Animal Crossing datamining effort uncovers massive future update potential

Spoilers

As more and more of us reach the point where we’ve unlocked terraforming in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, we’re starting to want a little bit more out of it.

We always knew that Nintendo had a long term plan via DLC for the game, but a new datamining effort from Twitter user Ninji has found quite a bit of content to chew on in the coming months.

Spoilers.

Here’s a short list of what may come if the data is to be believed, straight from their findings:

• There’s entries for two extra museum upgrades. All three levels (after the tent) seem to contain an art section.

• There also seems to be two standalone buildings: the museum shop, and the museum cafe (which incorporates a Gyroid section).

• Redd appears to have a ship which will dock on the ‘secret beach’ at the north of the island. That particular acre is called Nã¤ã­ãã¡ internally – ã¤ã­ãã¡ is Redd’s Japanese name. The ‘fake art’ mechanic is coming back, but I don’t know more details.

• Bushes are coming back: azalea, hibiscus, holly, hydrangea, camellia, osmathus Those might change; the list actually changed between 1.0.0 and 1.1.4! Vegetables that you can grow and pick: tomato, wheat, sugar cane, potato, carrot, pumpkin.

• 1.0.0 has a file for a “Seafood” Critterpedia page that’s supposed to contain 33 items; the only one actually in the released game is the manila clam.

• There’s a 3rd Nook’s Cranny referenced, but no details on features or upgrade requirements.

• Diving will allow you to obtain fish (a different set from fishing ofc) and seaweed. There’s a portion of the save file reserved to store them already! (I’m not sure how, or if, this ties into the “Seafood” critterpedia page — not enough info yet).

• Unused shopping interfaces: ‘cGardening’, ‘cMuseum’ (museum shop?), ‘cRealEstate’, ‘cGallery.’ These might not be full-fledged shops. This particular system includes Nook Miles redemption, bridge/slope type purchases and Kicks’s shoes, for example.

There’s already plenty of items in the game, and the custom tool is in-depth enough for me, but the promise of more buildings is really what I want. There simply aren’t enough places to visit in the current state of the game. Also, the potential of another Nook’s Cranny (shop) upgrade is tantalizing: maybe we’ll have the opportunity to straight up buy even better tools directly (like the custom-design tools in the second shop) instead of tediously crafting them?

It’s possible Nintendo will slowly drip these quality of life features out over time under the guise of content updates.