In addition to Lyle, Nook’s Homes is filled with several familiar faces from previous Animal Crossing games, including Happy Home Showcase’s Digby, fan favorite town hall liaison Isabelle, and the infamous loan-shark-turned-realtor Tom Nook, owner of the business. After you’ve cut your teeth on a few homes you’re approached by returning mayoral assistant Isabelle to help in the town plaza’s redevelopment, and these tasks see you take on larger projects, from amenities such as cafes and shops through to essential services like the hospital and school. And since peer reviews are a staple of any well-run business, Nook’s Homes offers the ability to rank fellow designers’ creations in the “Happy Home Network“, which will be available through a software update at launch. Redecorating is done with the stylus, and reviewers are saying it’s easier than decorating in traditional Animal Crossing games.
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The item catalog is impressive and widens as you complete each client’s request. While that may seem a sensible and obvious move – and it is – it seems odd when the mainline Animal Crossing games place such an emphasis on money and earning; this is the game in which you take out mortgages from someone who’d clearly break your legs if you didn’t keep up with the repayments. So for those who spent their days constantly changing their own nest in Animal Crossing New Leaf, there is a chance you will love this completely. The only thing I can really think of using the extra amiibo cards for are getting more scratchers in Mario Party 10 or unlocking more games in amiibo tap: Nintendo’s Greatest Bits, neither of which is all that exciting or necessary. Far from being the stripped-back, amiibo-card-pushing cash-in that many feared, Happy Home Designer is generous with its tools, slowly expanding its initial focus on furniture-shifting to include nearly everything a budding interior designer might need.
The most shocking feature that is lacking is the home scoring system by Happy Home Academy that has been available since City Folk.
But even in the earliest hours of the game, you realize that this is not exactly the regular Animal Crossing experience. Yep, you can even build that hat museum you’ve always dreamed about.
REDMOND, Wash.-(satPRnews.com)-Nook’s Homes is looking for you! You’re an employee, and that’s it.
Granted it doesn’t quite have the depth of Happy Home Designer when it comes to decorating but designing is only one part of New Leaf.
Starting October 1, new items will be hitting Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer in Japan. Simplifying the Animal Crossing idea to a single concept is fine, but that concept better be done extremely well or it will become overly rigid, which unfortunately is what happens here. In fact, if you do the bare minimum for every design, you can watch the credits roll in about four, maybe three, hours. Creations can be rated using a simple set of criteria – and, similarly to Super Mario Maker’s online toolset, popular homes float to the top of the pile while less successful designs slowly fade into obscurity.
From the videos I’ve watched on destructoid, it appears that there is an endless amount of home styles even before you enter the house. That meant StreetPassing with as many people as I could and checking the store on a daily basis just to get an entire furniture set (and all of the number lamps).
Clients should shrug their shoulders or at least react dispassionately toward designs that barely pass their requirements, and players should feel rewarded for creating rooms that generally fit the client’s desires and pair nicely with their base items. It’s like they’re all free, waiting to be used! That would strike a healthier balance by both providing parameters for success while giving the player plenty of room for improvisation. When not designing a client’s new home, you can visit any house you previously designed, call up other clients and have a little gathering of your own. It’s the same complaint with The Sims 4 being separated into lots instead of being tied together in a connected world.
After that, the home design process generally follows a simple formula.
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An important design aspect, as Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer is a pretty big departure from the existing Animal Crossing titles. Before you know it, you’ll be pondering the aesthetic implications of a chaise lounge, obsessively heightening the dilapidated ambience of your haunted house, or toppling into existential despair as you debate adding another sofa to your project – just in case the entirely fictional Kabuki might want more than two friends around for tea.
