Highlights

  • Customization Kits in Animal Crossing: New Horizons allowed for more creativity in island decor.
  • Future games could expand on custom patterns for more furniture customization options.
  • Balancing full furniture customization with custom patterns may be challenging for Nintendo.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons really upped the ante in the ways it allowed players to customize their islands, giving them more freedom to be creative with their islands than any entry in the series' past. Part of what made Animal Crossing: New Horizons so great for flexing player creativity was the introduction of Customization Kits, which allowed players to customize certain furniture pieces and items to fit whatever aesthetic the player desired. However, there were some limitations to these kits that the next Animal Crossing game could build upon to unlock their full potential.

While Animal Crossing: New Horizons faced some controversy for toning down villager personalities in favor of its customization overhaul, it left the series with a great basis to build on in a sequel. There hasn't been any confirmation of a follow-up to the game yet, but the massive success of Animal Crossing: New Horizons makes it a likely contender for a new entry on the Switch's successor. This next game could build upon the customization afforded by Customization Kits in Animal Crossing: New Horizons by allowing players to display custom patterns on far more types of furniture than what the previous game allowed.

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The Next Animal Crossing Should Unleash the Floodgates for Custom Patterns on Furniture Via Customization Kits

The ability to create and utilize custom patterns has been a part of the Animal Crossing series since the original GameCube title but has been dramatically improved with each new entry. Originally, players could only create custom patterns to use as clothing, wallpaper, flooring, or umbrellas, but later games included the ability to place them on the ground outside the player's home or their home's door. Animal Crossing: New Horizons does allow players to use custom patterns for some pieces of furniture, like the tablecloth on a table, but there is potential for the next game to go even bigger with this functionality.

With Customization Kits already limiting how much players can change a piece of furniture, it's not surprising that their functionality with custom patterns is limited. However, a future Animal Crossing game should unlock the potential creativity this tool holds and allow players to use a custom design on any part of a piece of furniture to truly let them match whatever look they're going for with their living space. Players would essentially be able to design their own textures to apply to the piece of furniture they're customizing, giving them total control over the way it looks.

Allowing Players to Put Custom Patterns on Furniture Might Be a Tough Balancing Act

This degree of customization would give players a blank canvas to work with when customizing their furniture, which could end up being a double-edged sword that Nintendo would have to balance carefully. Custom patterns can be shared online via the Custom Designs Portal found at the Able Sisters' shop in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, allowing players to download the best designs the community has to offer. This practice could make fully customizable furniture designs a game-changing mechanic, but it might be tricky to make all furniture compatible with custom designs.

The Animal Crossing community is full of creative players designing unique islands based on various themes that could greatly benefit from the ability to apply custom textures to an entire piece of furniture. However, this mechanic might run into the issue many 3D designers deal with when trying to apply a texture to a mesh in the way it's supposed to. Uniform pieces of customizable items like clothing and umbrellas are fairly simple to apply new textures to since they are relatively symmetrical, but other pieces of furniture are much more complicated and could be the reason why Nintendo limited the mechanic in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.