TheAnimal Crossingfranchise has taken players from a small town to the city and now their own island inAnimal Crossing: New Horizons,but the future of the franchise could go even bigger. As the next entry in Nintendo’s popular life-sim series looks to evolve afterAnimal Crossing: New Horizons, the answer to where the next game could take players may be up in the stars. While it might seem unconventional for the series, the nextAnimal Crossinggame could find success by letting players build a colony on the moon.
Animal Crossing: New Horizonsshowed that the franchise isn’t afraid to go beyond the simple town setting the series had followed up to that point. The series already had started iterating on the idea withAnimal Crossing: City Folkgiving players access to the City beforeNew Horizonsgave players a private island to build to their liking. With this precedent set, it isn’t too outrageous to think theAnimal Crossingseries could take the leap and let players blast off to start a new settlement on the moon, especially given some of the space-faring references already present in the entries.
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Taking Players to the Moon Might Be One Giant Leap for the Animal Crossing Franchise
For a series that typically stays on the ground,Animal Crossinggames have included references to outer space and space travel more often than players might realize. While the Space Theme furniture set has been present since the original title,Animal Crossing: Wild Worldon the Nintendo DSwas the first entry to really develop the series' perspective on the cosmos thanks to the DS' second screen. This entry introduced Celeste, a star-gazing owl who let players design constellations in her observatory, and also gave the adventurer Gulliver a new mode of transportation: a flying saucer.
With the top screen of the DS allowing players to look up into the night sky, the series began to lay the foundation for a future entry to take place in outer space. The moon has also been a prominent fixture in theAnimal Crossinguniverse, with players even being able to receive a scale replica of the celestial body to place in their homes. Theoriginal GameCubeAnimal Crossingtitle featured the Harvest Moon Festival event where players could receive this item from Tortimer, and the event would appear in future titles under the Autumn Moon event featuring other moon-themed items.
The inhabitants ofAnimal Crossing’s world clearly have longed to travel to the stars, setting the stage for a future entry to take them their with the variety of events and mechanics centered around outer space and the moon. A game that takes place on the moon may seem odd for this series, but the experimental islandterraforming mechanics inAnimal Crossing: New Horizonsmake a compelling case for letting players terraform the moon next. The game could throw a new twist on the series by introducing elements that force players to think strategically about where they will place things like a greenhouse for plants, or other colonists' homes within an even more limited environment.
A game set on the moon could even give some resolution to one ofAnimal Crossing’s creepiest events, wherein players can witness aliens communicating via their TVs at 3:33am. This game could introduce a new alien villager type that shows that, despite the creepy Easter Egg, this alien species is actually quite friendly and could even guide players through the game’s tutorials. Not only would fans get to experience a new type of villager, but the introduction of aliens as potential residents would help give players some concrete closure around one of the series' biggest mysteries.
Animal Crossing: New Horizonsis available for Nintendo Switch.
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