Happy Home Paradise:

On 15th October, Nintendo livestreamed a direct which revealed a new 2.0 update and paid DLC known as Happy Home Paradise. In this article, we’ll be discussing everything that was announced to do with the paid DLC. 

Happy Home Paradise is very similar to Happy Home Designer on the 3DS where the player designs interior and exterior houses for villagers. HHP is an archipelago made of several islands. In order to start decorating you have to go to your island’s airport and select the option “I want to go to work”. Dodo Airlines will fly you to the archipelago and from there you can walk to the Paradise Planning office which is the resort developer and then start working there with a reference from Tom Nook to design vacation homes. You’re joined by Lottie who has appeared in previous animal crossing games (including Happy Home Designer), Niko, a new NPC who is a cute monkey and Wardell, also a new NPC who is a manatee with a cool hairstyle. They also work in the Paradise Planning office. 

Villagers that visit the island in search for someone to design them a holiday house, will appear walking around with thought bubbles above their head with the ideal setting and theme and you can approach them and offer to help design it for them. Once you’ve done this, Lottie will be consulted to help find the perfect island for the villager’s new holiday home. The islands range in weather, climate and surroundings. In the trailer, a beach island was shown off, a desert island, an icy wasteland and lots more. You can select whichever location you think best fits the villager’s vision of their new home. There are plenty of plots to choose from on the map!

Once you’ve chosen the location, Niko will escort you there and you can start designing the interior and exterior. Inside the house, the villager will have some required furniture which has to be included in the house design but apart from that you can design whatever you want. There will also be some recommendations as to what items would fit the villagers theme when you’re decorating. When designing the exterior, you can place fences, furniture, trees and paths from the landscaping license from your own island. You can also move the house anywhere around the designated spot and change the look of the exterior and the time of day, weather and season. You can also make a recommendation for two clients to share a holiday house with each other so they can become animal crossing roomies!!

As seen in the new 2.0 update, you can now add ceiling items and accent walls. You can also eventually unlock new design abilities such as adjusting the size of the house’s interior, placing partition walls which essentially divide the house up into different rooms (no need to use bookcases anymore!..), placing counters with different heights, placing pillars to support the ceiling, adjusting the lighting colour and brightness, soundscapes with different themes such as “ocean” and “construction” and also polishing items which results in different effects such as sparkles and butterflies as shown in the trailer. These new design techniques open up a whole range of new ideas and you can even use them on your own island once they’ve been unlocked in the DLC. 

As compensation for working for Paradise Planning, you earn a new game currency known as Poki which can be redeemed for exclusive furniture available to buy in the office such as a beach chair combo with umbrella, a piggy bank, lamp, mirror, souvenir chocolate box and a new plant item known as a schefflera. These were some of the items showcased in the direct so there is, of course, potential for other items. 

The more requests you receive, the more furniture becomes available for you to use when designing interiors. You can also visit past clients to remodel their house again which will offer a lot more hours of gameplay making this DLC worth the price. 

Aside from designing holiday homes for villagers, you can design facilities on the island which Lottie’s Paradise Planning office is located on. The ones showcased in the trailer in the trailer are a school, restaurant and hospital. It even appears as though villagers can work at these facilities as we see a clip of Vivian as a school teacher, giving a stern look to one of her students. There were also a few villagers cooking in the restaurant and Sherb as a waiter! This closely ties in with the fact that we recently saw data mines for villager jobs and outfits relating to nurse’s jackets and school uniform.

Whenever you design a plot, images from the newly renovated home are stored in a portfolio which can be accessed through an app called the Happy Home Network app on your Nook phone. From there you can visit all the villagers homes you have designed in the past and share your designs with people online which allows you to tour the houses they’ve designed and even follow them on the Happy Home Network app. 

You can also use animal crossing amiibo cards and figures at the amiibo reader in the Paradise Planning office to invite villagers in order to design a vacation house for them. This means you can even design vacation homes for NPCs such as Isabelle and the Nooklings!

If you give your villagers souvenirs from Happy Home Paradise which have been purchased with Poki currency from the office such as the souvenir chocolates, they might request to visit the archipelago and even get a holiday home! It is still unknown as to whether they will be able to return to your island after they get their vacation house, but it most assuredly will allow them to travel between the two places. The DLC is great however as you can design homes for villagers that you’ve wanted on your own island but couldn’t have due to the 10-house limit as there are roughly 50 plots for you to design on the archipelago!

Once you have designed a certain number of homes, you can remodel your villager’s houses on your own island which has been a much-wanted feature since the game released. 

This paid downloadable DLC retails at $24.99 / £22.49/ 24.99 euros as a standalone purchase and pre orders began on 29thOctober. However, it is also included in the expansion pack tier of Nintendo Switch Online membership alongside the N64 and Sega Genesis virtual consoles at $49.99/£34.99/39,99 euros for an individual membership and $79.99/ £59.99/ 69,99 euros for a family pass catering for up to 8 users. However, since this is quite a price hike from the original tier of membership which was £17.99 for an individual user or £31.49 for a family plan, if you’re just interested in playing the animal crossing DLC, it seems better value to buy it separately and stick with your original Nintendo switch online membership because if you cancel your NSO + expansion pack tier membership, you lose access to the archipelago but can still use some of the items and design techniques on your own island. However, if there are more than one of you playing on an island, in order for you both to access Happy Home Paradise, you both have to purchase the DLC so a family membership + expansion pack may seem worth it. Some form of NSO will be required to use the online features of this new DLC such as the Happy Home Network since it requires internet to view designs from players around the world. 

In addition to all these new features and content, many new items and returning items from old games that haven’t made an appearance in New Horizons are being added to this update including the fan favourite Froggy chair.

Series 5 amiibo will also be launching on November 5thintroducing 48 featuring Orville, Wilbur, CJ, Flick, Daisy Mae, Harvey, Wisp, Sherb, Megan, Dom, Audie, Cyd, Judy, Raymond, Reneigh who were some of the new villagers and NPCs added to the game on its initial release (or NPCs who didn’t get amiibo cards in the past) and new villagers and NPCs including: Niko, Wardell, Sasha (bunny), Ione (squirrel), Tiansheng (monkey), Shino (deer), Marlo (hamster), Petri (mouse), Cephalobot (octopus), Quinn (eagle) and Chabwick (penguin). The packs will include six cards each. If you’re in the UK and want to purchase these cards, they usually become out of stock very quickly so keep checking the Nintendo UK store and amazon UK for any restocks and pre-orders. 

This was by far the biggest update we’ve ever received for animal crossing however Nintendo did add that it would be the last major free content update (see our previous article for details on this) with only minimal support for the game moving forward but as for the DLC, only time will tell whether Nintendo will release more in the future.