Opinionated Logan: A Child’s Look at Happy Home Designer

When a code from Nintendo for Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer came I knew there was going to be a fight between myself and my almost six year old son Logan. Logan has recently become quite attached to the Animal Crossing series after playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf on the 3DS. With Nintendo continually releasing family friendly titles, we have decided to give Logan a say on each and every Nintendo ‘E’ rated title.

Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer can be as simple or as complex as you might like it. For me, the complexities and many options kept me decorating a house and yard for well over a half hour. Logan was finishing in less than five minutes, but he was loving it. A lot of the game was trial and error for him. Making sure he built the house that a customer wanted was more difficult for him then myself. He was a true employee though, never giving up until the job was done.

The first thing Logan pointed out to me was that he wished he could design more than just houses. Much to his excitement, it only took him about an hour before he was designing a school . His version of ‘school’ included the minimal amount of desks and chairs, and lots of computers and TVs. When I questioned his design choice, he said – and I quote – “The game lets me do whatever I want. I want TVs and computers so that’s what I put. What inevitably became an annoyance for my wife and I was his insistence on showing us every house, yard, or facility he designed. He also filled up my SD card with pictures.

Logan legitimately lost himself in this game for hours, which probably should make me reconsider some of my parenting methods! On a recent trip to Costco he played the entire hour long trip to the store, at the store, and all the way home. I asked him if the game was too repetitive; he assured me that doing the same thing over and over again just meant he would get better and better.

At times, Happy Home Designer left Logan extremely frustrated. One evening he came down from his room, New 3DS in hand and almost in tears. The problem? The house wasn’t big enough for a bed, a couch, a TV, a kitchen, and a bathroom, all the items he believed where necessary to create the ‘complete’ home. Ironically, this issue didn’t happen until he was building house number 8 or 9. I think as he became more comfortable with the items available, the further his imagination took him.

After letting him play a few hours, we stopped at Best Buy so he could get his first pack of amiibo cards. Honestly, I’m on the fence about these cards as their use in Happy Home Designer isn’t that interesting to me. However, prior to Logan even getting his hands on any, I was planning on getting them for their potential uses in amiibo Festival and future Animal Crossing titles. I was planning on buying them once in a while, perhaps when shopping for something out. However, one pack of amiibo cards quickly turned into 2, 3…and eventually 6. While some might find that excessive, Logan uses them all.

Overall, Logan doesn’t appear to be slowing down any time soon. With the weekend over his time with the game will be limited – as it always is during the school week in our home; however, next weekend he will quickly pick up from where he left off. I no longer consider this game mine. He has taken sole possession. At least from a child’s standpoint, Nintendo has released another fantastic game on 3DS.