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

By Heather Wald
published

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. 

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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
Senior staff writer

I started out writing for the games section of a student-run website as an undergrad, and continued to write about games in my free time during retail and temp jobs for a number of years. Eventually, I earned an MA in magazine journalism at Cardiff University, and soon after got my first official role in the industry as a content editor for Stuff magazine. After writing about all things tech and games-related, I then did a brief stint as a freelancer before I landed my role as a staff writer here at GamesRadar+. Now I get to write features, previews, and reviews, and when I'm not doing that, you can usually find me lost in any one of the Dragon Age or Mass Effect games, tucking into another delightful indie, or drinking far too much tea for my own good.