Oh man I’ve been busy. Not on the game but in life with actual work.
Something I’ve been idly toying with that’s not at all related to playing Animal Crossing is thoughts about the game feel in general. The nice part about this grid system is it makes interactions really easy and collision really simple. I’m feeling the rough edges on the gameplay, though, especially when it comes to doing things like talking with NPCs and moving across the map.
Changing it from grid movement to player input would be quite the shift in terms of how input was handled, but might make for a better game. I’d still want to leave in the systems-based pieces since that’s the majority of the interesting interactions, but I’d take out the grid movement and actions. Most of this was inspired by Trap Quest, and I think it shows, but the really good emergent behavior isn’t conditioned on this.