I think at this point, my general discouragement with New Horizons is pretty par for the course and even the few good things couldn’t counterbalance where the game fell flat. Obviously, this isn’t the case for everyone– for a lot of people, this game became a big deal either due to its timely release (though, personally, I still would’ve rather seen it come out with many of the things we got over time at the start) or due to being the type of person who often changes up their island and really uses those extra creativity assets like with design patterns and optical illusions.
For me, I just wanted New Leaf with certain things fixed (like the moving mechanic, one of the things I do think New Horizons did properly) and the best of all the games up to that point, including Happy Home Designer. I wanted the “deluxe” version of Animal Crossing and New Horizons felt like a downgrade for me in many of those things to insert features I never wanted. It’s weird to play and not feel the usual accomplishment I do normally from the game. It’s crazy to think my island is essentially 2 years old now today.
Regardless, I still had things I wanted to get done before my final town tour now that there are no more updates. The biggest is me slowly going through the Group Stretching. I had hoped to do 50 in one go, but it wasn’t possible. I’m at 35? right now so I still have to try and do it for 15 more days. I hope to at least finish before April 10th which will be my next island tour. I wish the game could be set separately from the system as I’d probably keep it as that date for various reasons.
One thing I hope to keep doing though is Happy Home Paradise homes. I’d like to complete my unfinished Happy Home Designer goal of making every character a Vacation Home so fingers crossed.
Before we get to some houses I did today though, I want to talk about things up to this point. As mentioned, I have been working on the group stretching… a lot. I had already cataloged the items from someone, but I suppose it’s still nice to earn them.
I also made sure to pop on for Valentine’s Day and was happy to see Brewster’s Hot Chocolate tradition continue. I wish it was an option all year, or at least tea, as I don’t drink coffee.
While I still haven’t visited too many islands through Dreams, I did make an exception to visit Omnipod Bay (Dream Address: DA-9645-5879-6910). I just find it really neat when an island is made to help spread awareness and I couldn’t help but check it out.
The only other thing I’ve done is just… work on the group stretching, but as mentioned, I finally felt like working on some Happy Home Paradise stuff again. I had felt pretty uncreative lately, but it was nice to have some spark again. Part of me almost wants to play more as well, but ignoring that I still have stuff to do in Pokemon Legends: Arceus, I’m still not at 100% right now.
This one actually came out better than I expected. I’m pretty proud of it.
Simon – Cool Car Lot
Space issues made this not work out as well as I had wanted it to. I’m also kind of annoyed that the Parking lot flooring didn’t actually line up with any of the cars…
Samson – A Treasure-Packed Gym
I feel like what the “theme” was and what was actually available to use were kind of two different things– it seems he wanted to work out while adventuring based off the items included, but it didn’t fully match his description. I really had no clue what to do outside based on what was given, but I had a lot of fun inside. I actually would’ve liked to make it more of a maze, but… space limits.
Coach – Track-Meet Training Grounds
This will look odd offhand, but on the beach, he said how he wanted to push a big ball around and I immediately thought of things like the Fall Guys minigame and so it’s a obstacle course they need to push a ball through the fastest.
After this, I got a surprise– I had finished 50 houses.
Regardless, I still felt like doing a bit more.
Keaton – My Beachside Cafe
I was pretty excited initially, but I think it ended up similar to another design of mine…
Elise – Spectacle Collector’s Home
There’s always some odder requests… If it wasn’t for how glasses get displayed, a walk-in closet-esque thing instead could have been neat.
After finishing Elise’s house, I received another surprise: A new Designer rank which I didn’t realize there were more of… Apparently, there are still two more, though, I wouldn’t mind not getting the last one. The name is pretty silly.
But that wasn’t all, apparently there was something else for me to make. A Gallery for the Cafe that would exist on the second floor.
I also got more options for the work uniform including finally getting my regular white tights.
Cafe Gallery
One thing that really frustrated me with this is that there was no actual theme or recommended items (everything was just usual cafe stuff)– in the end, I did my best to make some weird… artsy garden thing, but I really prefer having some kind of direction, otherwise I generally just feel overwhelmed and uninspired (thus why terraforming ended up doing more harm than good for me). Regardless, i did actually end up being kind of happy with this, though, I forgot to put up any actual paintings…
You may also notice Cookie is the waitress instead of Merengue. This is because today is Merengue’s birthday so she wasn’t there today.
There’s apparently an upstairs you can unlock for the Restaurant too, but you need to do more roommates, so I’ll probably never unlock it, unfortunately. As mentioned above, I like to work fully with a direction– I want a theme and I want to be told what to do. I can make something out of the items given to me, but if you start me with nothing, I’m essentially paralyzed. It’s also why I hate that we’re always asked one floor or two. I’d rather the Villager just pick and let me know, otherwise 90% of the time, the second floor will just be a generic bedroom or something. But for that reason, I’ll never pick to roommate villagers myself. I honestly am not that fond of it (I don’t like that one theme gets kind of kicked to the curb) and unless it forces a certain pair together (which I’d prefer), I just worry about not managing to match things up okay.
I was actually kind of excited for this one, but I don’t feel like I pulled off the interior as much as I wanted to.
Queenie – Contrast Courtyard
There’s honestly more I would have liked to do with this, but the inability to put flooring outside (My patterns are full and honestly, I prefer to not use patterns at all with house designs) combined with only being able to have one Accent Wall kind of compromised the design a bit.
And that was all the houses this time. It was a nearly 5 hour stream ^^; So thank you to everyone who watched. It should be up on Youtube soon.