Why Animal Crossing's Next Game Must Revolutionize Flower Mechanics

Reaching a perfect island status in Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a significant goal for players. It not only unlocks the recipe for the Golden Watering Can but also increases the chances of finding the rare Lily of the Valley flower. A crucial aspect of achieving a five-star island is ensuring adequate plant life with a sufficient number of trees and flowers. However, the game seems to emphasize flower-filled islands, and planting just a few flowers can quickly lead to an overgrown and chaotic island, making flowers almost as troublesome as weeds.

While tending to gardens and growing flowers has always been a delightful aspect of the Animal Crossing series, Animal Crossing: New Horizons has introduced hardier flowers that grow and spread more rapidly than previous versions. While this can be advantageous for players interested in breeding flowers for unique colors, it often results in an island overwhelmed with flowers. Managing and containing them becomes more of a hassle than they are worth.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons' Successor Needs to Tone Down Flower Growth

While increased flower growth rates can have both positive and negative effects, Animal Crossing: New Horizons introduces a new approach to handling flowers that ends up making them more challenging to manage compared to previous games in the series. Instead of being able to easily remove unwanted flowers, players are now required to pick the flower currently on the plant and leave the rest, resulting in the need to individually dig up each unwanted flower using a shovel if they want to dispose of it or relocate it.

This change was implemented with good intentions as it allows players to repeatedly obtain rare flowers without the need for breeding multiple plants. However, when combined with the rapid reproduction rate of flowers in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, it actually makes them more invasive and weed-like rather than helpful. To make matters worse, flowers experience accelerated growth when watered, and if it happens to rain on a player's island, the flowers will spread excessively the following day. The 2.0 update of Animal Crossing: New Horizons introduced ordinances, such as the Beautiful Island ordinance, which causes villagers to water flowers more frequently, further exacerbating the problem.

Players can address the issue of flower overpopulation by strategically using fences and paths, or by placing trash cans on their island for faster flower disposal. However, these solutions are not sustainable in the long term. Instead, the next Animal Crossing game should modify the mechanics of flowers to strike a balance between Animal Crossing: New Horizons' approach and that of previous entries in the series. Flowers should either grow at a faster rate or allow players to pick them without uprooting the entire plant. This would streamline the process of obtaining rare colors while avoiding the hassle of managing an overgrown town.

Another potential solution for dealing with overpopulated flowers is similar to the weed pulling service offered by Leif in Animal Crossing: New Leaf and Animal Crossing: New Horizons post-version 2.0. Players could have the option to hire Leif to automatically remove a specific portion of flowers in their town and store them for later use. This way, players can still replant any inadvertently picked flowers without the risk of losing valuable ones, while also providing a straightforward method for eliminating large quantities of unwanted flowers before they become bothersome or unsightly.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is available for Nintendo Switch.