Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer – Details and videos

20 July 2015 Lite_Agent Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer

Last week, NintendoLife wrote a preview for Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer, which is coming out next week… in Japan (Europe and North America will have to wait until this Autumn). First, they explain that the usual village has been replaced by a hub, not unlike the one found in Animal Crossing: City Folks.

What’s more, the hub will expand as you progress through the game, with restaurants, shops and hospitals and more which can be built over time. Of course, Isabelle (your trusty assistant from Animal Crossing: New Leaf) will take care of all that for you: it may be a spin-off, but she’s still as useful and dependable as ever!

Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer is a true spin-off, so don’t go and expect to be able to do the same things as in any Animal Crossing game. Yes… that means you can put that bug net back where you took it, you will not need it in this game.

On the hub, you can meet various animals (picked up at random): you need to talk to them in order to accept their requests. When you’ve accepted one, you then start by chosing an area where you will put the house, as well as the season. Once you’re done with that, you start designing the house proper.

Obviously, not all the items (furniture, decorations, etc.) are available right from the start: you need to accept request to unlock more. In fact, simply accepting a request will unlock all the necessary items for it: therefore, if you want to unlock more items to use, you need to take on more requests from the various villagers. Back at the Tom Nook Housing Company, you can use play coins in order to learn about new forms of decorations and more.

Also, Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer does not have a real time clock, and each day only ends when you want it to. You also have access to character customisation right from the start, including the long-awaited skin tone options.

However, it looks like the animals are quite easily pleased in this game: in fact, it doesn’t really matter what you design for them, they will be happy in the end. Therefore, you have a lot of freedom, and the only real limit is your imagination!

As for the amiibo cards, they have two purposes (as mentionned in this post):

– use them to invite the villagers in your game, and take on their request (you do not need the cards to do so, but the villagers are randomised so you’re not guaranteed to get the ones you want without their amiibo card).
– invite villagers to come chat with you at the house of another villager, etc.

Here’s a gameplay video from NintendoLife: