Animal Crossing Could Use Quality of Life Improvements

When you love a game as much as Animal Crossing, it’s easy to look over the negatives and focus just on the positives. And frankly, that is what we did at GamesReviews when handing the game a perfect 10/10 score. Does Animal Crossing: New Horizons have some faults? Of course it does, but the overall package is near perfection. For the record, a 10/10 score on GamesReviews does not mean perfect, but rather is a score given to only our favourite titles!

But that doesn’t mean the game couldn’t make improvements – who knows, a few tweaks here and there and we might just give New Horizons a 11/10! So after playing for about 150 hours, we are listing our quality of life improvements wish list below! Be sure to chime in with yours!

Inventory Stacks

Large inventory stacks would be nice, but that isn’t the request we are making here. Instead, we want to see stacks added for other items. We like that wood, weeds, and other natural materials stack in large groups. And we like, and feel that it is reasonable, for fruit to fall into stacks of 10. We can even get behind fish and bugs taking up their own slots. But do manila clams really need to take up one inventory slot apiece? As of today – and not including the datamined info – manila claims are not an item that can be donated, so unlike fish and bugs, we strongly feel that it should stack!

Multiple Crafting

The issue of Manila Clams brings us to our next quality of life improvement – the ability to craft stacks of items. For the most part, single crafting makes sense. You aren’t likely to craft more than one swinging bench, or an arcade machine. You might, however, want to craft, say, 10 fish bait at once? Come on Nintendo – give us the ability to craft stacks. The game has enough dialogue and menus elsewhere, at least streamline the crafting experience!

Tool Health Bars

Every start working away on a big project only to have your tool disingrate in your hands? I have, and you likely have as well. Since tool degradation is a thing, I feel like Nintendo should have included health bars for the tools you have, and not necessarily on the main screen (which would clutter the main heads up display), but at least within our inventory menu!

Automatic Tool Use – Poles and Ladders

When CJ comes to my island and I know that I can make some serious bells selling him fish, I begin at the top right and circle my entire island, running along the beach and catching lots of fish. Since there are always two river outlets to the sea, there are two areas were I’m required to put my fishing rod away, and pull out my jumping pole. In an ideal world, when I ‘push’ my character up against a rivers edge, it would be fantastic for him to auto swap the tools, jump the river, and auto switch back. It’s not a huge thing, but one that would make my game play experience better!

Streamlining Dialogue and Test – Steven van Eekeren

When I approach the workbench and press A. Don’t ask me if I want to use the workbench. Me approaching the workbench and pressing A should be enough acknowledgment that I want to use it.

These are a few of our favourites, but we want to incorporate yours! Hit me up on Twitter with your name and quality of life improvement, and I’ll add it onto the list!