Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer
- maylinhnaung
- Feb 17, 2016
- 4 min read
It's mini review time once again peeps! This time the blog addresses the animal loving, interior designer that rages through your veins!
Disclaimer: For those of you that don't care for the latter, that's ok, too. Hopefully this still makes for a good read. :D
Greetings again friends! :D I hope everyone had a great weekend and a happy love day!
***Throwback picture from Animal Crossing: New Leaf.
This Tuesday's exciting blog is all about Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer (AC:HHD). Not gonna lie, it's been a long minute since I last touched this game. AC:HHD launched in North America on September 25th of last year. I played the game nonstop for about two months and ended up totaling a whopping 96 hours and 11 minutes of playtime! I have been itching to get back in on the designing!
*data found in my activity log of my Nintendo 3DS
**Most, if not all, of the photos are IRL screenshots of the game from my 3ds!
SO CUTE.
Without further ado, let's get to the review!
Animal Crossing Happy Home Designer is what gamers call a, "sandbox" type of game. Unlike it's predecessors, it isn't categorized as a simulation game (where you live a sublife and interact with the artificial intelligence). Sandbox games allow players to choose what to do and when to complete tasks/content. There are hardly any rules. Sandbox games are very easy to pick up and great for beginners.
HHD allows players to essentially become a virtual interior designer. The game is focused on creating themed homes and buildings for the animals that live in the town. That's pretty much it. Your creativity is tested in this simple yet charming little game.
Here are just some examples of what I have created for my animals in accordance to their preferences and themes:
As you can see from the photos, players can decorate not only the inside of the homes, but the exterior as well. Although the animals initailly request a certain theme for their homes, the sky is still the limit. You can decorate the home however you want so long as you keep to the key items (usually one or two things) on their given lists. Even so, the animals allow you to basically redecorate anything in their homes at a later time. (So don't worry if you didn't like your first designs!)
Furniture doesn't come as easily as it does in the traditional Animal Crossing series. (It was actually somewhat difficult to find furniture in that game, too...) With each animal you help, you get set furniture in HHD. In a sense you want to help as many animals as possible so you can keep getting new furniture/wallpaper/carpet/etc.
***WARNING, POTENTIAL SPOILER ALERT****
Skip over the next pictures if you do not wish to see the spoilers.
In addition to decorating homes, players are tasked to rebuild the town and thus, must decorate some buildings. The buildings in the pictures below include: a school, a dept. store, an office, a restaurant, and a hotel!
But wait guys, there is more! Besides decorating, you can interact with the animals and watch them interact with things in the town and their homes. You can also play dress-up for your own character as well as with the animals! It's quite difficult to explain it through texts. You gotta try it yourselves and experience all the cute! <3
As you may have noticed, there was a weird circular object and an "Amiibo" card booster pack in one of the very first pictures of the blog. You may be asking yourself, "what are those and are they needed in the main game?" The answer is, no, you actually do not need those two things. :) You can play the game perfectly fine without having the e-reader and the amiibo cards. What those two things basically do is give you the opportunity to create homes for specific animals and special characters like Isabelle, Crazy Redd, Tom Nook, Mr. Resetti, and more. They are great little collectibles!
I think that pretty much covers most of the game. This is still a mini review, after all. Perhaps I will do an in-depth review or a live stream of myself playing the game someday?
tl;dr: Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer is a great game for all you creative folks. Not for the faint of heart, jk it's really basic. There are no competitive aspects. This is just a fun, easy, and very relaxing game.
Score: 3.75/5
Pros:
+ CUTE, duh
+ high replayability
+ easy to pickup
+ fun music
+ creativity is not limited SO BE CREATIVE
+ fun to see which animals visit and what they request
+ animal interactions
+ emotions
+ funny dialogue
+ (not discussed in main blog) but you can view other people's designs using the HHA (happy home academy) option in game
+ great use of stylus in game
Cons:
- can get repetitive
- amiibo card packs have completely random animals (hard to obtain your favorites)
- e-reader and amiibo cards don't do much for the game itself
- game is too simple and can get boring quickly
- not much else to do besides decorating and finishing public works projects
- single-player
The game shouldn't be too hard to find either. If you are interested and have a 3DS, it can be found on Amazon, Ebay, gaming retailers, Walmart, Target, Toys R' US and more.
Thanks for visiting and reading everyone! Have a wonderful rest of the week! It's been super freaking hot lately here in Southern California (seriously, where is El Niño at?)...
So eat some ice cream :D
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