The creation and terraforming tools in Animal Crossing: New Horizons allow players more freedom to customize their towns than ever, but a few limitations keep things from feeling truly free - especially the inability to build bridges over cliffs. Many Animal Crossing: New Horizons players want to be able to build "air bridges," begging Nintendo to remove bridge-building's water requirement. In the meantime, others have come up with ways to build fake land bridges.
The terraforming feature in New Horizons lets players shape their islands to their liking, building up mountains and moving rivers. Players have been able to create impressive Animal Crossing island transformations with these tools. Popular terraforming techniques include making decorative island entryways, secret passages to player homes, island-spanning obstacle courses, and more. Unfortunately, connecting raised areas without building a filled-in walkway is impossible.
Reddit user KingstonWhite used photo editing to create a mock-up of what a bridge without water could look like, and many fans agreed it's a must-add feature. Commenters thought a suspension bridge between two cliffs would be especially visually impressive. KingstonWhite's post has earned almost 51,000 upvotes at the time of writing, and it's gotten even more attention elsewhere. Twitter user @CrossingRyan shared KingstonWhite's post there with the caption "Nintendo, please," and it's received 101,000 likes 15,300 retweets.
Without the ability to officially build one of New Horizons' bridges over the air, some players have turned to creating fake bridges instead. Twitter user @isleofmarlie used fencing and custom floor patterns to make a strip of cliffs look like a bridge. When viewed from the side, it's pretty clearly just some terraformed elevation, but the illusion works well when walking across the structure. For added effect, @isleofmarlie also embellished the bridge with log stools at either end of the fencing, as well as a sloped stone path leading up to one side.
This, of course, wouldn't work at all if players wanted to build a land bridge at an angle like the one in KingstonWhite's example, since fencing can only be placed straight up or down, and the camera would reveal the bridge's land-filled underside. For that, players will have to wait and see if Nintendo decides to implement an air bridge fix in a future update. So far, Animal Crossing's updates have been limited to new visiting vendors and holiday events, but it's possible others could introduce quality-of-life improvements. Nintendo's Super Mario Maker 2 World Maker update, for example, brought a huge new feature almost a year after the game's release. The developer seems to be planning more regular support of New Horizons, so players could see something similar soon.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons released on March 20, 2020, for the Nintendo Switch.
Image Source: KingstonWhite/Reddit