Animal Crossing: Happy Home Paradise is the DLC for New Horizons for the Switch.  The premise is simple.  You get a job on a tropical island separate from your own, where you design vacation homes for various animal clients you meet on the island.  After picking a location amongst various settings, including mountains, sandy beaches, or ice, you then design a home based around your client’s theme and furniture preferences.  And once your hard work is done, you are paid in a new currency called Poki, which allows you to buy a bunch of new furniture exclusive to the DLC.

Features get added as you play.  As you decorate more and more houses, you are granted the ability to also design their yards, make their houses bigger or add a second floor, and even add walls and pillars.  (If only you could hang things on these walls…or add windows!  Ah, the missed potential…)  Other features include adding soundscapes and colorful lighting, making things sparkly, and giving people roommates, but I almost never used those.  In addition, you’re even able to design facilities for the main island, such as a school, a few restaurants, and a hospital, of all things!

More and more items get added, too, eventually leading to a huge variety of furniture and decorations and whatnot with which to design the perfect island getaway.  One frustrating thing, however, is there are eventually so many items, it can be hard to sift through them all.  And sorting alphabetically will only get you so far when you forget that the Apple TV (I mean the fruit, not the company) is, in fact, called the Juicy Apple TV.  Gee whiz, and you thought you’d find this item under A, you silly goof!

Another feature is the ability to design houses for your own villagers.  This comes in two forms.  Either you can invite them to the vacation island by giving them some souvenir chocolates or you can redesign their own homes on your island.  But for that last one, instead of getting paid for your efforts, you have to pay a fee?  Um, that doesn’t make any sense…

In general, I loved the DLC and got hours of enjoyment from it.  It was so much fun getting to freely decorate a variety of houses, and even businesses, without the need to craft anything.  You can create, and customize, anything to your heart’s content!  And all those many new items, including walls to break up rooms, can now be used on your own island, as well.   Walls, especially, were something I was really excited to unlock.  It’s also cool that every possible villager in Animal Crossing (I heard there are over 400!) can potentially appear to ask for a vacation home (I even saw the dreaded…gulp, sheep clown today!).  Not only does it make it easier to meet villagers you’ve never seen before, but it’s less painful when your own villagers move away because you can visit them so easily. 

Normally selling for $25, I got the DLC for free thanks to my subscription to the Expansion Pass for Nintendo Switch Online.  Just keep in mind that, if you got it for free and your subscription lapses, you will lose access to the vacation island, as expected.  Though I did hear you get to keep whatever items you bought.  If you enjoy decorating houses, then this DLC is perfect!