One of the best parts of Animal Crossing: New HorizonsHappy Home Paradise DLC is the inclusion of facilities, and they could be expanded upon further in a future Animal Crossing sequel. The Happy Home Paradise expansion allows AC players to take their creative skills further than the series has ever allowed, by placing them in charge of designing a multitude of vacation homes for the game's many different animals. As fun as creating vacation homes based on outlandish themes can be, the best part of the expansion is allowing players to also build a variety of different facilities around the DLC's hub resort area.

Amongst the facilities players can design in Happy Home Paradise are a restaurant, a cafe, a school, and even a hospital. The feature is fairly robust by Animal Crossing design standards; in some cases it allows the player to design multi-room facilities and each and every one of the buildings can be staffed with whichever animals the player wants. This is all a welcome addition to the New Horizons experience, but it still feels like it could easily be improved upon.

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Nintendo has already said that New Horizons won't be getting any more substantial content updates, so unfortunately players will have to wait for the next installment in the series to see any additions to the facility system. However, thanks to New Horizons' massive success, a future installment is all but guaranteed to happen eventually, which means now is the perfect time to speculate on ways that Happy Home Paradise's facilities can be improved upon in the next game. A couple of tweaks and additions to the system laid out in Happy Home Paradise could help redefine the series and make the next installment even better than New Horizons.

Animal Crossing Facilities Should Be Buildable On The Main Island

Animal Crossing Nook's Cranny

The most obvious way to expand upon the facility system is by allowing the player to build and place the facilities around their own island. Spending hours designing a restaurant in Happy Home Paradise and then watching it come alive with daily animal visitors is a lot of fun, but it's also somewhat of a drag to have to fly out to the resort area anytime the player wants to see it. As great as the Happy Home Paradise expansion is, AC players will still probably spend the vast majority of their time in New Horizons on their islands, which limits the amount of time they can spend at their facilities. Having the facilities locked to a different area makes sense in this context, given the DLC is separate to the main game, but a future installment of the series that includes facilities in the base game would be the ideal opportunity to give players more flexibility with where they build their facilities.

Nintendo could take the feature even further by giving players full control over where exactly they place the buildings on their island, similar to how players can move Nook's Cranny and Able Sisters' locations. Being able to create a fully-fledged shopping district, complete with multiple stores and restaurants would be a dream come true for many AC players, and could give people more control over their islands than ever before. As cool (and adorable) as it is to see vacationing animals working in restaurants in Happy Home Paradise, it would be even cooler if players could see their beloved Animal Crossing villagers working in the facilities instead. All of this would add a level of customization to the facilities that Happy Home Paradise lacked and would help make players' islands feel even more personal and tailored to them.

Related: Animal Crossing Villager Combinations To Make The Worst Island Ever

In the same vein of more customization options, it would also be great if the next AC installment added more types of facilities. Happy Home Paradise lays a solid foundation by allowing players to build a restaurant, cafe, school, hospital, and clothing store, but there are still plenty of possibilities for expansion here. To again touch on the subject of a shopping district, perhaps the next AC game could allow players to design and build their own supermarket to place next to the more furniture-centric Nook's Cranny. Now seems like the ideal time for something like this, especially with the latest Animal Crossing update adding so many new food items to the game. The game could even take things a step further by allowing the player to customize each type of facility. Maybe one's island could have not only an upscale five-star restaurant, but also a fast-food establishment, complete with its own drive-thru design. Allowing players the freedom to choose their type of facility along with the ability to place it anywhere they wanted on their island would provide an unmatched level of freedom.

Animal Crossing Facilities Could Incorporate More Mini-Games

Animal Crossing Group Stretching Guide: How to Join & Rewards

Finally - and this one might be a bit of a long shot - Nintendo could also provide more ways for players to interact with their facilities, possibly in the form of different mini-games. This doesn't have to be anything too extravagant - maybe the player can earn some bells by taking on a delivery job for the restaurant in town. Players could be tasked with delivering food orders to different residents all across the island, even earning extra incentives based on how quickly they complete their deliveries. Perhaps players could even partake in actual touch or rhythm-based mini-games at their facilities as well. This isn't something the series is particularly known for, but with the addition of the stretching activity in the latest ACNH update, something like this doesn't seem like too big of a step anymore.

As great as the facility feature in New HorizonsHappy Home Paradise DLC is, it also feels like it's just the first step to something even bigger. New Horizons fans will probably be waiting a while for a new installment. But when it finally does arrive hopefully it comes complete with more fleshed-out facility capabilities. There are plenty of ways Nintendo could expand upon the feature in an upcoming sequel, which should hopefully bring everything that was great from Animal Crossing: New Horizons core game and DLC expansions, plus more.

Next: How Many Villagers Are in Animal Crossing After 2.0 & Happy Home DLC