**Original post first appeared over at TheBenAlder**
Take a quick look through my blog and you will find an abundance of personal ideas and suggestions regarding what I feel could augment and enhance Animal Crossing in favour of extending its replayability and the rewarding nature of its RPG structure. Now that an official announcement has been made about the game regarding its impending 2019 release, I wanted to recap and summarise my deepest desires for the next game in one final article, until the next game comes and goes of course!
I’m a big fan of the series, introduced back in the Game Cube days where I enjoyed roughly 3 months of gameplay until sadly my memory card became corrupt and all my hard work lost. The DS version was out, but I found myself having a hard time getting to grips with it as the overall feel was compromised to me. In the end the Wii version was soon announced, and so I re-invested once more and truly found my love for the series. I played the Wii version for at least 1000 hours. Though similar to the DS version, its differences to my short lived Game Cube experience made me feel like I was playing it for the first time. I easilly played the game at least semi-regularly over three years. The fact that I had friends to play alongside made it a definitive experience for me that I look back on very fondly.
Most recently we had the 3DS version, though when I say recently it’s hard to imagine it was SEVEN years ago, wow. My now-wife and I eagerly awaited this game to arrive on release, one warm summers day. We quickly fell in love with the new deeper customisation and fresh looks. Through our joint experiences together we played late into the night every night for weeks. Solidifying it as another deep, personal experience in one of my favourite game universes. All this together has made me very passionate and keen to see what the next entry will bring. I feel my ideas are well balanced, applying what can be realistically achieved to my thoughts and feelings about what could make the next big outing great. SO WITHOUT FURTHER ADO (and thank you for reading thus far) let me grind all my ideas and wishes down to a few key points below, let’s go!
Full 3D Visuals
I would love to be able to turn the camera in all directions. To see over the ocean and to in turn be able to place assets in all parts of the game world from more angles. This however, is a biggie. Any short video on the technical setup for Animal Crossing games will reveal that the game is rendered on what is essentially a cylinder. The world rolls back and forth as you move, which also means that the backs of many assets aren’t rendered. To achieve a full 3D game world would take enormous effort from the development team. But I think this dramatic change would really set a new benchmark for the series, and the Nintendo Switch certainly has enough power to achieve it
A Bigger World
The intimate setting of your own personal slice of paradise is a wonderful one. But I feel there is plenty of room to expand the world outside of this so that when you do start to get a little stir crazy at home, there is plenty to explore and discover to further enhance the game and its replayability. First and foremost is the High Street. It is definetly a fun place to visit in New Leaf. I think expanding it with more shops and including the café amd Re-Tail, frees up valuable space in your town and increases the value of the area as a place that becomes essential to visit.
Next are two areas of my own design; the forest and the caves. These areas appear in your town in the cliffside. When you visit the forest, the area is laid out on a 3×3 grid the size of the Game Cubes acres. You can pick berries (for sale, not to eat) and find certain bugs in this area. The cave is similar, but full of rocks and spots to dig. Both are randomised every 24 hours, so regular visits are recommended.
Next, another area of my design is Underwater. Once you purchase a Scuba Mask and Wet Suit, you can dive underwater and explore for a short time (depending on the type of scuba mask). Here there are deep sea creatures, treasure chests and other items. Again, this area randomises each day promoting regular visits.
Finally in this section, Hotspots. Similar to how the mobile app has its locations laid out. These areas would be based on certain environments and would contain different bugs, fish and more. They could also contain other players so that the Market Box feature could carry over. My ideas for areas include; a riverside, a beach, a stoney hill and a snowy field.
Town Builder
To further my wishes for a deeper personalised experience, having a town builder where you lay every little detail out would be a dream come true. By all means provide random templates for players to choose from again. But drawing the town into my ideal shape and laying out the buildings and features has been something I have hoped for, for a long time. To that end, also choosing where new townsfolk will move into would be amazing too. I had another idea of combining the Town Hall with the station so that your town is truly an uninterupted blank canvas for you to paint your dream town onto.
That’s my key three suggestions. Atop these are a plethora of other ideas. I will sign off by writing those that spring to mind below, and thank you for reading!
Fast travel, bigger island area, the social meters from Pocket Camp, character creator, simpler crafting from Pocket Camp, Rocks, Gems & Minerals, their own section in the encyclopedia and museum, a meadow area for planting flowers and trees, the park to return but expand as the high street improves, little islands that appear in your waters randomly, the island to be an island resort where villagers and other humans visit, letters to return, stickers as suggested by TheBitBlock, train to return as a magnet train, shining creatures that are more valuable, a special star in the encyclopedia to show you caught them, a minimap, more designs with space to expand, a toolbelt for tools in one inventory tile…