Highlights
- Biomes could add a new level of intrigue and excitement to Animal Crossing, making exploration more interesting and organic for players.
- By incorporating unique biomes, Animal Crossing could offer a wider variety of crafting components, collectibles, and buffs, giving players more control over their gameplay experience.
- The addition of biomes could enhance multiplayer gameplay in Animal Crossing, encouraging players to trade with each other to access the benefits and drawbacks of different environments.
At first glance, Minecraft and Animal Crossing: New Horizons appear to have a lot of similarities. Both games give their players the tools to express themselves creatively, and there have been several instances of both Minecraft and Animal Crossing players recreating Star Wars planets and real-world locations, or coming up with new and exciting creations altogether. While both games can offer relaxing, creatively stimulating, casual gaming experiences, there is one area where the next Animal Crossing game ought to follow Minecraft's lead.
Minecraft and Animal Crossing: New Horizons both use procedural generation to keep each game world unique. However, Minecraft places a much higher emphasis on exploration, and a big part of what makes that exploration exciting and rewarding are the various distinct biomes in the game. Since crafting key items and terraforming have been much-welcome additions to Animal Crossing: New Horizons, it seems natural that the series should borrow another staple from Minecraft. The next Animal Crossing game doesn't need to change gears completely, but adopting a feature similar to Minecraft's biomes could go a long way toward keeping the franchise fresh and interesting for both new and returning players.
Adding Biomes Could Make Exploration Worthwhile In Animal Crossing
Compared to most AAA, big-budget video games, the Animal Crossing franchise is rather small in scope. New Horizons offers a wealth of options when it comes to collecting decorations, fishing, catching bugs, and building relationships with townsfolk, but the landscape of the island itself is somewhat constrained, even if players can modify it through the terraforming mechanic. With the addition of biomes, Animal Crossing can become more interesting in terms of both aesthetics and gameplay.
There are a number of rare items in Animal Crossing, but very few serve a practical purpose, nor are they found through organic exploration. With biomes, the next Animal Crossing game could encourage players to explore its map, offering up unique crafting components, collectibles, or even buffs of some kind, all dependent on where the player is looking. This could be a welcome alternative to the long-running in-game Nook store, which offers a rotating selection of items available to purchase. Although the store offers its own form of excitement, some players might view it as a bit stale or boring, as they have less control over not only what items they can get, but how they can get them.
Biomes Would Add A New Level Of Intrigue To Animal Crossing's Multiplayer
Animal Crossing players can trade villagers, visit their friends, and engage in some friendly, unregulated commerce thanks to the series' multiplayer format. As such, multiplayer plays a key role in the Animal Crossing experience. That said, the addition of unique biomes could make this feature even more exciting and worth engaging with.
As it stands, each Animal Crossing: New Horizons island is unique. This is thanks to a combination of procedural generation of resources, randomization of villagers, and player customization. Add biomes into the mix, and things suddenly become even more unpredictable between islands. For instance, one player may have a rainforest biome on their island, giving them produce that is different from other Animal Crossing players, but also offering unique bugs, wood from trees, and other resources, all of which could make trading more interesting and multifaceted. There could be benefits and drawbacks to each biome, encouraging players to trade with each other as much as possible to get the most out of their respective environments.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is an expertly crafted game that has been fine-tuned to allow players the chance to be creative, engage with the environment, and have low-stakes fun with their friends through multiplayer. By implementing unique biomes in a manner similar to Minecraft, the next Animal Crossing could shake things up while maintaining its signature charm and identity.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is available for Nintendo Switch.
