Ive seen hints of a new animal crossing game on the horrizons (might be fake, but that's ok) and before the official nintendo game comes thundering down the road i need to get out what I daydreamed so I can claim to have the dodgeball of prophesy.
A lot of animal crossing games have been stuck in the space of needing to be slightly bigger than the previous game. But that means they get trapped with a lot of the trappings the past games had. Animal crossing villages tend to need a lot of waterways for all the critter catching the game entails, but this vastly limits what kinda of environments they can portay, all the ocean fish and deep sea fish that new horrizons added is yet another problem. New Horrizons caught flack on release for not having the observatorium or Cafe, stuff that was a ubiquitous part of the late game of previous games (it was replaced with the huge amount of decoration you could do to the island, ut that's not everyone's cup of tea).
I think animal crossing is going g to have to draw a line in the sand and do its version of dexit. Big chunks are going to have to go missing and may not return and be replaced with something entierly new.
If I was put in charge of the Animal Crossing series to design and lead the next game, I'd focus on what the players were already doing: business.
I'd set the next game in a cute outer suburb of Tokyo looking place and the house the player would move into would actually be a shop they can run and have the local villagers visit. They can set prices or force villagers to trade for items instead. And in the beginning they don't have much space for personal decorating, so it'd be a mishmash of space for the shop and themselves before they can afford a back room and top floor to expand into.
#Animal-Crossing #design-ideas #jankademia #if-this-sounds-fun-its-cause-I'm-good-at-game-design #if-it-doesn't-that's-on-you