I have loved “Animal Crossing” since the first time I played it on my red Nintendo 3DS in 2012; at this point, I was playing “Animal Crossing: New Leaf,” and it was one of the only games that was simple enough for me to understand at such a young age, but complex enough that I didn’t get bored.
Now, I was a little late to the “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” party, since I didn’t have a Switch to play it on until this Christmas. However, I am obsessed. There are the same familiar characters that I know and love from my childhood, new additions and even more gameplay options so that you don’t get bored.
The new 3.0 update for “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” was released on Jan. 14, 2026, bringing the addition of a hotel pier, Kapp’n and his family and Slumber Islands.
In this free update, you are tasked with decorating hotel rooms for tourists to visit the town. The task of decorating is very similar to the Happy Home Paradise DLC; however, Happy Home is a paid DLC, costing $24.99 USD.
In addition, in Happy Home, you can decorate the yard outside your tourists’ homes and have the option of building two-story houses. In the free DLC, there is no yard ,and rooms cannot be two-stories.
The update also offers tourists the opportunity to visit your island, where they can walk around and interact with your scenery. You can choose the outfits that these tourists wear, but it can be a little confusing to see them at first and wonder who these strangers are on your island. I also have seen some of the more intense players complain that they hand-curate their favorite villagers, so having random people walking around that they have no control over was frustrating.
Another critique I have seen is that tourists are not interested in moving to your island, even if you continuously talk to them for their entire duration of their visit. Instead, they are just there as additional NPCs to talk to, without offering many benefits.
One of my big complaints is that designing hotel rooms can feel a little redundant, especially for a new player like me, who just downloaded the Happy Home DLC a few weeks ago, so I already have options to decorate with greater freedom.
So, the update just gets a little boring compared to what players already have access to.
However, the thing I am most excited about in this update is being able to craft multiple items at once. This has saved me so much time and brought me so many additional bells, as it is much easier to craft and sell hot-ticket items at Nook’s Cranny. And, being able to access your home’s storage as you travel throughout the island to various crafting stations has been one of my favorite additions to this update.
I will complain that my island feels way too busy now, though. With all eight of my hotel rooms completed, I now have ten residents and eight tourists always running around my island, and sometimes, it just gets a little too annoying with everyone running around.
While not the update that players desired or expected, the update is still a fun addition to the game. I wish there were more details and storylines like some previous versions of Animal Crossing, like Kapp’n’s family having more dialogue and greater backstories, or even another store in the hotel to purchase items from, like Leila buying seashells from you in “New Leaf.”
And, players are still desperate for some basic aspects of the game to still be added: like visible levels of durability on tools, so players can be better aware of when they are going to break. And, a shopping cart at the Able Sisters so visitors can buy more than one type of item per trip to the dressing room.
These are not large asks, in my opinion, but would make the game significantly better. Anyway, while not my favorite update, I definitely had fun playing and would recommend it, especially since it acts as a free version to the Happy Home DLC.
