Players step into the offices of Nook’s Homes and have free reign to do whatever they want with villagers’ homes and the town’s facilities. You can pluck whatever you desire from your catalog of items, building materials, and accessories to customize every location. It’s like they’re all free, waiting to be used!
Except they’re not really all free. There is a price to be paid. Because you know, Tom Nook’s got to get his money.
Most furniture items unlock gradually as a player takes on new requests from animals. When I decorated Octavian’s house, some of the furniture items usually earned from fishing contests appeared in my catalog. Decorating the town’s school for Isabelle added items like desks and science lab furniture. Marcie wanted a home that looked like a nursery school, which meant suddenly my avatar could use playground equipment when decorating. I pretty much assumed the clients were footing the bill for all of these things, until it came time to unlock some new design elements.
After getting the approval to do all facility work in town, Nook approached me with the Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer handbook. Sitting on my desk was a binder filled with “lessons” that would make houses even better. Now, given that I’m his employee and am probably helping him bilk these animals out of who knows how many bells, you’d think he’d go ahead and impart his wisdom for free. Nope!
The first Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer is free. You know, lure people in. Subsequent lessons cost between one and five Play Coins, with 30 Play Coins total needed to unlock additional game elements. One lesson can be viewed each in-game day, meaning someone will have to go through 14 in-game days to unlock each one.
Here’s the full list of the available courses and their cost.
- Ceiling Decor – Free
- Custom Designs – 1 Play Coin
- Even More Designs – 5 Play Coins
- Windows and More – 2 Play Coins
- Sound Scenery – 2 Play Coins
- Refurbishing – 2 Play Coins
- Happy Home Camera – 1 Play Coins
- World Insects – 2 Play Coins
- World Fish – 2 Play Coins
- Ancient Fossils – 2 Play Coins
- Gyroids – 1 Play Coin
- Art Collection – 1 Play Coin
- Choosing a Layout – 5 Play Coins
- Styling Machine – 5 Play Coins
Now, accumulating Play-Coins isn’t too difficult. This is an odd method of unlocking, sure, but I had enough lying around to grab everything over a three day period. If you’re short on coins and time, though, I recommend taking the Refurbishing, Choosing a Layout, Custom Designs, and Windows and More lessons first. That allows you different style options for certain pieces of furniture, the ability to alter the layout of homes and choose more than one room, create custom designs for use in homes, and change window treatments and doors.
Perhaps the least useful are the Even More Designs, Styling Machine, and Happy Home Camera lessons. The first adds a sewing machine for custom designs, but that isn’t so much of a focus in Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer. The Styling Machine lets you change your avatar’s hair, eyes, and skin color, so that can wait so long as you’re satisfied with your initial decision. The Happy Home Camera is for people who intend to take a lot of pictures of their creations, so you can hold off on that in favor of more furniture if the standard camera’s services are adequate.
It’s an interesting manner of pacing things, though perhaps I’d feel differently if I hadn’t had 40 Play Coins to spare when starting Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer. The ability to choose what unlocks and when is appreciated, as I know I was going nuts not having the ability to refurbish furniture from the very start.
Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer is now available for the Nintendo 3DS in North America.
