So, with E3 only a few weeks away, Animal Crossing is a game a lot of people are hoping for. It’s been over 4 and a half years since it came out in Japan (and will be over 4 years since those outside of Japan received the game once E3 hits). That’s definitely a good amount of time for a new AC. For reference, the first AC came out in the US in 2002 (In Japan, it came out in 2001 with the E+ version coming out two years later in 2003). Wild World then came out 2-3 years later in 2005 and is one of the closer relates dates we’ve had between the US and Japan with just about 2 weeks inbetween releases. City Folk, with the closest release dates (in fact, the US got it 4 days earlier than Japan) came out in 2008–3 more years. We then had New Leaf 4-5 years later. I’m still not sure why we had over a half a year delay between New Leaf coming out in Japan in November 2012 and coming out everywhere else June 2013, but I hope that whatever new Animal Crossing is coming, the release dates will be very close if not a Worldwide release.
There’s been so many rumors right now about the chance of an upcoming Animal Crossing, including a possible leak from a magazine (though, I won’t personally take it as proof until a more trustworthy source happens), but one thing that really stands out to me is the Mobile App constantly being pushed back. We were told it would connect with the actual Animal Crossing game, but if it keeps getting pushed back, maybe it’s because they want it to come out with the next game? Which makes me feel like a Fall release or an early Spring release next year for Animal Crossing for the Switch is quite likely. That said, we did receive a fairly awesome update to New Leaf just last year which makes me think there could still be another year off (despite 4-5 years already being around the same amount of time it was between the last main AC games). Of course, Happy Home Designer has also been said to not be getting any new content with the final Happy Home Challenge that happened this month and there is still only so much that extra content in New Leaf can really do.
Regardless of when it could happen, I do feel we have a good chance of hearing SOMETHING this E3 even if it may be another year or two off.
Moving onto the point of this article though, I wanted to talk about things I hope to see in the next Animal Crossing the most at this point. This is in no particular order, but just things I hope to see return and/or change up from New Leaf and other AC games.
1. No item limits in the houses and outside. While they’ve thankfully increased it since City Folk’s and Wild World’s terrible 20 item limit to 48, that still can end up being rather small if you use a lot of wall items or counters/dressers/desks. Similarly, you were restricted to about 30 Public Works (and bridges, which are quite helpful, counted against this) and with so many Public Works and places to place them, it wasn’t fun. As long as there is space, I feel like people should be able to place them. Similarly, no limits on patterns (or at least maybe make it memory based instead)–way too often do I have to make more characters specifically for patterns or have to give up on clothes and things due to trying to make my town nice. It’d be nice to just have everything I want if I have enough memory on my system.
2. Being able to decide where a villager’s house can go. One of the nice things with New Leaf is you got to place your own home with Tom Nook. It’d be nice, especially if you’re still the mayor, that when someone new comes in, he’ll be outside waiting for you and ask if you’d like to pick a place for whatever new villager is moving in to put their house. If you say yes, you get into a similar mode when placing your own house, but if you say no, Tom Nook places it himself (so randomly).
3. Being able to vary on villager numbers. With how New Leaf works, you’ll get villagers pretty often up until you have 8. After that, you will get one soon for 9 and then it will vary with you only being able to get a 10th from outside means (Campsite, Friends, StreetPass, etc.). When you have 9 or 10, there is a chance someone will move while you will never have less than 8. I think it’d be neat if people could choose to maybe cap it at 3 villagers (the lowest it’s been possible to have) or up to 15 (which was how many the original had). Personally, I’d probably cap my own town at 12 if I had this choice.
4. Being able to prevent a villager from leaving. And I don’t mean just the “I want to move” prompts you can convince to stay–I mean literally being able to set something so the villager will never even ask to leave. They will always be there. It can be triggered on and off if you change your mind, but this would be nice for those who may want to just be able to play without having to worry about their favorite villagers leaving because they haven’t played for a while.
5. Being able to have multiple ordinances set at a time, but prices rising for each extra one (So it’s 20K for one, 40K for the second, etc.).
6. Be able to experience other culture events in your own town despite what region you may be playing. It’s just a good chance to experience other cultures. And in general, I want to see so many older events come back too. I also want to see items that have become Region Exclusives to find a way back.
7. Be able to transfer things from your New Leaf file. Whether it be your entire town, just patterns, just your character (Similar to Wild World’s transfer to City Folk), or some combination of the above, I think it’d be a nice feature. I’d like at least patterns because wow would I hate to remake all of them, but heck, I’d be happy transferring my town and being able to make it bigger and better too.
8. Similarly, be able to edit patterns even if you didn’t make them. Mostly because this even effects your other villagers in your town from ones you made yourself. Suddenly they can’t edit them and I’ve had some patterns slightly off for ages, but forgot to save on my main character and just… am not up to remaking it for that one purpose. It’s annoying and frustrating. One day maybe I’ll get around to it, but it just seems unnecessary and there wasn’t really a need to make QR codes Edit locked (or heck, at least make it a choice that people can pick if they want it to be or not).
9. Bring back the Dream Suite. It’s so much fun seeing people’s towns.
10. A bigger map. New Leaf has one of the smallest maps thus far so…
11. Being able to place things outside besides just Public Works. And being able to place both these and Public Works on the beach.
12. Speaking of Public Works, more ways to unlock them. Villagers can prompt you for so many things and even lessening the chances made it still pretty un-fun to do. Thus, two options (though, even both could work): Being able to pay bells to unlock a random (or maybe specific) Public Work and/or If you see a Public Work in a Friend’s town or through Dream Suite, being able to request it directly (which may require bells as well possibly).
13. I want a Gyroid in front of my house again. I miss it.
14. Ceiling items. I loved them so much in Happy Home Designer and really want to see them as part of a main game.
15. Being able to have the option to use HHD decorating both for interiors and exteriors. You don’t have to decorate that way (there’s still something fun about doing the classic way), but it comes in handy a lot. Heck, it’d be cool if we could do this to move everything around as needed–maybe placed a house slightly off? Just move it over slightly.
17. Be able to have Patterns under public works.
18. Be able to place things inbetween squares. It was really nice to properly center things and have stuff slightly off and just kind of… slide between them.
19. Being able to choose door designs for your house’s interior.
20. I want Villagers to be able to sing one night at Club K.K. The Concert Hall in HHD is still a beautiful thing.
I’m going to cut it off there because this already has gotten pretty long, but I just hope the people working on the game will look over some of the best things from each and just make things more fun. I will give one last bonus one though for those who made it this far:
Get rid of the Jellyfish being annoying in the Ocean and let us catch them again. I loved having a “pet” in my house for one, but they also are just… frustrating and don’t really have a set trigger like the bees do.