At the beginning of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, players are given a home on their island which they are free to design any way they choose, but this home will always be a perfectly square room. Upgrading the player’s Animal Crossing home will increase the size of this space and add adjoining rooms, but players will never have the chance to decorate a hallway or a foyer for their homes.
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Players have had to get creative, then, with the different customization options available to them and the perspective of the game itself. A Reddit user named shakeber has shared a clever trick for designing a hallway which leads to the bottom of what looks like a staircase and gives the impression that the player’s Animal Crossing house has a different layout than the open plan squares of most Animal Crossing homes.
The effect is created by using the suitably named Stair Dresser item and placing it in a gap behind a partition wall so that it creates the impression of a continuing staircase. Shakeber also uses stickers to create a door next to the staircase and decorates the area to create an adorable entrance hall, complete with an Iron Hanger Stand and shoes by the door.
From Animal Crossing’s traditional top-down camera perspective, the illusionary staircase stands up to scrutiny, although the camera is able to move freely 360 degrees around the room when inside a player’s home, which may cause the illusion to break down slightly. But Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a game about creating a picturesque home on a picturesque island, and a staircase to nowhere in service of that isn’t nearly is strange as the interior designing done by other Animal Crossing villagers. Looking at previous posts from Shakeber on Reddit, as well as on their Twitter account, reveals many more creative Animal Crossing designs for both inside the player’s home and the rest of the island, with many of these designs using similar forced perspective tricks to imply hidden areas to the viewer.
All of Shakeber Animal Crossing posts are designs which could inspire other players who are struggling to make up their mind on what kind of aesthetic theme they would like to apply to a particular area of their island or to the rooms in their Animal Crossing house.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is available for Nintendo Switch.
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