Animal Crossing Director Aya Kyogoku discusses what’s next for the series as well as Happy Home Designer and amiibo

10 years ago Justin 10 Comments

In an interview at E3 with Gamesbeat, Animal Crossing: New Leaf Director Aya Kyogoku offered up some information on what’s next for the Animal Crossing series, as well as additional thoughts on the upcoming games releasing this fall.

After the announcement of the new spin-off games coming this fall, many fans have been wondering when we’ll see a real new Animal Crossing game. When asked about the future of the series and whether we’ll see a full-blown Animal Crossing game next or another spin-off, Aya Kyogoku doesn’t offer much encouragement saying “that hasn’t been decided yet, but as a team we’re constantly thinking about what we can do for the series in the future.”

We can only speculate as to how far along another Animal Crossing game might be, but Kyogoku makes it clear that the current focus has been squarely on the currently announced games saying that “we’re in full development for Happy Home Designer and Amiibo Festival. We’ve been focusing on that.” Of course, Happy Home Designer is due to release in Japan in just over a month and amiibo Festival launches this holiday season, so development is wrapping up on these projects.

It seems the original concept for Happy Home Designer came from what the developers have done themselves in the past when creating every Animal Crossing game and designing the rooms of each villager with their own suiting furniture:

“When we were developing Animal Crossing, we had to come up with ideas for houses that the animals have when they first move in to your town. They have a set of furniture and decorations they use. That was very fun for us as developers.” says Kyogoku, adding that “we tried to think of a way we could get this kind of experience to players as well. That’s where the origins of this home-designing concept came from.”

Why the move to Animal Crossing spin-offs now though after so long? The answer might be amiibo, at least in part based on Kyogoku’s comments: “In the past, Animal Crossing has only been Animal Crossing, but we thought that with the addition of Amiibo — how could we make an Animal Crossing game that would be fun by adding Amiibo features? What resulted was Happy Home Designer on 3DS and Amiibo Festival on the Wii U. This was a way to try different ways of playing Animal Crossing.”

Finally, Aya Kyogoku dropped a few other little tidbits on Happy Home Designer noting that:

• There is no store to buy furniture from; it’s all available to you for free but is still progressively unlocked
• Accepting new requests unlocks new furniture which matches the theme of the request
• There is no “budget” when designing homes, although this was considered at some point in the development process
• You can fully customize your character to change your face and hair
• You will always be in the Nook Homes’ uniform when designing homes as you are working
• amiibo Cards are absolutely not required to play the game; villagers will still appear randomly with their requests

For more on Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer and Animal Crossing: amiibo Festival, check out the full interview at Gamesbeat and stay tuned to Animal Crossing World for continued coverage for both titles.

Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer News