Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer is a spin-off of the Animal Crossing series. Instead of the day-to-day activities, it is focused on the home decoration aspect. The player starts off as a new employee for Nook’s Home. Everything feels like normal as you input your name and a character pops up to introduce you to the game’s mechanics. You find out that you are the new designer helping out clients to redesign their homes. They give you an idea of what they would like and it is up to you to fulfill their wishes.
The game has a set structure. At the beginning of each day, you will either have a client come to you or you go and find a client. You pick where their house is going to be and then decorate a bare empty house of one room. You’re given plenty of objects to insert and rearrange including all the pieces of furniture you can image, wallpapers, rugs, flooring, decorations and lighting. The controls for decoration are intuitive and easy to use. The bottom touchscreen is used to select and rearrange all the items, which are laid out in a grid fashion. Tapping on a item will rotate it, hold down and drag to move it, and hold down the L button while tapping an item will duplicate it. This makes rearranging a breeze.
At any time during the process, you can check out the room from various camera angles, move your character, take photos and change the lighting from dark to light. You can go back to your previous client’s houses at any time to check it out again and change things around. Maybe you got some new pieces of furniture that would fit perfectly, or you’ve just thought of a better layout. There are tons of items that unlock after every client. Eventually, though, due to the sheer number of items that are available to you, it gets clunky to sift through the menu to pick the ones you wanted to use. Luckily, there’s a search function that works fairly well.
Note that decorating is the whole game. If you’re not interested in decorating for no reason at all, then you’ll get bored of the game really quick. It can get tedious and repetitive within the first hour. There are certain story events, such as you needing to get outside of the office and talk to the characters loitering around to engage them for designing their houses. You’ll meet and interact with your boss, Mr Nooks. There are no overarching objectives, so it can feel a bit pointless at times since you have nothing to aim towards. Your clients may have specific themes that they want (color, nature, etc) but you cannot actually fail a job.
There are hundreds of villagers in the game, each with a house to design. Furthermore, the game supports Amiibo cards which summons the character and you can decorate their houses, as well as allowing them to visit your houses. Soon, you’ll be able to participate and design in public works projects and exteriors. This is good since there’s only so much you can do with interiors without it becoming boring and repetitive. The public works projects involving large spaces and specific use buildings like schools and hospitals are a nice change from yet another home.
There are hundreds of villagers in the game, each with a house to design. Furthermore, the game supports Amiibo cards which summons the character and you can decorate their houses, as well as allowing them to visit your houses. Soon, you’ll be able to participate and design in public works projects and exteriors. This is good since there’s only so much you can do with interiors without it becoming boring and repetitive. The public works projects involving large spaces and specific use buildings like schools and hospitals are a nice change from yet another home.
Overall, Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer doesn’t contain a lot of variety, but it targets a specific niche. The design mechanics are well done and spending a lot of time in perfecting your design is satisfying. Take note that the game is best played in short bursts, like one or two redesigns per session; otherwise it can feel like a huge grind.
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The game also comes with one random Animal Crossing Amiibo card.
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The game also comes with one random Animal Crossing Amiibo card.
