The next Animal Crossing game will be an important moment for Nintendo. Animal Crossing: New Horizons was the series’ best-selling release, and while at least some of that success can be attributed to its launch window—it dropped right at the start of the COVID pandemic, when stay-at-home orders were first being issued worldwide—this strong financial performance is also indicative of the franchise’s wide appeal and staying power.
Indeed, New Horizons ushered in an entirely new generation of Animal Crossing fans, giving the series more visibility and hype than ever before. This is good, obviously, but it also means that future entries will have a lot to live up to. Mix in the improved performance of the Nintendo Switch 2, and expectations are high for the next chapter of the Animal Crossing franchise, which will hopefully prompt its developers to go all-out with new, ambitious features and mechanics. There’s a laundry list of miscellaneous tweaks, additions, and removals that could make the next Animal Crossing better than New Horizons, but taking a page out of The Sims‘ playbook might be particularly beneficial for the cozy, lovable life sim.
Animal Crossing: New Horizon’s latest updates are the first ones the game has received in more than 2 years, and they hopefully won’t be the last.
The Next Animal Crossing Shouldn’t Shy Away from Family Life
Animal Crossing Characters Tend To Ride Solo
Of the many things that don’t make sense in Animal Crossing‘s bizarre, magical world, the lack of family dynamics is among the most notable. In something like The Sims 4, players get to observe and guide countless in-game characters through various life stages, nurturing them as they grow from children to adults, and finally into old age. This often involves some sort of familial elements, whether that be a spouse, children, or even grandchildren. It’s these unique and ever-changing life-sim mechanics that the next Animal Crossing can learn from.
The scope and growth potential of Animal Crossing communities could theoretically explode with such a radical system. Perhaps animal families could move in together or, if Nintendo were feeling particularly ambitious, two Villagers could start a family. This might encroach slightly on the E-rating of the franchise, but even family-friendly games like Stardew Valley allow the player-character to get married and have children, after all.
If already-formed families could join an in-game village, then they could serve as distinct pillars of the community: players could choose to have more or fewer families in their town, thereby facilitating a wider range of in-game fantasies. In other words, if a player wanted a wholesome town built around family living, then they could have just that. If NPCs in the next Animal Crossing could start as single or childless before partnering up and having children, then it would lend the game a sense of dynamism, creating a deeper, more complex relationship between players and Villagers.
The “animal” side of Animal Crossing could be further explored through such features as well: players could see how young dogs, cats, apes, and more act compared to their adult counterparts. Perhaps these “children” could even grow into adults over the course of a playthrough—many animals mature faster than humans, after all.
Families Could Radically Redefine the Animal Crossing Experience, for Better or Worse
Family life playing a bigger role in Animal Crossing would make for a far more nuanced and multifaceted gaming experience, which runs the risk of alienating some fans. Indeed, many enjoy Animal Crossing precisely because it doesn’t feel like the real world—introducing spouses, children, teenagers, and the like could make the next game a bit too realistic, as it were. But experimentation and reinvention are essential for a long-running franchise, even one as quaint and deceptively simple as Animal Crossing, so it could be a risk worth taking.
