Animal Crossing has been bringing me joy since the Gamecube days and New Horizons continues to bring that joy every time I play the game. Designing my own island paradise, making friends with the villagers, visiting friends on their island, and inviting them to mine makes for so much fun. There's also fun events like the fireworks festival and Halloween which was even better celebrating with friends. I was excited about the new updates because it sounded like it was going to make my happy place even better and I was right.
The free updates included being able to cook, growing veggies, wheat, and sugarcane for cooking, helping Harv build a community on his island, collecting gyroids, having a cup of coffee with Brewster the pigeon, group stretches with the villagers, and getting to sail to interesting islands with Kapp'n while listening to him sing sea shanties. I love all of it! Growing lovely gardens and cooking is one of my favorite things on my island. It's always a thrill to find new cooking recipes, gathering the ingredients, and trying them out. The group stretching is a fun thing to do with all the villagers which can be done with the buttons or motion controls. I prefer the buttons because it makes things easier for me. It's only 200 bells for a cup of coffee with Brewster and sometimes he gives you a gift showing his appreciation.
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| Gardening, cooking, stretching, and coffee with Brewster. |
I also loved the fact that there are recipes based on the types of fruit trees I have so I was able to make all kinds of smoothies and tarts. Harv's community isn't challenging to build, you just need to donate the bells needed to help his friends set up there. I was delighted to see fellow plant lover Leif there and good old Tortimer as well as Sahara with her mysterious wares. Don't worry, Sahara and Leif still make the trips to your island to sell all their wonderful items. Island tours with Kapp'n are fun because of his sea shanties and you never know what kind of island you will get to explore. Some are just regular islands with fruit trees, but some are magical like the island I went to that had star shards all over the beaches and meteor showers everywhere. You can also dig up gyroid fragments on these islands to take home with you and grow your own gyroid. Remember, bury the gyroid fragment and water it. The next day when you dig it up, you'll have your very own gyroid! My gyroid collection is steadily growing and maybe someday I'll collect them all.
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| Doing all the things! |
Happy Home Paradise is the only paid DLC for the game that lets you visit a resort island to work at Paradise Planning where you can help villagers build the vacation home of their dreams. This is a spin off of Happy Home Designer on the 3DS a game that I loved so having it in New Horizons is fantastic. It's very easy to get started with a villager showing you the pieces they want used in their new home. Then it's up to you to pick a location for them on a map with a handful of islands. Each island has its own season and depending on what you have in mind for ideas and what they request, you can pick anywhere. You can even pick the same location for a different client because the map doesn't seem to get full which means lots of possibilities.
Designing and decorating are pretty straightforward, but there is a lot of freedom with the creativity and items you choose as you decorate the villager's house, yard, and interior. I had a lot of fun with the themes like a house of chocolates for Carmen and a house full of books for Eloise. Your inventory will also show what items they like or love which also helps when choosing items.
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| Carmen's sweet retreat yard and house and Eloise's library. |
After a certain amount of houses decorated, you unlock roommates which lets you design for two villagers living together. This can be a good time exploring thinking outside of the box as you design for them using things like partition walls to make one room into two rooms and really exploring ideas to create the best vacation home for them matching their theme.
At first you won't have access to all the furniture because Happy Home Paradise is a slow burn. As you get more clients, this will unlock more items like pillars and being able to add a second floor to the vacation homes which gives even more creative freedom. One of the best things that gets unlocked is being able to resize a room which means you can make the room as small as 4x4 or as big as 10x10 which allows you to have a wider variety of choices in how you want your design to look. This really came in handy for me when I designed a rockin' amphitheater for the villager Katt because it gave me a lot of space to work with to make something I really liked.
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| A rock n' roll palace for Katt |
I loved the fact that I could also invite my villagers to the resort and build a vacation home for them too. It does take a little bribing by offering them a box of souvenir chocolates which you can buy from the Paradise Planning office. Designing vacation homes for my villagers was a great time ranging from making Julia a room to play her guitar to making the adorable Lolly a place to practice public speaking. It added an extra layer of charm to the game itself.
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| Lolly is ready to practice her speeches. |
You do get paid for all your work in Happy Home Paradise. The boss we all deserve, Lottie will pay you in a currency called Poki. This can only be spent on items being sold at the resort like items for decorating from Wardell or buying things from a cafe or shop that you can also design. As you unlock more things, you unlock buildings on the resort that you can design like a hospital, school, and restaurant. Eventually you do get an ABD machine in the Paradise Planning office which does allow you to convert your Poki into Bells. Even with a soft ending for the game, you can still keep designing to your heart's content which I absolutely love. It feels like another great community with Lottie and everyone on the resort as you chat with everyone, help design homes, and even getting to enjoy some down time with dance parties on the beach. All of these wonderful activities makes New Horizons feel like a whole new game with how much has been added and I love all of it. The free updates and Happy Home Designer have truly made Animal Crossing New Horizons an even happier place, one that I am overjoyed to visit every time I play the game.
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| Oh yeah, dance party on the beach! |
*Animal Crossing New Horizons is available to play on the Nintendo Switch
