We may be a PC gaming site, but that hasn’t prevented many of us from catching the Animal Crossing: New Horizons bug while we’ve been sequestered in our homes to wait out various quarantines. Fortunately for us, an artist in Hong Kong has worked out how to pair our passion for PC games with the latest Switch phenomenon by using Minecraft as an urban planning tool for Animal Crossing.
Freelance illustrator and background artist Cheryl Young shared an image from a Minecraft build Young was working on to map out the residential area on Young’s Animal Crossing island. The build shows paths built in wood, wrapping around clusters of homes nestled into some low hills and streams.
It’s a simple but brilliant idea – Animal Crossing’s buildings fit into a similar grid pattern to the one you’ll find in Minecraft, and if you have the dimensions of each building in Animal Crossing, you can easily recreate layouts in Minecraft creative mode prior to setting anything down in stone in Animal Crossing. If you don’t like the look, no problem – whip out that pickaxe and try another. Once you have the flow you like, you can start filling things in in Animal Crossing.
Helpfully, Young has also provided the dimensions of several Animal Crossing buildings:
if you wanna try:
– villager houses are 4×4
– your house is 4×5
– the museum is 4×8
– bridges are 2×4 and have to cross a 4 block gap of water to count
– substitute whatever other blocks to make it work XD— Cheryl 🍡 lost in ACNH (@cysketch) March 26, 2020
Smart, right? If you’re trying to make your New Horizons village look as good as it can get, then a bit of pre-planning and mock-up work can make all the difference. As an added bonus, you can check out the look of your town in first person this way.
Sadly, Minecraft does not offer any advantages when it comes to farming for iron nuggets, which are devilishly hard to come by when you’re first getting going in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
Related: Here are the best Minecraft seeds
If you’d rather not sully your hands with a console, however, we’ve still got you covered. Here’s a list of games like Animal Crossing you can play on PC, and thanks to mods, you now can bring Isabelle along with you in classic Doom.