MayorofMapleton
Mayor of Mapleton, now Island Rep. of Oldenbell
Just an Idea I've had for a bit and thought I'd share it.
Feel free to do the same.
So this game would be the culmination of all the growing features within the games, of course the work to make it so would be a lot of development time and resources. So seeing something like this may never come to be, but a guy can dream of what ifs.
Animal Crossing: A New Day (also called Town Life, Fresh Start, Of Towns and Cities and also Square One) would be a hypothetical next big step in a similar way New Horizons was seen as compared to New Leaf, due to its core mechanics.
The Setting
We see Tom Nook in a office late at night as he is going over his files scattered on his desk. This is where we pick all the main info such as the map design, player info. He puts all the confirmed info into a letter and prepares to mail it off as he thinks about the main character (similar to HHD).
Would cut to character creation and from there, would cut to our character in the passenger seat of an RV, looking at the letter from Nook. Player looks and reveals that Rover is driving. Normal Rover conversation happens and pretty much is used to set up the time and exposition of whats going on.
The player has been mistaken as a new partner for Nook Inc. and been assigned to start development of a brand new town that Nook Inc. hopes to promote as its magnum opus due to its recent company expansion; no longer just homes, but building a township. Something proven to work from the success of the Island Getaway Package Project. On the way there your RV broke down and Rover picked you up.
Once you get to your destination its revealed the town development is quite far behind, the place is practically a forest with a mobile Nook Office and some plots. Nook greets you and realizes he got the wrong guy, but since you are here and that he has good feeling that the dream is shared, he keeps you on as partner. You get your tent home and your loan and off we go.
Core Mechanics
Everything from how you do the day to day grind from New Horizons is still here, crafting, tools needed to get to certain areas and having to progress a certain amount to gain more features. The interior decorating is straight from HHD/NH too.
Nook will help with giving you plots to build, Public Work Projects and Amenities to fund or gather materials for as well. More are unlocked as you go and Nook Points are here too. However, if you don't want to progress more, the player can unlock these later options by funding Nook Inc. themselves, which becomes higher priced each time you fund the benchmarks.
There are no villagers to start with, once you make some progress on building some DIYs, basic Amenities and some plots, requests start coming in. This is similar to how HHD handled Villager Requests, but with instead as a move in feature mixed with how NH have you craft specific DIYs for them. Once chosen and all set up, they'll move in the next day. Will continue this later.
Now this is where the meat of the game comes into play. You can continue doing this and the same way you play the day to day of an Animal Crossing game and the small start-up settlement can grown to something akin to the original Animal Crossing. Nook will show you the next phase in the plans of development. If you want to continue you can, or you can continue looking after the new town and further it as is (this is for players who want the small town feel). The player if they wish to expand can.
This gives us the Development Permit, a next step to terraforming if you will. By visiting Nook in his office and interacting with the Model Planner, the player can use Town Squares. A grid system the player can control in a similar fashion to the Dungeon Creator from Legend of Zelda. The player can select and unlock more locations to place down and choose where to go. This blocks will always connect to each other. Three categories of exist-Routes, Plots and Locations. The variety is not as much as you'd think. Routes are rectangular and provide the players options for more material gathering, may even find characters of interest along the way. Plots are customizable development areas such as your town, options for these are the Big City (city folk), Campgrounds (Pock Camp) and a few more, each with their own features and developments, which in turn unlock more PWP and Amenities. Locations are scenic areas but can come into play for villager interactions, mini-games and museum completion. You start with one route and the Crossroads a intersection that's a mix between NL's Mainstreet and PC's shop area.
As you develop these areas, more NPCs are unlocked and open their respective features in the respective areas. All customizable where you wish to place them and some places are entirely customizable and all your own (think HHD Projects). Some shops and buildings are interchangeable between the Town, Crossroads or Big City
Secondary Mechanics
As you build up and connect your Town Squares, travelling to on foot may become a bit of a hassle. Soon fast travel is unlocked via the OK Motors RV. customizable just like before but this time hopping in the passenger seat gives you the options to where you'd like to go, can either take the short way and instantly pop over to the location you want to get to or the long way. Which takes the player down a route similar to the one connecting the two areas and you may find villagers on the side of the road, pick them up and you have a great chance of having them move in.
10 villagers for your main town
4 for the campgrounds
2 for the island (more like ACe+ less NH)
All can be seen wandering the Big City and Crossroads, but you have a higher chance seeing moved out villagers or villagers from friend's towns via wifi.
Villager move ins are still possible the old school way by placing a plot, the HHD process, the random villager interaction on routes.
Beachfront can be unlocked to have Kapp'n take you to Tortimer Island for mini-games with friends.
City Airport is used for traveling to out-of-season or opposite hemisphere islands for seasonal item acquiring but they cost a fair amount of Nook Points, you'll also need to make sure you have the right tools or it will be a bust. Mostly used to travel to friend's towns for visits and trade.
Having trouble finding one of your villagers? Use the Contact App and text your villager (only a certain amount of prompts available) such as "where are you?" and they'll tell you. Like wise they can text you and see if you'd like to go somewhere together. Villagers are more likely to text you if you are inside your house or away from a town for a certain amount of time. Otherwise they'll just run to talk to you.
ALL NPCs return with new ones as well that relate to, can be found at and are a mechanic to certain areas.
In Summary
So that's about it for the newer idea stuff. The rest would play out just like a normal animal crossing game. Town hall expansion, museum expansion, villager expansions and houses, Nook Inc going from mobile office to skyscraper in the city, daily npcs and yearly events.
The idea is pretty much to have a regular animal crossing game with all the features but give players the choice how big they want to make it. players who share a save file can even potentially have two separate towns to look after.
And again, I'm aware how big this game would be compared to the others, but this is the simplest way I could think of making this a city tycoon and still be grounded to the rules of animal crossing.
Love to hear your ideas and your own concepts.
Feel free to do the same.
So this game would be the culmination of all the growing features within the games, of course the work to make it so would be a lot of development time and resources. So seeing something like this may never come to be, but a guy can dream of what ifs.
Animal Crossing: A New Day (also called Town Life, Fresh Start, Of Towns and Cities and also Square One) would be a hypothetical next big step in a similar way New Horizons was seen as compared to New Leaf, due to its core mechanics.
The Setting
We see Tom Nook in a office late at night as he is going over his files scattered on his desk. This is where we pick all the main info such as the map design, player info. He puts all the confirmed info into a letter and prepares to mail it off as he thinks about the main character (similar to HHD).
Would cut to character creation and from there, would cut to our character in the passenger seat of an RV, looking at the letter from Nook. Player looks and reveals that Rover is driving. Normal Rover conversation happens and pretty much is used to set up the time and exposition of whats going on.
The player has been mistaken as a new partner for Nook Inc. and been assigned to start development of a brand new town that Nook Inc. hopes to promote as its magnum opus due to its recent company expansion; no longer just homes, but building a township. Something proven to work from the success of the Island Getaway Package Project. On the way there your RV broke down and Rover picked you up.
Once you get to your destination its revealed the town development is quite far behind, the place is practically a forest with a mobile Nook Office and some plots. Nook greets you and realizes he got the wrong guy, but since you are here and that he has good feeling that the dream is shared, he keeps you on as partner. You get your tent home and your loan and off we go.
Core Mechanics
Everything from how you do the day to day grind from New Horizons is still here, crafting, tools needed to get to certain areas and having to progress a certain amount to gain more features. The interior decorating is straight from HHD/NH too.
Nook will help with giving you plots to build, Public Work Projects and Amenities to fund or gather materials for as well. More are unlocked as you go and Nook Points are here too. However, if you don't want to progress more, the player can unlock these later options by funding Nook Inc. themselves, which becomes higher priced each time you fund the benchmarks.
There are no villagers to start with, once you make some progress on building some DIYs, basic Amenities and some plots, requests start coming in. This is similar to how HHD handled Villager Requests, but with instead as a move in feature mixed with how NH have you craft specific DIYs for them. Once chosen and all set up, they'll move in the next day. Will continue this later.
Now this is where the meat of the game comes into play. You can continue doing this and the same way you play the day to day of an Animal Crossing game and the small start-up settlement can grown to something akin to the original Animal Crossing. Nook will show you the next phase in the plans of development. If you want to continue you can, or you can continue looking after the new town and further it as is (this is for players who want the small town feel). The player if they wish to expand can.
This gives us the Development Permit, a next step to terraforming if you will. By visiting Nook in his office and interacting with the Model Planner, the player can use Town Squares. A grid system the player can control in a similar fashion to the Dungeon Creator from Legend of Zelda. The player can select and unlock more locations to place down and choose where to go. This blocks will always connect to each other. Three categories of exist-Routes, Plots and Locations. The variety is not as much as you'd think. Routes are rectangular and provide the players options for more material gathering, may even find characters of interest along the way. Plots are customizable development areas such as your town, options for these are the Big City (city folk), Campgrounds (Pock Camp) and a few more, each with their own features and developments, which in turn unlock more PWP and Amenities. Locations are scenic areas but can come into play for villager interactions, mini-games and museum completion. You start with one route and the Crossroads a intersection that's a mix between NL's Mainstreet and PC's shop area.
As you develop these areas, more NPCs are unlocked and open their respective features in the respective areas. All customizable where you wish to place them and some places are entirely customizable and all your own (think HHD Projects). Some shops and buildings are interchangeable between the Town, Crossroads or Big City
Secondary Mechanics
As you build up and connect your Town Squares, travelling to on foot may become a bit of a hassle. Soon fast travel is unlocked via the OK Motors RV. customizable just like before but this time hopping in the passenger seat gives you the options to where you'd like to go, can either take the short way and instantly pop over to the location you want to get to or the long way. Which takes the player down a route similar to the one connecting the two areas and you may find villagers on the side of the road, pick them up and you have a great chance of having them move in.
10 villagers for your main town
4 for the campgrounds
2 for the island (more like ACe+ less NH)
All can be seen wandering the Big City and Crossroads, but you have a higher chance seeing moved out villagers or villagers from friend's towns via wifi.
Villager move ins are still possible the old school way by placing a plot, the HHD process, the random villager interaction on routes.
Beachfront can be unlocked to have Kapp'n take you to Tortimer Island for mini-games with friends.
City Airport is used for traveling to out-of-season or opposite hemisphere islands for seasonal item acquiring but they cost a fair amount of Nook Points, you'll also need to make sure you have the right tools or it will be a bust. Mostly used to travel to friend's towns for visits and trade.
Having trouble finding one of your villagers? Use the Contact App and text your villager (only a certain amount of prompts available) such as "where are you?" and they'll tell you. Like wise they can text you and see if you'd like to go somewhere together. Villagers are more likely to text you if you are inside your house or away from a town for a certain amount of time. Otherwise they'll just run to talk to you.
ALL NPCs return with new ones as well that relate to, can be found at and are a mechanic to certain areas.
In Summary
So that's about it for the newer idea stuff. The rest would play out just like a normal animal crossing game. Town hall expansion, museum expansion, villager expansions and houses, Nook Inc going from mobile office to skyscraper in the city, daily npcs and yearly events.
The idea is pretty much to have a regular animal crossing game with all the features but give players the choice how big they want to make it. players who share a save file can even potentially have two separate towns to look after.
And again, I'm aware how big this game would be compared to the others, but this is the simplest way I could think of making this a city tycoon and still be grounded to the rules of animal crossing.
Love to hear your ideas and your own concepts.
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