The latest Animal Crossing: New Horizons Direct for 15/10/2021 has just finished airing and it had quite a number of exciting announcements.

Over to the Nintendo Press Release for all of the information...

Get ready to expand your horizons! In a new Animal Crossing: New Horizons Direct video presentation today, a sweeping lineup of new additions and options to enrich your island life were introduced. A number of these features for the Animal Crossing: New Horizons game for the Nintendo Switch family of systems will be available through a free update on Nov. 5.* These free features include characters from the Animal Crossing series, such as the composed Brewster, who will open a café on the second floor of the museum, and the sea shanty singing Kapp’n, who will take you to different islands with his boat; newly opened shops in the plaza on Harv’s Island, including Katrina’s fortune-telling shop; the introduction of cooking and growing vegetables; and a host of other customizations and features.

In addition to this free update, today’s video presentation also debuted the first details and footage for Animal Crossing: New Horizons – Happy Home Paradise.** In this paid DLC, you’ll have the chance to join Lottie and the Paradise Planning team. In your new role, you’ll travel to a chain of charming islands where you can design vacation homes, decorate island facilities – like a school and a restaurant – and discover new ways to create and personalize as you gain experience designing dream vacation homes for your clients. Animal Crossing: New Horizons – Happy Home Paradise launches on Nov. 5, and can be purchased for a one-time fee of $24.99. The paid expansion is also supported as a complimentary feature of Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack, the new membership plan of Nintendo Switch Online that includes the base Nintendo Switch Online membership, plus additional benefits like access to Nintendo 64 games and SEGA Genesis games. Members can download Animal Crossing: New Horizons – Happy Home Paradise for free and play while they maintain an active membership. An Individual Membership will cost €39.99 / £ 34.99 for 12 months, while a Family Membership will cost €69.99 / £ 59.99 for 12 months.

To view the Animal Crossing: New Horizons Direct video in its entirety, visit Nintendo’s YouTube channel here.

“With all this new content, we can’t wait for players to rediscover the vibrant world of Animal Crossing: New Horizons and enjoy new opportunities for relaxation and self-expression,” said Nick Chavez, Nintendo of America’s Senior Vice President of Sales, Marketing and Communications. “For daily players, returning residents and newcomers alike, we hope both Animal Crossing: New Horizons – Happy Home Paradise and the free update bring more experiences to your personal island paradise for a long time to come.”

The free update will offer new facilities, characters and support from Resident Services, as well as new gameplay mechanics. Here are just a few of the features and activities that can be enjoyed beginning Nov. 5:

• Brewster Will Open a Café: Something new is coming to a corner of the museum. The quiet proprietor Brewster will open the Roost after you fulfill a certain favor for museum director Blathers. The Roost is a new location to take a relaxing break in and enjoy some hand-selected coffee. You may run into some island residents here, too. If you use the amiibo phone inside the café, you can invite other characters to join you by using compatible amiibo cards. If you’d like, you can even invite friends*** to your island and bring them to the Roost to enjoy relaxing cups of joe together.
• Take a Boat Tour With Kapp’n: Kapp’n hangs out at the pier and will take you to one of the remote islands on his boat. The sea shanty he serenades you with along the way is also part of the fun! You may arrive at islands with mysterious flora that’s never been seen before, or islands with different seasons and times of day. What kind of mysteries await?
• Unearth Gyroids: So far, fossils could be dug up from the ground, and now you can also find gyroids. Each gyroid plays unique sounds. You can even customize them to match their surroundings when you place them!
• Shop at the Open Market on Harv’s Island: Harv’s Island is undergoing a renewal. With a little help from his friend Harriet, Harvey is inviting some shops to the island for an open market. Contribute Bells to the cause to help make it happen! Familiar visitors on your island like Redd, Saharah and Kicks will have shops here now, and Reese & Cyrus’s shop will offer furniture customization that can’t be done through DIY workbenches. At Katrina’s shop, she’ll look at your fortune of the day. Harriet can even teach you some different hairstyles!
• Get Cooking: Cooking will be added to DIY recipes. After growing vegetables in your garden like tomatoes, wheat, sugarcane, potatoes and carrots, you can combine your harvest or other ingredients and fill up your dining table with delicious looking dishes. Enjoy while it’s hot!
• Further Support to Your Island Life: Nook, Inc. will offer further support for your island life. From group stretching at the plaza and bigger home storage, to the Resident Representative being able to establish ordinances like reducing the rate at which weeds grow or making all the residents get up early in the morning, there are more options to help you enjoy and adjust the island to fit your lifestyle.

In addition to these features included with the free update, you may want to consider expanding your island getaway with the Animal Crossing: New Horizons – Happy Home Paradise paid DLC. In this expansion, you’ll join the Paradise Planning team, where you’ll have the opportunity to design vacation homes for characters, with dozens and dozens of vacationers enjoying your design inspirations! Let’s take a closer look at just some of the experiences you can expect with this new add-on, beginning Nov. 5:

• Work With Lottie as a Member of the Paradise Planning Team: Clients with different dream vacation requests will visit a new resort area located in an archipelago, made up of several different islands, where the Paradise Planning team is located. You can talk to a client and find out the details of their requests for a vacation home, and then make their dreams happen!
• Design Dream Vacation Homes: After choosing a location for your client’s dream vacation home, you can design the interior where you’ll place designated furniture that was delivered ahead of time. As you continue designing vacation homes, you’ll acquire various design techniques, from changing how the home is structured by adding partition walls and pillars to divide the space, to adding counters, ambient lighting and soundscapes to add depth to the room design, and more. The vacation home themes vary depending on the client, and many requests await your expertise. You can also decorate the exterior yard.
• Make Remodeling and Roommate Recommendations: As you gain experience as a designer, more furniture will become available, and you’ll also be able to make more suggestions. These include recommendations like remodeling the vacation homes of clients you’ve helped previously with different furniture, or even recommending that two clients share a room together as roommates.
• Design Facilities: There are several vacant buildings on the island where Lottie’s Paradise Planning team is located. Lottie wants to make this island more robust and developed, so you’ll be able to help design facilities such as a school, restaurant and café.
• Get Inspiration From the Happy Home Network: Capture photos of the vacation homes you design and save them to your catalog, which you can check out through the in-game Happy Home Network app in your NookPhone. From this app, you can also access the Showroom to view the building examples of designers from all over the world who have posted their creations online.**** You can follow the designers you like and view their samples for inspiration.
• Use amiibo To Invite More Clients: Usually your job is to look for clients on the resort who may be considering having their own vacation home, but … if you use the current Animal Crossing series amiibo accessories, you can invite a specific client to discuss their vacation home. With amiibo, you can even design the vacation homes of busy individuals like Isabelle and Timmy & Tommy!
• Bring Your Techniques Back to the Main Island: Techniques you’ve obtained through your work on the Paradise Planning team can also be used on your home island. Perhaps this will be a great opportunity for you to overhaul the design of your own home. And if you give island residents souvenir chocolate from Paradise Planning as a gift, they may become interested in what the archipelagos and vacation homes have to offer. Then, one day when you become a veteran designer with lots of experience, you will eventually be able to remodel residents’ homes on your island by making suggestions to them, too!

But that’s not all! To help further extend your island getaway, on Nov. 5, new Animal Crossing Series 5 amiibo cards will launch in select stores, bringing an additional variety of characters to the amiibo cards lineup. Each individual amiibo card pack will be available for purchase separately at a suggested retail price of $5.99 and will include six cards in each pack. You’ll be able to use these vibrantly designed amiibo cards in compatible games, including Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Series 5 will encompass a selection of 48 characters total, including new characters and characters never before seen in amiibo card form.

The NookLink service in the Nintendo Switch Online app will be receiving an update on Nov. 5 as well, which will add more in-game items you can redeem with Nook Points and an island newspaper so you can read about the happenings on your island each day. You’ll also be able to check out tips for island living from Island Life 101 and view the Happy Home Network, all from the convenience of your smart device.

Although these features arriving on Nov. 5 will be the last major free content update for Animal Crossing: New Horizons, hopefully you’ll continue to enjoy island life for a long time to come.

And if you'd like to see the Animal Crossing: New Horizons Direct in case you haven't seen it or want to check through it all again, here's the video link below...

As a bonus, check out how much Nintendo Switch Online with the Expansion Pack is going to cost if you want additional Animal Crossing content, N64 games and Sega Mega Drive titles...

So what did you think of this latest Animal Crossing: New Horizons Direct? Did it provide an ample amount of additional distractions for your digital island? Or do you have enough to do as it is?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments section or join in with the discussion on our forum.