Animal Crossing Happy Home Designer Reviews
Happy Home Designer is a fun way to pass the time. Certainly not a revolutionary game, and certainly not a perfect game, but it's an interesting take on the Animal Crossing series – having zoomed in so closely on just one aspect of the series is a breath of fresh air.
Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer is a very enjoyable game until you realize that nothing you do really has any lasting effect on the game or its citizens.
"Get creative and you might enjoy it."
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It's also very nice to see a dead town turn into a thriving community before your very eyes; I just didn't expect to see it in about six hours. The most disheartening part of the game, though, are the NPCs who barely seem to exist in this world beyond saying "I like apples, please make me an apple house". While the charm of the series is fully represented here, the wit and deeper experiences of the franchise are not, and that leaves me feeling like the game overall is just a shallow title in a series that can do a lot more.
Happy Home Designer is a different kind of Animal Crossing. From its pacing to its objectives, the game will delight fans with its new take on the series' longstanding gameplay. It's not the life-sim of years past, but Happy Home Designer's successful re-imagining of what makes Animal Crossing tick is a lovely departure that I sincerely hope Nintendo explores again in the future. Go and snag yourself a copy today!
Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer on Nintendo 3DS is a flawed spin-off that's still sure to settle right into the hearts of fans and creative folk.
Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer isn't going to dethrone Animal Crossing: New Leaf as the number one game in your 3DS' play log – not by a long shot. In taking away the scant few of the franchise's stressors, however, it becomes a profoundly therapeutic life simulator that respects and rewards every millilitre of creative juice you pour into it. It's a stop-gap on the road to Wii U/NX but a detour that won't soon be surpassed.
On the whole, it's fair to say that most spin-offs are doomed to live in the shadow of their more popular source materials. Even so, Happy Home Designer did have the potential to stand on its own two legs - the sole ingredient needed to confirm that fact being the element of fun, which it sadly lacks. Everything is polished to a very typical high-gloss, Nintendo-brand sheen, but without any deep or meaningful gameplay system in place to bolster the charm, Happy Home Designer ends up feeling disappointingly shallow, with minimal longevity. Perhaps as an eShop game the effect would have been softened - at best, there are a few hours of enjoyment to be had, but the finished package lends little to the justification of a standalone release.
Given Animal Crossing's sickeningly cutesy look and feel, it's tempting to play tricks on it, to fool its adorably simple-minded denizens into living in squalor and liking it. But the game is just too sincere to prank, the way that toys can't feel embarrassed of how they're played with.
Feels like it would benefit from a longer plot, but still fun if you overlook the repetitive nature.
Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer is a fun twist on the original Animal Crossing games.
Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer will appeal those love decorating homes and collecting Nintendo's new amiibo cards, but for the rest of us, it's a broken home.
It's a fun little distraction that doesn't require too much attention to enjoy.
A mini-game at a maxi-price
If you ever felt intrigued by the Animal Crossing games, but found their open-ended nature to be more daunting than relaxing, then Happy Home Designer might just be the answer. It seems like this game was also made to satisfy Sims players, who did nothing more but customize and furnished various homes to no end.
Overall, Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer is a welcome spinoff that helps diversify the Animal Crossing brand and cements it as one of Nintendo's cornerstone franchises (if it wasn't already). The Big N has shown an increased willingness on putting fresh spins on older series and this is a case where it works naturally. It makes perfect sense for an interior design game to exist in this universe, not just because of its town-building mythos but also because of its folksy charm.
We want to play in ways beyond the gaming population's insular past, cavorting through catastrophes and destroying the present. Our future depends on the ability to create, and design, something new. It's fun to tear something down but there's a deeper joy in building something up. Besides, there's nothing more catastrophic than the wrong wallpaper.
It's an absolute feat that Nintendo was able to retain the trademark Animal Crossing charming feel without including many of the tropes that have been present since the series began back in 2001. That novelty, however, is fleeting, and after a few hours of play, you're left with a shallow feeling that your work has gotten you nowhere. Even when viewed through the lens of "just a spinoff," Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer is disappointing.
Ultimately, Happy Home Designer is an adorable and charming game that will delight fans interested in more lighthearted Animal Crossing fare. It might not have enough variety of content for the series' more hardcore fanbase, so if you're looking for another New Leaf this likely isn't the title for you. Folks who thoroughly enjoyed the design aspects of the last mainline game, however, should get more mileage out of Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer.
Animal Crossing Happy Home Designer looks and sounds like the game that fans were expecting; unfortunately it lacks the depth and addictiveness to keep you interested. Even with its cast of adorable characters and excellent soundtrack, the gameplay becomes stale really fast and you'll find yourself grasping at what little the game has to offer in order to find something to hold your attention.