Column: LEGO Animal Crossing misses the key feature of the game

LEGO Animal Crossing misses an opportunity to capture the true spirit of the original games through the lack of one key feature.

Anyone who has played Animal Crossing will know that the joy of the game lies in personalisation. You start off with your own island and a small, largely undecorated home. From picking your name and unlocking new accessories for your avatar to completing tasks that will ultimately allow you to expand and redesign your home, being able to customise almost everything about the game to your liking is what keeps people playing. There are no overarching objectives and only a very loose story; much like games like The Sims or Stardew Valley, you can truly make Animal Crossing your own.

When rumours first started surfacing about LEGO Animal Crossing, it wasn’t a huge jump, then, to think that the LEGO Group might incorporate some level of personalisation. After all, the idea isn’t a new one within LEGO sets. The newly-launched original theme, LEGO DREAMZzz, features 2-in-1 “guided creativity” options, where builders choose between two sets of instructions to create the version of the final set that they prefer. Similarly, another recent release, 31210 Modern Art, opens the door for builders to use the brick-built colourful elements to create a LEGO piece of art of their own.

Creativity is baked into the essence of building LEGO. Many people’s memories from childhood will be building fantastical models out of whatever bricks were left over or they could find lying around. To me, it’s surprising and honestly disappointing to see, therefore, that the LEGO Group hasn’t incorporated any of customisable options into the upcoming 2024 wave.

Two of the sets, 77049 Isabelle’s House Visit and 77050 Nook’s Cranny & Rosie’s House, include houses from Animal Crossing. In-game, admittedly, these sites wouldn’t be available to remodel until after completing the Happy Home Paradise DLC, but some element of choosing the colour of the roof, what decoration options are inside, and so on would have been more than welcome.

Even better, what about an entirely different set, where the first step is to build a plain tent, but then you can choose to upgrade to a house (perhaps even with a couple of colour options), or simply decorate the interior of the tent as you please. Much like 10317 Land Rover Classic Defender 90, for example, the instructions could walk builders through creating various Animal Crossing-related accessories before encouraging you to arrange them as and when you please.

Even for sets without actual buildings, terraforming the sets could open up a whole world of opportunities. Allow for options of where to place the bridge in 77048 Kapp’n’s Island Boat Tour, or offer enough pieces for builders to decide the height of the different levels in 77047 Bunnie’s Outdoor Activities. This might well increase the price of the upcoming wave but, considering the lacklustre response to the actual sets, perhaps sets more in keeping with the spirit of Animal Crossing would have encouraged people to spend more.

Of course, there’s nothing stopping anyone from buying the LEGO Animal Crossing sets and customising them anyway, but leading with creativity and customisation would surely have attracted both LEGO and Animal Crossing fans alike. After all, spending hours fine-tuning tiny designs is something both communities have in common.

Ultimately, I see it as a missed opportunity from the LEGO Group, especially with other themes promoting creativity, to not include any personalisation options in LEGO Animal Crossing. While the sets are bright and do have that AC-island-feel when arranged altogether, it’s something that would have captured the true heart of Animal Crossing as a game.

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Rachael Davies

I write about all the very best fandoms – and that means LEGO, of course. Spending so much time looking at and talking about LEGO sets is dangerous for my bank balance, but the LEGO shelves are thriving. You win some, you lose some.

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