Welcome to Ember Isle!

Spoilers for those who haven't seen the new Nintendo Direct regarding New Horizons.

Obviously there's still some stuff in the game that I think deserves some sort of update (crafting multiples of an item at once, better system to buy items than just 1 or 5, etc).

But they're adding a ton of stuff in the 2.0 update that looks really awesome. The Roost seems like it'll just be a hangout spot rather than a place to work like in New Leaf, but considering some of the other stuff being added in for free (cooking, Kapp'n, even a lil stretching mini game, gyroids), I really don't think it's that big of a deal. There's a good amount of stuff being added, both in this free update and the paid DLC that I may get, that I'll have to rethink my island/home design a little bit to fit stuff in.

Even if this truly is the last major free update, they've been giving free stuff for almost 2 years, and this update is huge. And even the paid DLC doesn't seem priced too high, and that looks like it'll add a ton more replay value for people (plus extra stuff to design their island with like pillars and such).

Four of the more important map screenshots I took over the past year.

My initial island look, more or less. I terraformed the back end a little.

A month in I had reworked the river system, began building a residents area in the back right, and got my museum area setup.

November is not long after I got back into the game and got a decent setup for my island. Nice and grid-like, little residents area, the museum had space for displays. Alas, I wasn’t satisfied.

Nearly a year later, after a 5 month hiatus because the prospect of designing my island became way too much, Ember Isle has achieved a 5 star rating.

I haven’t posted original content in a long time, but I finally got back into playing the game a couple months ago after a 5 month hiatus and I wanted to show an update of my island since the game first came out. The last photo is as of December 2020, and I’m overall A LOT happier with the design than previous attempts.