Animal Crossing: New Horizons fan-made island planner lets you map out your terraforming ideas

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You can plan out water features, cliff placements, and much more besides

(Image credit: Nintendo)

A fanmade Animal Crossing: New Horizons island planner tool has launched on Itch.io to help you map out your island designs. 

While it's still an early build, the delightful tool created by Rob Fichman can be found on their itch.io account bobacupcake. The tool is a great way to experiment and bring your terraforming creations to life without the stress of having to commit to the designs in-game. 

After all, getting your layout just right to create what you have in mind can be tricky when you're going at it head-on. The planner can help you map out what you want to do before you begin your construction work, and it will also give you a good idea of what it will actually look like. 

The Island planner lets you use all of the tools you can find in-game with your Animal Crossing: New Horizons island designer app. So, you can place cliffs, bodies of water, and bridges and inclines to your heart's content, and also put down buildings featured in the game so you can build around it and see what you can do to create unique looks. Once you've played around with the tool, you can also save your creations so you can use them for reference when you want to bring them to life in New Horizons. 

The Animal Crossing community has already created some amazing island layouts that really show off what you can do with the terraforming tools. Complete with neat waterfall designs and cliff placements, there's no end of possibilities, but I, for one, find it quite tricky to envision the designs without playing around to get it just how I want it. This planner tool really is the answer to my prayers, and even though it's still in its early stages, I can see myself jumping into this tool to see just what I could do to improve my little virtual paradise. 

The island planner is one of the many creative tools fans have made since New Horizons launched. Before the game was released, an Animal Crossing fan-made planner came out that let you plan out where you wanted to place all of your buildings on the island. Another came in the shape of a helpful island name generator for any folks struggling to come up with a name for their new virtual home. 

In other Animal Crossing News, Screenwriter Gary Whitta talks origins and plans for Animal Crossing: New Horizons talk show. 

Heather Wald
Heather Wald
Evergreen Editor, Games

Heather Wald is the Evergreen Editor, Games at GamesRadar+. Her writing career began on a student-led magazine at Bath Spa University, where she earned a BA (Hons) in English literature. Heather landed her first role writing about tech and games for Stuff Magazine shortly after graduating with an MA in magazine journalism at Cardiff University. Now with almost seven years of experience working with GamesRadar+ on the features team, Heather helps to develop, maintain, and expand the evergreen features that exist on the site for games, as well as spearhead the Indie Spotlight series. You'll also see her contribute op-eds, interview-led features, and more. In her spare time, you'll likely find Heather tucking into RPGs and indie games, reading romance novels, and drinking lots of tea.