Animal Crossing is back, and this time, it’s coming to Nintendo Switch. Nintendo unveiled the news during mid-September’s postponed Nintendo Direct, and fans immediately went wild.
Since we know next to nothing about the next Animal Crossing, our imaginations are running wild. We have a list of features that we’d love to see Nintendo implement. From Animal Crossing: New Leaf’s best additions all the way to all-new junk for the 2019 entry.
If we could create our dream Animal Crossing title, here’s what it would look like.
Better online features
The Nintendo Switch is one of Nintendo’s most successful consoles for plenty of reasons, one being its online and local multiplayer functions are perfect for a hybrid gaming device. For the best possible Animal Crossing experience, Nintendo should experiment with new multiplayer features that take advantage of the Switch.
It would be great to have a shared Animal Crossing town that you can invite your friends to live in. Just imagine running a collaborative online village populated by your roommates or shared with your girlfriend. New Leaf lets multiple players visit a single person’s town together, too, and it would be great if Nintendo brought back the feature for both local and online play.
Become a bigger and better mayor
New Leaf wasn’t just a solid Animal Crossing title, it also introduced several new features that went on to inspire the rest of the series, like mayoral duties. Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp embraced that by letting players manage a campsite. For Animal Crossing for Switch, we’d love to see a bigger, better, and more powerful range of ordinances as mayor.
Imagine being able to lay out your town’s commercial district or create your very own custom holiday events. Or maybe players could further change up their town’s aesthetic for Victorian, mid-20th century, and Medieval themes. Give us the power we crave, Nintendo. Give us municipal authority.
More monthly events
Animal Crossing’s holiday celebrations are iconic, but Nintendo’s mobile freemium title Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp kicked things up a notch thanks to its regular holiday events and limited time item deals. While some events would coincide with major dates like Valentine’s Day or Halloween, there were also celebrations for things like the Winter Olympics or a crossover event for Splatoon 2 and Super Mario.
We’d love to see regular events going on throughout the year, such as the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics or Chinese New Year.
Regular DLC updates and expansions
Nintendo hasn’t shied away from regularly updating Switch games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey. Animal Crossing presents the perfect opportunity for ongoing content. Imagine regularly receiving new house upgrades, clothing, villagers, or stores through your online connection. The Nintendo Switch’s online servers provide so many opportunities to turn Animal Crossing into a game that grows over time with new content. We’d love to see Nintendo regularly pump new updates into the world each month, just like the company’s weapon and map updates with Splatoon 2.
Bring in our favorite villagers, both new and old
If Animal Crossing is coming to Switch, why not go all out with as many villagers as possible? Thanks to the Switch’s added storage capacity and processing, we’d love to see the biggest collection of villagers available to date in Animal Crossing.
We aren’t just talking about the biggest names either, like K.K. Slider or Mabel. Those animals are expected. It’d be great to see some of the rarer Animal Crossing characters come to the game too.
For example, imagine if Ketchup the duck came back? She was in Pocket Camp and introduced late into New Leaf during the Welcome Amiibo update. Having her from the start in Animal Crossing for Switch would be great.
We’d love to see Bonbon too. She’s such a cute and quirky bunny, a relatively new addition that only appeared in New Leaf and Happy Home Designer. It would be great to see her make a third return for Animal Crossing’s Switch release.
And then there’s Flossie, a peppy little mouse who hasn’t been seen since the original Animal Crossing. She was an islander in those games, and it’d be great to see her come back.
Oh, and who could forget Felicity the cat? She’s so happy and pretty that she’s sure to brighten up any villager’s day.
And you can date the villagers
Animal Crossing has avoided any sort of romance system for the longest time. Villagers would cozy up to the player, send them photos, and ask them to go out for a night on the town together, but the player was always walking around their village as a bachelor or bachelorette. Forever alone.
Nintendo, it’s time to change things up a bit. We’d love to see Animal Crossing implement a dating system that’s similar to Stardew Valley’s, where players can earn their girlfriends’ and boyfriends’ favor with gifts or hanging out. Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp already has a friendship level system. Give the people what they want, Nintendo: Cute dates with animal people.
Isabelle
It would be shocking if Isabelle was scrapped given her increasing popularity, but just in case… Please, Nintendo. Bring her back. She is the best girl.
