Summary
Animal Crossing: New Horizonsbrought some of the most helpful quality of life improvements to the series yet that made the game drastically more accessible to new players. Additions like theDrop-Off Box for selling items to Nook’s Crannywhen it’s closed and a bigger overall pocket size means players are able to gather and sell items from around their island more efficiently than ever before. However, there is still room for improvement with this system, and the nextAnimal Crossinggame should look toPalia’s overflow inventory system as a model to follow.
Despite only being in its Open Beta as of August 9,Paliahas already shown itself to be a new standard for the life-sim genre, and one of the biggest ways the game improves upon other titles in the genre is with its approach to inventory management. As a MMO with an expansive world to explore and resources to collect,Paliaplayers will often find the need much more inventory space than they have available.Animal Crossing: New Horizonsplayers often face a similar issue, andPalia’s elegant solution to this problem would be right at home in the nextAnimal Crossing game.
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Palia’s Overflow Inventory Should Inspire the Next Animal Crossing
In life-sim games likePaliaandAnimal Crossing: New Horizons, gathering resources like fish, insects, ore, and furniture is a major part of the gameplay loop. Whether these resources are used for crafting, selling, or decorating, players' inventory tends to fill up quickly when out and about in the world. As a result, players are often forced to leave items behind for the sake of conserving storage space, meaning they end up having to take multiple trips to collect all of their desired items or even risk having those dropped items disappear entirely.
Paliaoffers an excellent solution to this inventoryproblem by giving players an extra bar of overflow inventory that will temporarily hold items that can’t fit into their normal backpack. While the items stored in the overflow bar will disappear after a period of time if not transferred to permanent storage, it still makes for a huge improvement over having to risk losing valuable items out in the field or having to run back and forth to collect all the desired resources. As long as players remember to transfer their overflow items into their main inventory as soon as possible, this system is an essential quality of life feature.
TheAnimal Crossingseriescould adapt this type of system to fit its next entry by offering players a similar limited number of overflow spaces of their inventory reserved for when the rest of their pockets are full. WhileAnimal Crossingplayers don’t have to worry about dropped items disappearing when they leave the area, having a system like this would still serve to make resource collecting gameplay as a whole much more efficient. For example, players who may be fishing to earn Bells might have just filled up their inventory when a shark spawns on screen, and with this type of inventory system, they can still catch it without worry of it de-spawning if they leave.
If the nextAnimal Crossinggame leans more towards the open-world genre, then an inventory system like this would be even more useful. Gathering resources likefruit inAnimal Crossing: New Horizonscan already be tedious if players have to travel back and forth when collecting and selling fruit, but an open world could make a task like this even more time-consuming. Regardless of where the nextAnimal Crossinggame takes players, this simple quality of life feature would be a very welcome addition to the franchise.
Animal Crossing: New Horizonsis available for Nintendo Switch.
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