Animal Crossing New Horizons: Terraforming Thoughts

Recently, I unlocked terraforming/path making in Animal Crossing New Horizons. Now I have more power over the landscape of my island. Too much power? Enough power? Let’s talk about terraforming and making paths!

In Animal Crossing New Horizons, Nintendo has given us tools that we can use to almost completely reshape our island. I’m talking about terraforming and path making! I’ve unlocked both and thought I’d give our readers my thoughts so far about these new tools.

PATHS

Since Animal Crossing Wild World, players have been able to lay patterns on the ground. This came in handy in City Folk and New Leaf because of the dreaded grass wear (walk on grass, destroy grass) feature from those games.

Thankfully, grass wear isn’t back in New Horizons. At least I haven’t seen it nor heard any reports of it. Whew.

Putting patterns on the ground is back. It can be done the old fashioned way, by putting a pattern down via the custom design app, or….

At a certain point in the game, a better way to put paths down on the ground is unlocked. I won’t spoil how or when the tool is available.

What I will say is that its much easier to put patterns on the ground with this tool. It still does take a lot of patience because you are putting one tile down at a time still and its easy to mistakely erase a title. Even so, with this new tool I can get the tiles down faster and can even round off the path! This is a very cool feature when it comes to making turns in the path look like an artist put them together.

And speaking of artists, the player doesn’t have to be an artist or know an artist to make a path in this game. New Horizons provides players with some really cool pre-made paths. Come on, you didn’t think I actually made that stone path did you? I’m not an artist, I’m a writer!

WATERSCAPING

Not only do players get their hands on a path making tool, but they also get a tool that lets them turn land into water and water into land. Waterscaping lets the player make rivers small, bigger, create ponds that weren’t there before, add a bigger yard for an animal, or if a person is really mean, completely wipe out a pond that was near Nook’s Cranny. I wouldn’t do such a thing…ok yes I would and I did (see pic above).

Waterscaping is so much fun. Its pretty easy too. Maybe too easy? I can really just lay down land on water or take out some land to create ponds with a simple button press. I can even round off the new land that I created. Yes, I now have god tier powers! What was Nook thinking?!

CLIFFSCAPING

And if Waterscaping isn’t enough for you, you can also create cliffs or completely destroy them.
In the picture above, I created a bigger cliff there so that Rolf and his neighbor Curlos could have a bigger area to walk around in. Plus the path looks nicer and not as thin.

Cliffscaping lets me add or subject cliffs and even can let me round off or flatten the cliffs to make them look more natural. I have the power!

Terraforming/path making is a lot of fun. My island is starting to become a town. I’m pretty amazed by these tools. I have all of my paths done now but I will continue to mess around with the terraforming. I want to see what else I can do with the waterscaping and cliffscaping.

Have you tried Waterscaping, Cliffscaping, or path making in New Horizons yet? What do you think of them?