Alongside the announcement of a major free update for Animal Crossing New Horizons‘, Nintendo also announced paid DLC in the form of Happy Home Paradise, also arriving on Nov. 5.
In Happy Home Paradise, players will be tasked with helping character acquire their dream vacation homes. Various characters from the series will visit the archipelago to have their dreams fulfilled. You’ll then get to work, selecting the island their home will be built, each one having its own distinctive features that players will need to match to best suit the request.
After that, they’ll take a tour of the home, place designated furniture requested by the client, and then get to work on completely refurbishing the interior of their homes.
During the New Horizons Direct, we saw overhead lighting and wallpaper could be added to the interior of a home to completely renovate how the living space looks. Soundscapes could also be added to provide additional depth to a house, providing background noise like the calming sound of the sea, or the clanging of a busy construction site.
The job doesn’t stop on the inside, with players able to place furniture outside of the home, build fences, plant trees and create paths to give the character their perfect yard for their dream home. The home’s location and exterior can be modified too, as can the season, time of day and weather to really ensure the ambience outside matches the design you’ve gone for inside. It was noted, however, that the terrain on the island cannot be modified in Animal Crossing Happy Home Paradise.
The size of the interior of each home can also be adjusted, and in doing so, you can unlock new features to completely change up the design of the home including partition walls, counters and even pillars. Lighting can be adjusted with different colors and brightness settings to finetune the mood to the character’s liking.
Once you’ve got everything in-place, you can also polish furniture to give it additional effects, such as butterflies around flowers, or glistening sparkles on a surface.
After all your hard work is done, you can return to the Happy Home Office and be paid for your work in Poki. This currency can then be spent at the shop to buy rare furniture that can be hard to find on own island.
The more time you spend in Happy Home Paradise, and the more dream homes you make a reality, the more furniture you’ll unlock. You can then go back and update existing homes you’ve already created, to really show off your interior design skills.
On your recommendation, two clients may also share a vacation home, and you can visit the pair of them whenever you wish.
Happy Home Paradise isn’t just about building dream vacation homes, though. There are a number of other buildings on the island Lodi’s paradise planning office is located which you can design, such as a school, restaurant, or even a hospital. These facilities will then be used by islanders so you’ll have a bustling restaurant or a classroom of hard-working students.
The Happy Home Network app on your Nookphone also allows you to visit the homes of previous clients and see how they’re doing, and by connecting online, you’ll be able to share your designs with people from all over the world. You can follow the designers of homes you particularly like, and view their designs to spark inspiration for your own.
Finally, Happy Home Paradise is compatible with Animal Crossing amiibo figures and cards, allowing you to invite specific islanders over to create their own dream vacation homes, including the likes of Isabelle and Timmy and Tommy Nook.
All of the learned techniques from Happy Home Paradise can also be used on your own island. That means you can add partition walls, counters, pillars, lighting, soundscapes and polish up your own furniture to spruce up your home. After all, why should it just be the islanders that get to benefit from all these new features?
By gifting your favorite islanders a souvenir from the Happy Home Paradise island, they may also visit the archipelago in search of their own dream home designed by you, too. The Direct also revealed that after designing a certain number of homes on the archipelago, you’ll be able to remodel the homes of your favorite islanders on your own island, too.
Animal Crossing New Horizons’ Happy Home Paradise DLC will release on Nov. 5 for $24.99 and will also be part of the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion pack. Pre-orders begin on Oct. 29 from the Nintendo eShop if you’re itching to get started.
