How to make Animal Crossing New Horizons even better

I’ve already poured a lot of hours into Animal Crossing New Horizons already. I’ve been catching fish and bugs, digging up fossils, donating to the museum, talking to villagers, and trying to play the stalk market correctly even though my stalks are tanking right now. While the game has its flaws, it is still very enjoyable and a fun to play game. Players can even come up with their own challenges like trying to collect all the fruit or build a stockpile of wood and iron so when your tools break you can easily make new ones. But there are still things that I would love to see be added to the game. With updates happening to the game quite regularly, there is plenty that can and might still be added to the game.

The first thing I want to see added to the game is more fruit. Right now players can get six different fruits for their islands. While that is a wide variety, it is nothing compared to the variety of fruit that was able to be found in New Leaf. In that game, players had access to 10 different fruits. The fruits that didn’t make the cut from the 3DS game to New Horizons are Durians, Lemons, Lychees, Mangos and Persimmons. This is a rather interesting note, as there is no way that the Switch can’t handle all those fruits while the 3DS could. So I say that those fruits should be added into the game in a future update, maybe in one of the 2.0 updates (whenever we get to that point). But why stop at just those fruits? Why not add some more too. There are plenty of options to choose from. There are two other color variants of apples as well as options like plums, nectarines, grapefruits, cumquats, papayas, cocoa, avocados (because we are millenials and we love avocados) and so many more options.

The only issue with the fruit right now is that there is no real purpose for it outside of using it for a quick cash grab at Nook’s Cranny or to make some furniture. While there isn’t an issue with that on the surface, its uses outside of that are pretty limited. So what if when we have some fruit in our inventory, we have the option to make it into something. You got three apples in your inventory? Well now you can make apple juice! Six peaches taking up one of your inventory slots? Well just make a peach cobbler! And instead of having to eat a ton of fruit to shovel up a tree, you get multiple food meter numbers by making different food. It’s a win-win for everyone in that scenario.

One last thing on the fruit aspect, Animal Crossing has always relied on trees for fruit. Well what if they added in another way to get fruit? What if they added fruit bushes to the game. Now the options for items on fruit bushes with items like blueberries, strawberries, raspberries and elderberries (had to get one random fruit in there). It’s a small add, and one that could help make the island look more and more lively with some colorful shrubs around the tall trees.

Okay, enough fruit let’s get into something else. One of the things I enjoyed doing the most was going to The Roost and enjoying a nice cup of coffee from Brewster after a long day's work. So far, Brewster isn’t in the game yet, but I am pretty sure that we will see the return of The Roost in a future update. I already have the perfect place for it on my island too, right before a ledge to the beach. This however is my one real issue with the game, the amount of cut content. Most of the time, I chalk up cut content as things players didn’t love from prior games in the series, or things that can overtax a new console's hardware, but going from the 3DS to the Switch shouldn't have that latter problem. Now Timmy and Tommy taking over the character creation aspect of the game from Rover isn’t a real issue for me, but Kicks has become a traveling salesman and Crazy Redd being nowhere to be found is a very big surprise. Gyroids aren’t moving every few seconds, Copper and Booker aren’t finding missing or random items and Reese and Cyrus aren’t selling you items for your home anymore. A lot of aspects that fans have gotten used to from the previous game have had their roles changed or are completely cut from the game so far.

Now a lot of these are easier fixes, as you can just have them become stores and locations. Adding Kicks as an extension of the Able Sisters store could work as well, if they don’t want to give him his own store. Redd and his art can either be added on as a wing to the Museum or the island could add an art gallery. The only question then is where do you get the art pieces themselves from. Maybe the island holds an island wide art day on random days of the week or something along those lines. The gyroids and Copper and Booker are an easy enough fix too, as adding in items is something commonly seen in games, and a police station would follow the same line as Kicks or the Art Gallery. The only ones that don’t really seem to have a place are Reese and Cyrus, as the player buys and sells items to the Nooklings as well as the stalk market. However, there is one feature that they had that I would love to see them bring back. If you had all of a dinosaur set, then you could have Cyrus make you a model of the actual fossil. Let’s bring that concept back especially since we have Flick and CJ to make bug and fish models respectively. Maybe the pair only show up once and awhile, or maybe they can set up a stand where you can give them the fossils you want to be made into a model. Maybe you could even give them the bugs or fish you want as models for them to send to Flick or CJ since they visit the island so sparsely.

Now with all of those new shops and places to visit, one would think that it would limit the player to the amount of space they have left on the island. That wouldn’t be the case, as the islands are a lot bigger than you would imagine. On my island I have eight different areas of land that need either the ladder or vaulting pole to get to. That is a lot of space already, and since the game runs on a grid based system, there is plenty of room. Now assuming that every step the player takes is one spot on the grid, we can measure that the stores and houses on the island are roughly three grid spaces across and two grid spaces long. The museum is the biggest building so far, being seven spaces across and three spaces long. The simple solution is to have new shops that the player can get be the same size as the Able Sisters store, which is four spaces across and two spaces long.

The one final thing I want to see be added to the game is another island for different players. We’ve seen the Switch be able to hold multiple save accounts for different profiles before, look at Pokemon Sword and Shield, Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey as prime examples of that. So why can’t Animal Crossing do the same? Plus my brother set up his house on one of my beaches and is ruining my beachfront property value! Do you know how much I could sell that for! But in all seriousness, if games that are bigger than Animal Crossing can allow different accounts on the same system have different save files, then why can’t Animal Crossing? That is one thing that I just don’t understand.