Animal Crossing provides a rather unique and uplifting experience for many players, excelling with plenty of customization options to where it usually doesn't have to put out more than one entry per console to satisfy fans. The series usually sees fans moving into a new town, or uninhabited island in the case of the Nintendo Switch title, and has them slowly earn their way towards housing upgrades and more. As players work towards their dream home, they also meet their animal neighbors and get to know them while gathering furniture and helping make the village they call home their dream place to live during their playthrough.
However, as the series has progressed, Animal Crossing has been less about players making it on their own in a new town and more about the interior design aspects that come with gathering the game's many furniture pieces, and recent additions to the series only further emphasize this. The latest DLC for Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Happy Home Paradise, adds new features that make houses in the series even more fun to customize. If the franchise continues heading down this trend, there are all kinds of different interior design ideas future games can dabble in for even more customization.
Lofts in Animal Crossing
In terms of potential new ways for Animal Crossing to expand how players can customize their homes, one option players may think about might be along the lines of a balcony. Balconies being added to houses seems rather unlikely, though, due to how the series uses small-scale houses with a "bigger on the inside" design scheme to avoid taking too much space in fans' towns. However, a similar feature that Nintendo could implement could be the use of lofts inside players' houses.
Lofts could be a great way to change up the layout of houses in Animal Crossing while also giving fans some extra space. There could be different sizes available depending on the type of room they're added to, such as a big loft to make a somewhat second floor to the main room, or a smaller loft attached to only one wall of smaller side-rooms. Making space for a loft against the wall could also lead to enough room for ceiling furniture such as chandeliers, or even making classic Animal Crossing furniture such as UFOs or the Moon finally airborne as centerpieces to players' designs.
Animal Crossing With Secret Room Upgrades
There's a fair deal of media that use secret rooms to their benefit, such as rooms hidden behind bookcases, trap doors, secret passageways, and the like. Many houses made in recent years feature small hidden spaces, such as small reading nooks or an entire area closed off apart from a secret that only the owner knows about. While it may be a stretch, there are plenty of Animal Crossing fans who may enjoy having the chance to turn a room in their house into a little secret entrance.
Animal Crossing could potentially capitalize on this feature either through Tom Nook, or perhaps Redd or a third retailer if it is meant to serve as an optional extra room upgrade. It could be completely customizable with different sizes to suit different purposes, and it could add to a potential "post-game" with future Animal Crossing games where the secret room upgrades can only be obtained once players have had K.K Slider visit their town once - the usual completion goal for most AC players.
Animal Crossing Tiny Houses
When it comes to the space someone uses in their day-to-day lives, a recent trend that has come up has been the tiny house fad. These homes usually focus on keeping things simple and minimalist, so one person can live while taking up the least amount of space possible. Many people need to limit things to the essentials in their lives to live in these spaces, and Animal Crossing could use this to amazing effect as an alternative to those who don't want the biggest house they can have during their playthrough.
Some players are content with maybe only two or more rooms to their Animal Crossing home, with some being sad when they're forced to move out of the small tent players start within New Horizons. However, while the game makes it easy for fans to stay this way if they wish, they miss out on things like storage upgrades and such if they do. Using a tiny home as an optional choice for these players could be a great option for those who desire a smaller space. As seen with one fan's tiny home attempt in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the current space available in the games makes a tiny home hard to replicate, leading to potential in the idea.
Adding these features to the next game would make the homes players create even more customizable, giving them a chance to really make it their own in ways that the series had never tackled before. After how Animal Crossing: New Horizons featured an entire island for fans to make their own, many players are probably wondering just where the Animal Crossing series will go next, and including these trends could either help with the next theme or simply make the formula in the games more robust in the long run with options that may excite players for years.
With how each title of Animal Crossing debuts more and more features that give even further customization features to players, it's become obvious that the series aims to focus on interior design over the old themes that the previous titles focused on, and series loyalists have long adjusted to this new norm. With Happy Home Paradise adding exciting new features like partition walls, it makes sense that fans would question just what features the next game will bring with it. Speculating over what fans could do with their next town and house might be the very thoughts that keep fans interested as they wait out the next title as they're having fun with the incredibly replayable details found in Animal Crossing: New Horizon's latest update.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is available now for Nintendo Switch.
