New Horizons was the most successful Animal Crossing to date. The ability to terraform and place furniture outside is literally game-changing. Before, there was no way to make an island your own besides custom paths, flowers, and public works projects. Thankfully, a fountain doesn’t cost nearly 100k bells to make anymore. Now, it’s a pretty simple DIY instead.

However, there are still some missing features, as well. Unfortunately, there are some fun activities that could easily be added in order to improve the game and add gameplay features to keep fans interested. Some fans have gone so far as to suggest that ACNH is actually limbo due to its missing elements. What features are missing from Animal Crossing: New Horizons a year later?

10 Crafting In Bulk

Crafting is one of the new mechanics added to Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Along with item customization, it has unlocked thousands of possibilities for players. There are items that often need to be crafted a few times depending on the situation.

One item that is especially tedious to craft because of this is bait. Individually crafting each piece of fish bait is definitely a chore – especially when only one Manila Clam can be caught at a time. This is why crafting in bulk is a necessity: to save time and button clicks.

9 Shops And Buildings

In previous Animal Crossing games, like City Folk and New Leaf, there were shopping districts. The player would visit these areas and visit various shops like GracieGrace, Leif’s Flower Shop, Kicks, and Shampoodle. There were also specialty buildings like the Police Station, the Post Office, and The Roost.

The Roost, Brewster’s café, has been one of the most common requests among the Animal Crossing community. Being able to purchase a cup of coffee and walking around town drinking was an incredibly satisfying option. Plus, working at the café was a very fun activity. Adding these “quality of life” experiences could only improve an island goer’s adventure.

8 Upgrade Initial Villager Homes

The first 5 villagers to move in will live in premade basic homes. Although these houses will have the villager’s own exterior, all will display the same interior. Meanwhile, villagers that move in afterward will all have their original home interiors. This is unfortunate because naturally, it is easier to get more attached to the first villagers as they’re the ones that gamers spend their first few days on the island with.

It would be great to somehow upgrade the generic starter homes and allow these villagers to have their own personal interior without having to let them move out and get them back with the help of friends.

7 Fruit Variety

At the moment, Animal Crossing: New Horizons has 6 types of fruit. There are apples, cherries, coconuts, oranges, peaches, and pears. However, this isn’t even half the amount of fruit available in the game’s predecessor.

In New Leaf, there were also lychees, durians, lemons, mangos, bananas, persimmons, and grapes. Not to mention the fact that there was something called “Perfect Fruit”. The fact that these varieties of fruit aren’t available in New Horizons is unfortunate. It’d be refreshing to collect more types and see new fruit trees grow.

6 Added Minigames

The timer tool was a nice addition to the game. It made it easier for players to create their own challenges. The player can choose how many minutes they want the timer to count and then it’ll display how many bugs, fish, and deep-sea creatures each player has caught once it reaches zero.

However, in New Leaf, there were actually minigames that fans could play. For example, if the player obtained a Wii U or a 3DS in-game, there was a game for each console. And in the original Animal Crossing, players could actually collect and play NES games.  It’s sad not to see this kind of feature implemented in the latest entry to the series.

5 Furniture And NPC Gyroids

Gyroids used to be and still are for many fans, one of the faces of the Animal Crossing series. Gyroids were usually furniture, but there’s also Gyroid NPCs that the player can interact with. One of the most notorious Gyroids is Lloid.

Lloid has been around since City Folk, but also made appearances in New Leaf, Pocket Camp, and New Horizons. However, he doesn’t play such a significant role in the most recent game and all of the other Gyroids have been completely removed from the game.

4 Tortimer Island

Fans will recognize Tortimer Island as an island in New Leaf. Gamers could access this island with Kapp’n’s boat and he would even sing players a song each time they would go out to sea. Unfortunately, winter lacks variety when it comes to bugs and fish.

But Tortimer Island was a place of eternal summer with not only summer creatures but also creatures unique to the island. Adding an option to visit the island would be a fun way to spend Nook Miles. It’s one more place to go rather than only visiting random islands from the player’s island all year round.

3 More Varied NPCs

There is a chance that most NPCs have been removed because the developers want to release updates to ACNH for a long time. Players will keep playing New Horizons for longer and there won’t be excess updates needed. Of course, the game has actually been updated to feature NPCs like Rover, Redd, Pascal, and a few other fan favorites.

However, it’d be great to see other NPCs such as Lottie, Digby, Resetti, Lyle, Pete, Copper, etc. All of these characters were important at some point in the series and it would be a pity to not add them at some points.

2 Villager Visits

It’s nice to have friends over after completing one’s Animal Crossing house. It was especially nice in other games when villagers could come over to visit and hang out with the player in their homes.

They would just inquire when the player would be free and ask if they could come on over. They would comment on the player’s home and even follow them into other rooms. It was overall a very wholesome experience and many fans were disappointed to know that they couldn’t have villagers over.

1 Interactive Items

Items are somewhat interactive in New Horizons, but not in any way that would surprise fans of the older games. For example, villagers and players can make the soccer balls available in the game bounce but that’s it. It’s not possible to actually kick a soccer ball and play a game with it.

In Pocket Camp, there are hundreds of different animations for many furniture items. Villagers will bathe in the “Serene Outdoor Bath” in Pocket Camp but it’s not possible to interact with “Outdoor Bath” in New Horizons. Adding these possibilities makes the in-game world feel more alive.

NEXT: Animal Crossing: 10 Things To Do Once You’ve Perfected Your Island