Highlights

  • Animal Crossing: New Horizons' Happy Home Paradise DLC introduced a wealth of creative possibilities for players, allowing them to design vacation homes and customize the weather, time of day, and villagers' outfits.
  • The DLC added new design options such as partitions, soundscapes, polishing, and pillars, expanding the game's customization features.
  • The next Animal Crossing game should launch with the ability to customize villagers' homes, wardrobes, and environments from the beginning.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons has, in many ways, set the standard for what a modern community sim title should be. The sixth mainline entry in Nintendo's most relaxing franchise, the title allows players to build and shape an island community to their liking; building homes, businesses, and environmental structures that attract more and more inhabitants to the island. While New Horizons modernized much of what fans loved from previous entries, its true potential, and that of the series' future, was revealed with the release of the Happy Home Paradise DLC. However, one feature stood high above the rest, and the next Animal Crossing game shouldn't make fans wait to take full advantage of its creative possibilities.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the series’ most popular entry to date, due in part to the time of its release. Launching during the global COVID-19 pandemic, fans and newcomers alike flocked to the title and its online community building. In November 2021, the Happy Home Paradise DLC launched, taking fans and their villagers on vacation. Most significantly, fans were given the task of designing vacation homes for their villagers, a highly rewarding and much-requested feature.

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Happy Home Paradise's Vacation Homes Offered a Wealth of Creative Possibilities

The premise behind Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ Happy Home Paradise DLC is pretty simple. Players are presented with an opportunity to work as a vacation planner for an off-island company called Paradise Planning. There they are tasked with designing dream vacation homes, in the form of continental islands, for some of their favorite villagers. To do so, players first consult with each villager, before being given full rein over designing their “home” from the inside out.

Happy Home Paradise delivered much-requested customization options, further cementing New Horizons' status as the most expansive title in the series. Specifically, the DLC added a wealth of new design options, including ​​partitions, soundscapes, polishing, pillars, and more. Beyond the vacation homes themselves, players can also change the weather, time of day, and villagers' outfits. Happy Home Paradise truly took players’ creative possibilities to the next level, leaving fans to wonder which features would be made standard in the series’ future releases.

The Next Animal Crossing Should Launch with Villager Home Customization

The next Animal Crossing game shouldn't make fans wait for another special occasion, just to regain access to New Horizons' full breadth of features. While the base game did a great job modernizing the series' formula, its DLC took things to a whole new level, allowing the game to essentially transcend the blueprint of those that came before.

After three years so far with Happy Home Paradise, asking fans to give up their ability to customize villagers' homes, wardrobes, and environments would be a major setback. While it is unlikely that the next Animal Crossing title will launch with vacation homes themselves, the feature could easily be implemented in players' initial tasks of building a community, no matter what form those communities take.

It is not yet known when the next Animal Crossing game could be announced, or exactly what the title may entail. However, that has not stopped fans from speculating about how it may build on Animal Crossing: New Horizons' best ideas. Some fans believe the next title may even be a direct sequel to New Horizons. Whether it is a sequel or not, the next Animal Crossing title would do well to implement Happy Home Paradise's best features on day one, as it grants fans greater creative control over their community, and allows them to partner and grow with their villagers in a much deeper and more expressive way.