otherwise would’ve been. The mini-games were a blast, too, with plenty of different options on Tortimer’s “tours.”

It was such a shame that New Horizons didn’t include any of that. It meant multiplayer got boring really quickly, and while you can “make your own fun,” at least in a limited way… that doesn’t make up for it. Proper, structured games to play with friends made a world of difference to New Leaf, and I really felt their absence harmed New Horizons. I bought Switch Online entirely because a friend wanted to play New Horizons together… but both of us bounced off pretty quickly after we’d visited each other’s islands and realised that there wasn’t actually a lot to do there.

Wish #8:
Mini-games that can be played at will.
(No randomness/waiting)

Screenshot of Animal Crossing: New Leaf showing a game of hide-and-seek. — Playing hide-and-seek in *New Leaf*.

I’d like to be able to go up to my favourite villager and invite them to play a game. I don’t want to have to go up to everyone over and over again and hope that someone will ask me to play hide-and-seek! As the player, I should be able to choose when to start these mini-games, and pick from the list of available options. Maybe certain characters can refuse my request if they’re in a bad mood or something… sure. That could add to the immersion. But I should be able to start these mini-games at will to give me something to do when I’m not weeding or fishing!

This would also be present in multiplayer. After arriving at a friend’s town, we could choose to start a game of something like hide-and-seek with some of the villagers from their town, and that could add to the fun. But instead of approaching characters and hoping to get the right dialogue prompts, this should be a permanent fixture; something we can always ask our villagers to do.

Wish #9:
Support the game for 6+ years instead of just 18 months.

Promo screenshot for Animal Crossing: New Horizons showing Happy Home Paradise and its pricing. — *Happy Home Paradise* and its associated update were the last major content additions to *New Horizons* – barely eighteen months after the game launched.

Nintendo dropped the ball by abandoning New Horizons so quickly. Look around at the cozy life-sim genre and what do you see? Ongoing support for multiple years from all of the big developers. New items, events, and gameplay features are frequently added, often for free but sometimes as paid DLC. Nintendo did this for the game’s first year, but a lot of that was really spent on patches and on adding features that, frankly, should’ve been present from day one. The next game in the series should get continuing support really for the life of the Switch 2, but at least for five or six years instead of one or two.

This should also include listening and responding to community feedback. If players ask for, say, more vegetables to plant… then add them in the next update. The best long-running titles have devs who engage with and listen to players, and while Animal Crossing has done some of this, sometimes – like reducing the scope of the Easter event – there’s a lot more that Nintendo could do on that front. I’d love to see the next Animal Crossing given years’ worth of free updates. If the game’s gonna sell tens of millions of copies, it’s not like adding new items every now and then is gonna break the bank!

Wish #10:
More shops.
(All of which can be placed anywhere, and all of which can expand.)

Screenshot of Animal Crossing: New Leaf showing a player on the shopping street. — The shopping street in *New Leaf* – with construction underway to expand Nook’s Cranny.

After New Leaf had an entire shopping street, it was kinda pathetic that New Horizons only got two shops. And after New Leaf’s main shop got five or six expansions, taking it from a tin hut to a full-blown multi-storey department store, it was pretty lame that Nook’s Cranny only got one solitary upgrade in New Horizons. Even when Nintendo relented to pressure and added Brewster’s coffee shop back into the game, it wasn’t able to be placed in the world and could only be a new room in the museum. That just made me sad.

So the next game should have, at a minimum, all of the shops from New Leaf, and all of them should be able to be placed in the world. There could be options to place two shops in the same space, or to put the coffee shop inside the museum – but these should be optional, not mandatory! If I want to place the coffee shop in its own dedicated building out in the game world, I should have that freedom. And all of these – including the coffee shop – should get at least one level of expansion. The main shop should get half a dozen.

Wish #11:
Massively expanded villager dialogue.
(And more villager personality types than there are available slots)

Promo screenshot for Animal Crossing: New Horizons showing a villager crafting in their home. — Dialogue got pretty repetitive…

New Horizons gave you ten slots on your island for villagers to move into. But there are only eight villager personality types! What that meant in practice is you’d get at least two villagers who were word-for-word identical to one another. Combine that with some pretty lazy and sparse dialogue, and you’ve got a recipe for boring, repetitive character interactions. Some common events – like walking into a villager’s home while they’re crafting – literally only had one possible line of dialogue, meaning even if you didn’t have two of the same personality type you’d still always see the same text every single time that event triggered.

Given that every Animal Crossing game just uses text for dialogue, adding a huge amount of additional text wouldn’t inflate the size of the game or really have any noticeable impact whatsoever. That goes double for the Switch 2, so I really hope that the next game in the series can have… oh, let’s say quadruple the amount of dialogue, with new villager personality types to further mix things up. And there should be more personality types than there are housing slots available in your town – so you’re always going to have a reason to mix things up and bring in new villagers.

Wish #12:
Farming and cooking from day 1.

Promo screenshot for Animal Crossing: New Horizons showing cooking recipes. — Recipes after one of the final *New Horizons* updates.

By the time New Horizons introduced crops other than pumpkins, I’d already given up on the game. Some of the new farming and cooking things looked neat – but not neat enough to warrant starting a brand-new island or returning to my old one! It would be great if the next game could include these pretty basic features from day one, and not strip out gameplay elements to “add” later while expecting praise! Farming crops and cooking recipes are bog-standard life-sim features and should be present from the beginning.

I love how Dreamlight Valley handles these things, though. Crops can be farmed for cash if you have enough space, but they need watering and attention. And also crops are ingredients in all of your recipes. Food in that game can be consumed for extra energy, given to villagers to boost your friendship, sold for cash, or even used for decoration. New Horizons had some of that, but I think it could be massively expanded to make farming and cooking integral parts of the experience.

Wish #13:
Some kind of drivable vehicle.

Promo image for Mario Kart 8 showing the Animal Crossing Villager character in a kart. — Yep, exactly like this!

If we assume that New Horizons’ successor is going to have a larger map, it would be neat if we could get some kind of bike or kart to make traversing the game world a little faster. This could be a late-game item, meaning you’d need to invest a lot of time and money into acquiring or crafting it, and it could be limited to only being drivable on paths/roads, not just everywhere. But it could make doing your chores a lot more fun – and it would feel like there was something to work towards beyond house expansions, new furniture, and so on.

Depending on what kind of setting the new game goes for – it could be a return to the forest, a city, or another island of some kind – then different vehicle options could be found to fit the game. Perhaps an even bigger project for your new village could see you build your own railway line, with a train and different buildable stations around the village. That could be a ton of fun, too, and a great way to include the Animal Crossing train, which was absent from New Horizons.

Wish #14:
New special characters and events.

Promo screenshot for Animal Crossing: New Horizons showing Zipper in the Roost. — Maybe not this guy, though…

New Horizons introduced a couple of new special characters to run things like the fishing tourney and the bug-off. But these events weren’t new, and they played out pretty much the same as in previous entries in the series. I’d like to see brand-new special characters tied to new events – maybe a hide-and-seek championship or a scavenger hunt. Either of those could introduce a new character to organise and manage the event, mixing things up and giving players something new to do at least once a week.

This could also expand to include new annual holidays or seasonal events; we got things like the wedding and the fireworks nights in New Horizons, but I’m sure there are others and different ones that a new game could include. I don’t think Animal Crossing should go overboard here; we don’t need a special character and event every single day! But having new ones in the mix, helmed by new characters, would be a lot of fun.

Wish #15:
Go easy on the monetisation.

Still frame of the Nintendo Switch 2 Direct showing Welcome Tour. — *Welcome Tour* – and the Switch 2’s launch overall – doesn’t leave me feeling optimistic for this one.

New Horizons, despite its limitations, was priced fairly. Given recent behaviour from Nintendo – jacking up prices left, right, and centre, and going all-in on microtransactions in mobile games like Mario Kart Tour – I don’t want to see the next Animal Crossing game monetised to death. We don’t need “season passes,” paid-for skins, or dozens of tiny “item packs” to add content to the game for a fee. The game should be reasonably-priced, with plenty of free updates throughout its life, and one or perhaps two expansion packs – provided they’re sizable and not overpriced.

This is a source of concern, I’ll be honest with you. I can absolutely see Nintendo trying to cash in on the Animal Crossing series, charging for items, features, characters, currency, and all sorts of things that should be included with the game. I was disappointed when Dreamlight Valley’s monetisation got out of hand, and you don’t need to look far to see life-sim games with ridiculous price tags. The Sims 4, for instance, costs over £1,300 if you were to buy all of its various content packs and DLC.

So that’s it.

Promo screenshot for Animal Crossing: New Horizons showing a player character standing outside a house with decorative items and fencing. — What will come next for Animal Crossing?

We’ve taken a look at a whole bunch of things that I’d like to see from the next Animal Crossing game!

This series has a lot of potential – but for me, at least, New Horizons didn’t live up to it. Most of what we’ve discussed today could – and I would argue should – have been part of New Horizons or added to it later. So in that sense, I don’t think I’m being unreasonable or asking for anything totally crazy from the next game in the series.

I’m not sure what the developers have in store, though. Could we get a new game set in an urban environment, for instance, or are we going to stick with the deserted island? Will characters like Tortimer and Kappn have bigger roles this time, after being effectively absent in New Horizons? What will be the new game’s biggest addition or transformation? Those are all open questions!

If Nintendo gets this right, the next Animal Crossing could be the game that convinces me to save up for a Switch 2. But if it looks like it’s going to be drowning in microtransactions and monetisation… maybe I won’t bother.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is out now for Nintendo Switch. The next Animal Crossing game is presumably in development, but no release date has been announced at time of writing. The Animal Crossing series – including all titles and properties discussed above – is the copyright of Nintendo. Some screenshots and artwork courtesy of IGDB and Nookipedia. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons finally gets an update… and paid DLC

Sat 16.10.21Fri 15.04.22Dennis

Shortly after Animal Crossing: New Horizons launched in March last year, here’s what I had to say about the game in my review: “When I compare New Horizons to New Leaf, a game that I played way more and for way longer, I feel at least a little disappointed. New Leaf seemed to offer more to do when the shine of playing a new game wore off, and it certainly offered significantly more in terms of playing with friends…”

Many of the criticisms I made of the game – most notably the lack of a significant multiplayer offering and mini-games to play with friends – still hadn’t been addressed, and as 2021 wore on the “updates” that were released for the game were incredibly threadbare. Nintendo, in their infinite wisdom, chose to make last year’s holiday-themed updates only valid for one year, meaning much of 2021 was actually spent re-adding holiday events like Easter, Halloween, and Christmas that had already been added in 2020.

Re-adding last year’s holiday events has taken up most of 2021 for *New Horizons*.

The Animal Crossing: New Horizons Nintendo Direct, which premiered yesterday, had the difficult task of making amends with a fanbase that has become disenchanted with the game over the past year or so. Many of New Horizons’ biggest fans hadn’t held back from criticising the game and Nintendo for the lack of proper updates and the lack of communication in 2021, and while the game remains one of the Switch’s best-selling titles, there has been a sense for some time that a lot of folks were simply burnt out and no longer enjoying the experience.

Games have a natural lifespan, so under normal circumstances I’d say that’s just to be expected! But the Animal Crossing series has always been an outlier in that regard; the games challenge players to play long-term, even just for a few minutes a day, but the repetitiveness of the activities and dialogue, combined with no significant updates or new additions, meant New Horizons’ welcome wore out far more quickly than any previous entry in the series.

Brewster and the coffee shop are returning from past games in the Animal Crossing series.

Right off the bat, yesterday’s Nintendo Direct offered a lot of new content, and it’s coming soon – in just under three weeks’ time. The addition of a coffee shop, new islands to visit by boat, a parade of shops (on a separate island), the return of classic characters, more customisation options, more DIY options (including cooking), and an expansion of other aspects of island life, with new items, more storage space, and the like are all incredibly welcome additions. The new update will give players a lot to sink their teeth into – and will probably convince me to either pick up the island I haven’t touched in months or restart the game for a new experience.

However, I do have a few points of criticism. The first is that these updates feel, for the most part, like features that could and should have been part of the game when it arrived in 2020. New Horizons wasn’t exactly threadbare when it launched, but it was missing a number of important features that were part of older games in the series that hampered its longevity. As I’ve said on more than one occasion, New Horizons is basically a “release now, fix later” title.

Kapp’n is another returning character from past games in the series.

The second concern I have, and perhaps the most significant one, is that I don’t see these updates improving the game’s long-term prospects in any meaningful way. They’re going to be a ton of fun… at first. Players who’ve stuck with New Horizons since launch will be thrilled at finally having new things to do, and new players will discover a game that feels much more feature-rich. But when it comes to long-term playing, things like new island tours by boat or a first-person camera are going to lose their shine pretty quickly – just like terraforming and other features did when the original version of the game launched last year.

These new features paper over the cracks and don’t do anything to address New Horizons’ longstanding issues. There was no mention in the Nintendo Direct broadcast of new villager dialogue, for example, which is something the game desperately needs. Anyone who’s sunk a significant amount of time into New Horizons can tell you that villagers simply don’t have much to say after a while, and what they do say is incredibly repetitive. This also extends to Isabelle’s utterly useless “announcements” at the beginning of each day – she usually has nothing of consequence to say, has only a handful of different lines of dialogue, and ignores many goings-on around the island.

No, Isabelle… it really f**king doesn’t.

New Horizons wants to offer players a home-away-from-home on a fantastical island, and the neighbours players will have and befriend are a vital part of that experience. But because the villagers have so little to say, with some common in-game occurrences literally having only one line of dialogue, it makes playing the game feel incredibly repetitive to the point of becoming off-putting. Add into the mix that there are only eight villager “personality types” yet ten villager slots, and you’re always going to have at least two villagers who have identical dialogue even under the best possible conditions.

This was a prime candidate for an overhaul. Unlike adding new gameplay features, new dialogue requires far less development time and far fewer resources. The game’s modest file size could easily handle double the current amount of dialogue – if not more. While the addition of new features like the coffee shop will give villagers a few new things to say, at the end of the day they’re still going to largely be saying the same things that they always have. Once the novelty of some of these new features has worn off, players will be back where they started.

Failing to improve and expand villager dialogue feels like a wasted opportunity – one which seriously hampers *New Horizons’* long-term prospects.

Also missing from the update were multiplayer mini-games. This is a feature I’ve argued needs to be part of New Horizons on several occasions now, and while it’s possible it will come in future as paid DLC, I don’t think that’s good enough. New Horizons currently offers incredibly bad value for players who want to play with friends – Switch Online isn’t free, after all – as there really isn’t anything substantial to do in multiplayer. Nothing in this update will change that, because players will be stuck with the same things to do as before: tour their friend’s island, talk to villagers, and that’s it.

Even some of the features that this update has added feel less than they could’ve been. The coffee shop and parade of shops are in fixed locations – in the museum or on a different island. Yet with a small amount of extra effort, surely Nintendo could’ve given players the option to place new shops and new buildings around their islands? As things sit at the moment, players have one shop, one tailor’s shop, and the museum as buildings that can be placed. Islands are decently-sized, so there was scope to add at least two or three new buildings. Giving players the option to create their own parade of shops would have been fun, and it feels like a missed opportunity that the update has added no new buildings at all.

Couldn’t some of these shops have been optional additions to a player’s island?

I’ve heard some fans argue that they’ve finished designing their island now, so they wouldn’t know where to place a new building. But that’s why something like the coffee shop could have been an option: either included as part of the museum or as a separate building like it was in New Leaf.

The main shop itself has also been ignored by the new update. New Leaf offered players five levels of shop expansion, but New Horizons only has one – and it seems like that’s all there will ever be. The shop doesn’t carry a huge amount of stock: six items at the most (if seasonal items are available). There was scope to expand the shop in the same way as the museum has been expanded, growing it to make it more useful – and to give players something to aim for and work towards.

The shop is staying in its current form.

The aforementioned parade of shops, which will be present on a separate island, could have been part of a shop expansion as well. Gardening items, different wallpapers and rugs, and other such things could have been given their own section within the shop if adding more new buildings to the island was off the table – or as an alternative option.

Kapp’n doesn’t feel like he has a lot to offer based on what we saw in the broadcast. Players have already been able to visit random islands via the airport, and adding a second way to visit a second set of random islands feels like something that will have limited use and, at least based on the way I play the game, is likely not to be used very often. Even if there are multiple new plants, shrubs, and trees, once these have been found and collected I don’t really see what else Kapp’n is going to be useful for – and this really comes back to what I was saying about the update’s longevity.

Players could already visit random islands via the airport… Kapp’n doesn’t seem to offer much that’s different.

Gyroids were never my thing in past Animal Crossing games, but they were always a part of the series so it’s nice to see them return. Brewster, the character who runs the coffee shop, was a big fan of Gyroids, so it makes sense that they’d be part of the update that brought him back. The addition of new items, new furniture, wallpapers, and the like is good, and the ability to hang items from the ceiling is likewise an extra dimension to customisation. None of that will be earth-shattering, but I love a game with customisation options, so adding more ways to customise and to make the island and player’s home feel unique is certainly a good thing.

The addition of town ordinances, which were present in New Leaf, will change things up a little and improve the quality-of-life for some players. Being able to shift the island’s activity to earlier or later in the day should allow some players with tight schedules the ability to play more at a more convenient time, and that’s a positive thing. Again, though, I feel like this should really have been part of the game from the beginning – it was part of New Leaf in 2013, so it can hardly be called a “new” feature.

Perhaps the one addition that interested me the most was the DIY expansion, particularly cooking. The addition of new vegetables and new crops seems to have opened up a range of new DIY recipes for food – and this looks like something that has the potential to be a lot of fun. New Horizons does have a number of food items already, but adding new ones and different ones that can be created is certainly something I find interesting.

DIY has been a double-edged sword in New Horizons sometimes, though. Item durability – a feature copied from the likes of Minecraft – is almost never handled well in any game, and it doesn’t work well in New Horizons. Having to constantly replace broken tools rapidly stops being fun – if it was ever fun – and the fact that DIY doesn’t work particularly well or especially intuitively has hampered the experience. For example, being able to craft more than one item at a time – particularly for one-time use items like fish bait – would massively improve the experience, as would the ability to craft tools in one step instead of two. Neither of these quality-of-life improvements has been added to New Horizons.

Being able to cook different dishes seems like a fun feature – and something actually new!

The addition of a first-person photo mode looks like fun, but the kind of gimmicky fun that I might use a few times at the most. New hairstyles might be fun for some people – and being able to represent different types of hair in a game is no bad thing. More K.K. Slider songs might be your thing… but it’s definitely not mine!

Being able to set up ladders at particular cliffs is something I can see being useful, even as the number of available inclines is slightly expanded. Also allowing players to navigate smaller gaps in between furniture is likewise something that will be useful in certain circumstances. I wouldn’t say that either are groundbreaking, but smaller quality-of-life improvements like these were definitely needed.

The ability to permanently set up ladders is a small addition, but a decent one.

So let’s talk about money. Everything we’ve discussed so far will be added for free, and that’s no bad thing. New Horizons did promise free updates when it launched. But this update will be the last free one for New Horizons, and the first paid DLC has already been announced.

Considering that there are still missing features, and that some quality-of-life additions, like new dialogue and improvements to crafting, haven’t been made, I can’t be the only one who feels it’s rather bold of Nintendo to begin demanding $25 for an expansion to the game – especially considering the expansion is based on 3DS title Happy Home Designer, and thus is hardly something we can call “new.”

*New Horizons* is getting its first paid DLC.

It also means that multiplayer mini-games – if they ever come to New Horizons, and it would be such a shame if they didn’t – will now almost certainly be paid DLC as well. The Happy Home Paradise DLC seems like it could be the first of many, and next year could see at least one or two more paid DLC packs as well – which would greatly increase the cost of playing New Horizons in full.

Happy Home Paradise looks like an updated riff on the Happy Home Designer concept. It does add new things, like partition walls, countertops, and so on, some of which can be brought to a player’s main island home as well. I’m not going to argue that Happy Home Paradise should’ve been free – though it absolutely could have been if Nintendo was a more customer-friendly company – but I’m not sure the timing is right considering that the base game will still be missing key features even after this latest – and final – update.

One of the features present in the DLC pack is the ability to build partition walls.

Version 2.0, which will be the final free update for New Horizons, still doesn’t get it over the line. The game is still going to be missing important features that previous entries in the series had. Some of these features – like multiplayer mini-games – gave the Animal Crossing series much of its long-term value, and without them it’s hard to see New Horizons being a game that will live up to the legacy of its predecessors. Don’t get me wrong, practically all of the additions and updates look like fun… but they look like short-term fun at best.

In addition, the game’s final update will do nothing to address player criticisms and complaints about a number of quality-of-life issues, some of which are pretty major. The lack of expanded dialogue for villagers, the lack of fixes for basic DIY issues, and a number of other points have all been ignored by Nintendo in their rush to blitz through New Horizons’ free updates so they could begin selling paid DLC. As a result, New Horizons in its base form is still not good enough for the kind of game it wants to be – and even the addition of this first paid expansion pack won’t address these concerns.

Adding a coffee shop doesn’t fix what’s fundamentally missing from *New Horizons*.

There are things to look forward to on the fifth of November, and I’m debating whether to jump back into the game or even start a new file in the run-up to the update going live. However, I’m already predicting that many of the new features added into the game will have a relatively short shelf-life, and while they may very well carry New Horizons into the beginning of 2022, the game’s longer-term prospects are still pretty poor.

I judge New Horizons based on how much I enjoyed its predecessor, New Leaf. I played that game on and off for more than seven years because it just had so much to offer and so much going on to convince me to keep coming back. I got bored of New Horizons within a couple of months, and while two months and 100+ hours is definitely a lot of time when compared to many other games, by Animal Crossing standards that’s nothing. Unfortunately everything I’ve seen from this update, and its paid DLC companion, tells me that New Horizons is going to get a short-term fix that will tide fans over for a little while but ultimately does nothing to address the game’s real longevity.

Maybe I’m the one who’s wrong – maybe New Horizons was never meant to be the kind of long-term project that its predecessors were. Perhaps gaming has just changed too much in the past decade or so such that a long-term experience was never something that most players were interested in. If that’s the case then I’m judging New Horizons unfairly. Maybe it was just never meant to be the long-term experience that I expected.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is out now for Nintendo Switch. Version 2.0 will launch on the 5th of November 2021 as a free update, and Happy Home Paradise will launch also on the 5th of November 2021 as paid DLC. Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the copyright of Nintendo. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is still missing an incredibly basic feature

Wed 21.04.21Sun 13.11.22Dennis

It’s been just over a year since the launch of Animal Crossing: New Horizons for Nintendo Switch, the latest entry in a series that has been running since the GameCube era. And New Horizons has been incredibly popular, rising rapidly to become the Switch’s second best-selling game, behind only Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Considering Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is a glorified Wii U port (as are many Switch games, but that’s a battle for another day), I’d say that makes New Horizons the best-selling game that was made from the ground up for the new console! Am I splitting hairs? Well, maybe.

I spent a lot of time with New Horizons in the weeks after its launch. With over 120 hours played it became one of my most-played games of 2020, and I gave it the “best casual game” award as the year drew to a close. But shortly after publishing my review of the game – which you can find by clicking or tapping here, by the way – I put it down for almost six months. When I picked it up again, although there were a handful of updates which added different features, I was surprised to see that New Horizons is still missing something incredibly basic, a feature that would make the game infinitely more fun and increase its longevity substantially. I’m talking about mini-games.

*New Horizons* is missing something important.

New Horizons has a shit multiplayer mode. In fact, its multiplayer mode is so utterly threadbare that it isn’t a stretch to say that there’s literally nothing to do when playing with friends. You can exchange gifts if you have an in-game item your friend desperately wants, and you can check out the designs and scenery on their island, but that’s it. There isn’t anything to do together at all – and especially for players who paid extra for Nintendo’s Switch Online service only to be able to play New Horizons, that’s incredibly disappointing.

I wouldn’t have picked up Switch Online but for New Horizons. I certainly wasn’t going to pay to play Mario Kart 8 Deluxe online after Nintendo gated off what had previously been a free online mode behind their new paywall, and I was content to skip Switch Online altogether. But New Horizons – and a couple of friends of mine who play – convinced me to sign up, and were it not for the fact that I’ve played a couple of other titles online (and will hopefully pick up Fall Guys when it arrives later in the year) I’d feel I 100% wasted my money.

Do not buy a Switch Online subscription just to play *New Horizons*… it isn’t worth it.

To understand why, and why I’m so sour about this, we need to step back one iteration in the Animal Crossing series, back to 2013’s Animal Crossing: New Leaf. New Leaf introduced a number of new features when it debuted on the Nintendo 3DS, and unlike New Horizons, felt like a game that was actually complete when it launched. One of the most fun features, and the main reason I was still playing New Leaf seven years after its release, was an area outside of the main map called the “tropical island.” This area is absent from New Horizons – as are a number of other Animal Crossing staples, despite the game having a full year’s worth of updates under its belt.

The tropical island in New Leaf was more than just a different area to visit with different fruit trees and bugs to catch. It offered mini-games to play, and these could be played with friends – for free, by the way – via either of the Nintendo 3DS’ two multiplayer options (local or online). These mini-games were so much fun, especially when playing with a friend, and gave New Leaf a whole extra lease of life that, frankly, the main game did not have. New Horizons does not have this, and thus a key component of the Animal Crossing experience is lacking.

An example of a tropical island mini-game.

The mini-games New Leaf offered were incredibly varied. Some would put a timer on everyday Animal Crossing activities – like fishing or popping balloons. Others were entirely new for the tropical island, such as using a soft mallet to hit an out-of-control robot. For me – and practically everyone else I knew who played New Leaf – these mini-games were an incredibly important part of the fun, and a mainstay of multiplayer sessions.

The mini-games aren’t the only feature New Horizons is missing. There are many others we could point to, like the coffee shop, the ability to set town ordinances, additional expansions of the shop, the fortune-tellers, the shoe-shop, the gardening shop, and so on. Holidays were also missing at launch, including Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. These were patched in later… but that’s no good for players who don’t have their Switch connected to the internet, or for whom data caps apply. Many kids play New Horizons, and I’m sure not all of them are allowed to connect their consoles to the internet.

“Toy Day” – a.k.a. Christmas – should not have been an update, it should’ve been part of the game at launch.

As I said once before, it’s hard to escape the feeling that New Horizons was released in an incomplete state. Although no major bugs or glitches are present, the game itself is missing key features, and can feel rather threadbare. New features, like terraforming, don’t make up for the lack of things like mini-games, not least because terraforming is a single-player-only activity!

I plan to do a full update of my review at some point soon, so I won’t dive too deeply into all of the missing or removed features here. But I would certainly make the case that these “free updates” are a lot less generous than they appear to be on the surface. All Nintendo is really doing is adding into the game features that should have already been present – features that were part of previous Animal Crossing titles that were removed, or not ready, when New Horizons launched.

At least we can still listen to K.K. Slider’s songs…

If I were in charge of the project, getting mini-games back into New Horizons in some form would be a priority. Nintendo spent much of 2020 adding holiday-themed events, including the aforementioned Halloween and Christmas, so perhaps now is the time to switch focus and make a big push to get mini-games back. Even if the tropical island itself doesn’t return as its own entire area of the map, the ability to play mini-games with villagers in single-player and with friends in multiplayer would quite literally transform the game and make it so much more enjoyable.

Right now, New Horizons doesn’t feel worthwhile to play with friends. After collecting all of the five different fruits (previous games even had more types of fruit!) and seeing their island, there’s really nothing to do. You can “make your own fun,” is what some super-fans and defenders of the game will say. But what fun can you make, exactly? Hide-and-seek works fine, I guess, with other players. But there’s no timed events, no special events like popping the most balloons or matching the right fossils; these things used to be part of Animal Crossing, and Nintendo opted to remove them. By doing so, New Horizons’ multiplayer is incredibly weak, and far, far worse than New Leaf offered eight years ago on much less impressive hardware. That shouldn’t have happened, and we shouldn’t let Nintendo get away with it.

2013’s *Animal Crossing: New Leaf* had a superior multiplayer experience.

I’ve already called out New Horizons for the incredibly poor way it handles save files; only allowing one island per console is a cheap trick to force players – and especially parents – to buy more Switch consoles. But the lack of in-game content, especially for multiplayer, deserves criticism too. Considering the game invites players to pay extra for Switch Online, the very least Nintendo could do is ensure that there was something for us to do.

I held off writing this piece for a long time, hoping that the next update or the next one after that would add in mini-games, the tropical island, or both. But after more than a year, New Horizons’ multiplayer remains in a useless state. There’s very little fun to be had playing with friends, and that situation shouldn’t go unnoticed. I’ll happily recommend New Horizons to players looking for a fun single-player experience – albeit with the caveat that it will probably be better and have more to offer in another year or two’s time. But as a multiplayer game, and especially as a reason to buy a Switch Online subscription? 0/10. Impossible to recommend New Horizons in its current state.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is out now for Nintendo Switch, and is the copyright of Nintendo. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.

The Nintendo 3DS has been discontinued – let’s look back at this unique system

Tue 29.09.20Sun 20.11.22Dennis

With all the hype surrounding the upcoming next-generation consoles, one gaming story that flew under the radar over the last couple of weeks has been the discontinuing of the Nintendo 3DS. The 3DS is arguably the last successful true handheld gaming platform – the Nintendo Switch is a hybrid, and the PlayStation Vita didn’t come close to matching the 3DS in terms of sales. As the console’s life comes to an end, I thought it would be a good opportunity to look back on some of its accomplishments.

I’ve never been massively interested in handheld gaming. I didn’t own an original Game Boy, and on past handheld systems, like the Game Boy Advance and the first Nintendo DS, I basically played Mario Kart and not much else. When home consoles and PC offered better graphics and generally more well-rounded experiences, that was how I preferred to play. Even when I was much more interested in gaming as a hobby, I was still content to wait to get home from work; I never felt that I needed a system I could play on the go. So that was the mindset I had as the Nintendo 3DS launched in 2011.

When I first encountered a 3DS, I confess to being unimpressed. Though the system did offer some improvements over the older DS, which had been released in 2005, it didn’t seem to be massively better, and the almost-identical dual screen design left me underwhelmed. Its autostereoscopic 3D felt like a total gimmick too; I was convinced that someone came up with the name “3DS” and then made a product to fit! There were a lot of reports at the time of the 3D screens causing headaches and migraines, and I believe Nintendo issued official advice not to use the device in 3D mode for more than an hour at a time.

So for a number of reasons I found the 3DS an underwhelming prospect at first. I had a Wii and an Xbox 360 by this point, so I wasn’t short of ways to play games, and having never really felt the need to play games while travelling or commuting I was content to give the console a pass. However, I ended up changing my mind for a couple of reasons. The first was that I really was quite keen to be able to play Mario Kart 7, and secondly my girlfriend at the time wanted to be able to play some 3DS titles together. What really sealed the deal, though, and convinced me that I needed to get a 3DS for myself was Animal Crossing: New Leaf.

Dedicating a new bridge in *Animal Crossing: New Leaf.*

I’d been dimly aware of the Animal Crossing series, but as someone who hadn’t owned a GameCube the first title wasn’t one I got to play for myself. New Leaf sounded fantastic, though, with lots of customisation options – and I do love a game with plenty of customisation! It was this game that finally pushed me into spending my money and buying a Nintendo 3DS.

Animal Crossing: New Leaf is a game I’ve sunk innumerable hours into in the seven years since it released. It was so much fun to play with a friend, with almost limitless single-player gameplay and a ton of fun mini-games to play in multiplayer. It’s also the kind of game that’s very easy to pick up for a few minutes at a time. I would find myself regularly picking up my 3DS during moments of downtime to perform a single small task in my town.

Mario Kart 7 was no disappointment either, and I had lots of fun with that title. Regular readers may remember that I used to work in the games industry, and for a time I worked in a large office where several colleagues also had 3DS consoles and enjoyed Mario Kart 7. We’d often get together during breaks or downtime and use the 3DS’ Download Play feature to race against one another wirelessly. It was great fun!

I loved the customisation options that Mario Kart 7 introduced. There were different kart pieces that could all be selected prior to the race, and that was an innovation for the series. Mario Kart Wii had introduced a broad range of karts, but Mario Kart 7 was the first entry to allow players to choose different tyres, different kart frames, etc. It also introduced a first-person viewpoint (which was seldom used), and the ability for karts to glide.

So those are undoubtedly my top two games from the system. Animal Crossing: New Leaf in particular was a game I was still playing even earlier this year; it has incredible longevity. Let’s look at a few other titles that did well on the system.

Obviously there were the obligatory Pokémon titles: Pokémon X & Y and Pokémon Sun & Moon released on the 3DS and though Pokémon has never really been my thing, I can acknowledge that the games are among the console’s best-sellers. Both titles (or all four, I guess) were considered iterative rather than transformative in the way the Switch title Pokémon Sword & Shield has been, but at the time they were well-received by fans.

Donkey Kong Country Returns was ported from the Wii, and obviously had to undergo a minor graphical downgrade to work on the less-powerful handheld system, but nevertheless was great fun. This was one of Nintendo’s big experiments with porting more modern titles to their handheld platform; older titles like Super Mario 64 had succeeded on the original DS, but there was a question-mark over how well a Wii title would work. Because Donkey Kong Country Returns is a 2D platformer, the 3DS held up remarkably well. Games like this also set the stage in some respects for the porting of “bigger” titles to the Nintendo Switch a few years later, and now it’s not uncommon to hear people say they can’t wait to play a Switch port of their favourite title so they can play it on the go.

The two main Mario games on the 3DS – New Super Mario Bros. 2 and Super Mario 3D Land did well too, and both were enjoyable. I loved Mario’s return to the 2D platforming genre on the Wii, and the 3DS title was more of the same. Super Mario 3D Land was okay, but didn’t really bring a lot to the table. It was criticised by some self-proclaimed “hardcore gamers” for offering players a way to skip tricky levels when they’ve been unable to get through after ten or more attempts. We could talk all day about difficulty options and accessibility – and perhaps we should one day – but suffice to say the argument was particularly stupid, as the inclusion of such options doesn’t change the main part of the game in any way.

Several Nintendo 2DS and 3DS variants in official marketing material.

Aside from games, the Nintendo 3DS leaned heavily into being a connected device that could do things like play YouTube videos and communicate with friends. It could connect to the internet via wi-fi, which was something home consoles at the time either couldn’t do or could only do with additional accessories. It also came out of the box with a basic augmented reality minigame, and thus was my first real experience with AR. Augmented reality never really took off in the way it could have, and in that respect feels gimmicky even today, but it was nevertheless interesting, and it’s something that the console was set up for – if any developers had been interested!

The 3DS had a camera that could not only take digital photos, but was also capable of taking autostereoscopic 3D photos. The 3D functionality in general was not something most folks were interested in, but again this is something that had potential in 2010/11 to take off, and if it had done so we would perhaps be hailing the 3DS as a pioneer! Remember it was around this time that 3D televisions were being pushed as “the next big thing” along with 3D blu-rays. Had the public been more receptive to 3D as a whole, some of these features would have surely been refined and reused.

The Nintendo 3DS came with a basic set of AR minigames.

Nintendo could see the writing on the wall for 3D, though, and released the Nintendo 2DS only a couple of years after the 3DS launched. The 2DS was marketed at kids, and was a less-expensive variant of the console that didn’t have the autostereoscopic 3D functionality. Partly released to overcome the worries of parents who’d heard about the problems that 3D could cause, the 2DS did well in that market. I couldn’t get past the fact that it didn’t fold up, though!

At a time when the Wii U’s failure threatened Nintendo as a company, the 3DS helped them tick over. It remained a profitable system, and even at the height of the Wii U’s problems in 2012-13, the 3DS continued to churn out titles and move units. The importance of its success in that period to Nintendo can’t really be overstated – without the money it was bringing in, Nintendo would have been in a much more shaky position.

The Wii U failed hard, but the Nintendo 3DS kept the company’s head above water.

Before Nintendo tried (and failed) to recapture the “hardcore gamer” market with the Wii U, the 3DS continued the trend of appealing to casual and occasional players in a much broader market. Titles like the Brain Age series, Sudoku Party, Nintendogs + Cats, and even Tomodachi Life appealed to many people who wouldn’t have considered themselves “gamers.” I know of disabled and elderly folks who enjoyed the 3DS for its casual puzzle and brain training titles, and the system was a gateway into the gaming hobby for kids who wanted to play some of the cuter titles. In that sense, the 3DS was an important platform, even if it wasn’t as transformative as smartphones and tablets.

The 3DS gave me one of my favourite games of the last decade in Animal Crossing: New Leaf, and one of the best multiplayer experiences in Mario Kart 7. For those two games alone I can say it was a fun system, and I greatly enjoyed my time with it. As smartphones have become a major gaming platform, it’s hard to see how another dedicated handheld gaming system could replicate the 3DS’ success. Even Nintendo themselves have recognised this, releasing mobile games that feature some of their biggest characters and franchises. With the system being discontinued in 2020, it may be the last ever dedicated handheld gaming system that isn’t either a phone or tablet.

The Nintendo 3DS – and many of the games mentioned above – is the copyright of Nintendo. Promo screenshots courtesy of press kits on IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.