Animal Crossing: New Horizons‘ major January update arrives as a welcome relief for players keen for fresh experiences on their virtual island homes. With brand new features, as well as some returning ones, it’s a lovely excuse to head back for fish and bug catching, decorating, hanging out with pals, and relaxing.
But it does inspire questions about what’s next for Animal Crossing. Will New Horizons continue to get new updates, well into the future? Or – more likely – is Nintendo currently developing a new game in the franchise?
With the added horsepower of the Nintendo Switch 2, there’s ample opportunity for a new, more ambitious Animal Crossing game – perhaps one that features bigger worlds, or more villagers, different gameplay elements, or fresh quirks.
Each franchise iteration has followed a familiar formula, while being entirely different. The Wii-exclusive City Folk, otherwise known as Let’s Go to the City, introduced a cityscape to explore. The 3DS game New Leaf offered the opportunity to redecorate your town as mayor.
New Horizons had its own set of innovations, too. It introduce elements of gardening and cooking, opportunities to decorate the rooms of villagers, island terraforming, and island travel.
There are many of these elements that should be carried over into the next Animal Crossing game, as well as plenty of new features we’d love to see. As Animal Crossing fever hits once more, let’s take a look at what’s next. Here’s everything we want to see in the next mainline Animal Crossing game.
Our wishlist for the next Animal Crossing – quick links
Farming and cooking, expanded
Animal Crossing: New Horizons added the ability to plant and harvest various crops, then ‘craft’ them into food, in its 2.0 update. We’d love to see this feature expanded in a future Animal Crossing game, with a more rewarding farming and cooking system implemented.
As it stands, New Horizons has a fairly bare bones approach to growing crops and cooking. You lay down seeds, eventually they grow, and then you can mix ingredients into a meal, which gives you energy points.
The next Animal Crossing game should add more meaning (as well as more variety) to this process, providing more reasons to farm and cook, in a way that feels useful for island living.
Celeste’s constellations return
Another major feature we’d love to see return is Celeste’s constellation creation. In Wild Word and City Folk, you could head to the upper level of your town’s museum to create constellations amongst the stars. While these were purely decorative, they added a nice, cosy touch to your island. We’d love to see more touches like this in the next Animal Crossing – small, sweet features that add personal vibes to your virtual home.
Villagers allowed to show their personality more
One of the missed opportunities of New Horizons was the chance to have villagers show more personality. Where, in the past, villagers would be brash, loud, and confident, some of this was shaved off in New Horizons to allow for kinder, more wholesome interactions.
In the next Animal Crossing, we’d love to see villagers given new opportunities to be more interesting – whether through sharper, more diverse dialogue, or by allowing them to be a bigger part of events and island activities. Have them host their own special celebrations, like birthday parties! We’d love to see them living their own inner lives, in a way that makes them more compelling.
Bring back Blanca’s face-drawing mini-game
Blanca the Cat is a special villager who has a blank face. In the original Animal Crossing, she would occasionally appear in your village with a special request: redraw her face using in-game drawing tools. Wherever she went next, she would appear with that face.
While only a small part of the game, Blanca’s original role was light-hearted and fun, and we’d love to see her return in the next Animal Crossing, ready with a pen for players to draw.
Consider: stricter energy requirements for added friction
Animal Crossing: New Horizons added in an energy metre to limit how much players could do at once. We’d love to see this concept taken further, particularly if cooking and farming are expanded in the next game. Looking to Stardew Valley for example, it would be interesting to see the next Animal Crossing integrate a more active energy bar that can limit gameplay.
Some friction is good, and needing to figure out how best to use energy would make for a light-touch challenge to keep the game interesting, and layered. While the system would need ample thought to ensure it doesn’t become a burden, there’s certainly room for slightly more challenge in the world of Animal Crossing.
More meaningful regions to explore
Each Animal Crossing game has experimented with offering new regions for players to explore, to varying degrees of success. While New Horizons‘ islands are fun additions, they are pretty beige – and eventually, the novelty wears off. City Folk had a much more compelling idea in having a separate city location you could visit.
We’d love to see the next Animal Crossing run with this idea, introducing new explorable locations with meaningful content – perhaps with new shops, activities, or even entirely new sets of villagers. Added bonus if you can swim to these locations from your home island.
The ability to run your own shop
It feels like the next logical evolution for Animal Crossing to allow players to run their own shop, selling goods they’ve crafted. While this would be somewhat divergent from typical Animal Crossing gameplay, it would provide new ways for players to fundraise, and give them fresh opportunities to meet and greet their island residents. It would certainly make for a more interesting money-making journey than simply dropping off goods at Nook’s Cranny.
Wilder terrains, more fruits
Animal Crossing has looked pretty much the same for decades now. As a villager, you roam a grassy island filled with trees and lakes. In the next game, we’d love to see this formula shaken up, with a new home location of unique terrains and environmental features. Add in mountains! Have snow outside of Winter, and pretty flowers of all kinds. While the series should retain its strong visual identity, we’d love to see more variety in its design, with new colour shades and world features to spice things up.
For now, Nintendo hasn’t announced plans for its next Animal Crossing game, but we’re keeping a keen eye on that new horizon.
