Animal Crossing: New Horizons is one of the most popular design-related games in the world. It features all kinds of customization and creation options for creating anyone’s dream island.
This allows players’ creativity to flourish, and births a ton of amazing and unbelievable islands. But not every one of them can make this list, so read to find out which islands are the most amazing!
10. Moonset Island by Leanne
Starting off this list strong is Moonset island by Leanne! Moonset island is a forest-themed island with lots of terraforming and waterscaping. It was awarded five stars by Isabelle, and it clearly shows!
Simple
Moonset island focuses on the beauty of simplicity. It features natural wood furniture like wild log benches and log stakes. Most of the island is taken by plant life, such as flowers, bushes, and trees.
Scenic
Moonset island’s simplicity doesn’t make it plain. In fact, its lack of elaborate illusions or furniture-cluttered rooms allows it to focus on larger, natural scenery instead. The island is filled with waterfalls, winding streams, and flower-filled cliffs instead. This gives the island a bright, inviting feeling.
Cohesive Scheme
The color scheme on Moonset island is a selection of white, beige/brown shades, and green. These colors go very well together and don’t clash at all, making the island very pleasing to the eyes.
They also fit the theme of the island, giving it a bright but soft feeling. The rest of the island’s selection of furniture and custom pathways and signs also contribute to this. All of it ties together perfectly into the simple but pretty forest theme.
9. Moon Island by Colin
Color Scheme
Colin’s selection of colors fits Moon island perfectly. The various shades of yellow, brown, orange and red bring the signature autumn vibes. None of the colors clash. In fact, they compliment each other well while also remaining appropriate for both the theme and the season.
Creative
The greatest charm of Moon island is its creativity. Colin utilizes all sorts of methods to create whatever they need for their island, especially when certain things don’t exist. For example, they utilize lots of custom designs to create anything from a toilet-papered house to diagonal roads.
A Popular Theme
Halloween is the fourth most celebrated holiday in the world. This makes Moon island’s Halloween theme extremely relevant and appealing to visitors. This island will be sure to attract all sorts of guests, and bring inspiration to players with unfinished islands!
8. Aurelia Island by Daisy
Aurelia island is a vintage-themed island. It comes with a lot of natural scenery and whimsical energy. The creator’s Resident Representative is Daisy.
Very Scenic
Aurelia boasts plenty of beautiful natural scenery. It features forests, flowers, and natural landscapes. The streams, waterfalls, and cliffs were carefully crafted by Daisy to create the pretty and natural looks of the island.
Fitting Colors
The color palette for Aurelia mostly consists of neutral colors such as white, beige, and brown, as well as plenty of green from the plant life. While some might consider this plain or boring, Daisy manages to make it not only interesting but pretty as well.
The simplicity of the colors allows guests to focus on the beauty of the natural landscape instead of being distracted by bright colors. It gives the island a sunny vintage vibe.
Creative
Much like every island on this list, Aurelia is very creatively made. Plenty of sections and structures are made almost exclusively through custom designs, such as the diagonal roads and the outdoor picnic blankets and rugs- all of which are features not otherwise allowed in the game. Seemingly random yet fitting items, such as cushions and books and giant mushrooms are placed about the island as well, giving Aurelia its whimsical side.
7. Sage Island by Leaf
Sage island is a desert town-themed island. Its Resident Representative is Leaf. It features elaborate forced perspective illusions and creative execution of designs.
Unique Theme
Sage island’s desert town theme is very unique. Since giving the island a desert look when it’s full of grass and trees is difficult, this theme isn’t very common. This can be appealing to guests, who won’t have seen this kind of town before.
Creative
When creating a desert out of a fruitful island, it’s unsurprising that it takes a bit of creativity to pull off. Still, Sage island goes above and beyond. To create proper canyons or desert hills, the creator collected an enormous amount of termite mounds to repurpose into sand mounds.
Custom design paths were also used, from making fake sand or dirt to roads and picnic blankets. They even created a fake building out of storefronts.
Elaborate
Part of the creativity of Sage island includes its elaborate setup. While it would still be considered creative to make fake buildings and call it a day, Sage island truly goes above and beyond to not only make the island look good, but also realistic.
From an irrigation system for their farm to a Route 66 complete with traffic lights and actual cars and trucks. One of the most impressive parts is certainly the fake canyon with a waterfall, and the view of it in the distance players can enjoy from a cliff’s edge.
6. Pickleton Island by Pickle
Our next island is called Pickleton! Interestingly enough, its Resident Representative is Pickle. Ironically, this island is not, in fact, pickle-themed. It is instead a breathtaking “rural town meets castlecore” island.
Undeniably Pretty
First and foremost, it’s important that an island is appealing in some way. The meaning behind this is that it shouldn’t be hard to look at.
If visitors find the island ugly or plain, they won’t want to visit. So whether it's scary or elegant, pretty or terrifying, there needs to be some kind of appeal. And Pickleton is certainly pretty.
Awesome Aesthetic
Rural towns and castlecore are very popular themes within the New Horizons community. However, few can manage to create a stunning mix of both. Pickleton does exactly that, mixing both castle structures with storefronts and cars to make a stunning little town settled in an abandoned castle.
Easy Navigation
Despite how full of furniture and decor the island is, Pickleton somehow keeps from being too cluttered and confusing to navigate. Even without using a map, getting lost is more of a difficult task than not. The island’s clear pathways, lined with buildings and flowers, are both scenic and helpful.
5. Dummyville Island by Dummy
Much like Pickleton, Dummyville is named after its Resident Representative, Dummy. Also like Pickleton, it is nothing like its name would suggest. Dummyville is an island filled with abandoned magical ruins.
Amazing Aesthetic
Dummyville boasts a magical set of ruins, complete with glowing moss and crumbling pillars. Its beauty is almost ethereal, in part from its glowing star clocks and moons. Vines creep across its cliffs, and statues and altars are scattered amongst the ruins, making it truly feel as if something magical was laid to rest and forgotten there.
Cohesive
Everything in Dummyville fits. From the butterfly models to the villagers, the only thing that doesn’t seem to feed into the aesthetic is the name of Dummyville itself.
Resident Representative Dummy made sure to select only the most magical of residents, such as Julian the unicorn-inspired horse, Judy the glittering bear cub, and Ione, the celestial glowing squirrel. Rare flowers add to the touch of its mystique.
Elaborate and Detailed
An island this beautiful couldn’t be done without detail and dedication. Many of the items are difficult to get, with most of the DIY materials being rare, such as star fragments.
Not only are there plenty of these items on Dummyville, but their placements and the structures built around them are elaborate and intricate, even inside the homes. It takes time, effort, and careful planning to create the illusion of a massive castle, which is precisely what Dummy did, using castle walls, pillars, and residential homes.
4. Moondust Island by Yuna
It seems that misleading names are a common trend for the best New Horizons islands. Moondust is a terrifying horror island. Created by Resident Representative Yuna, its deceitfully soft name will give visitors a false sense of security when arriving at this rainy zombie land.
Unique Theme
Moondust is the only island on this list with a zombie apocalypse theme. While others have certainly created all manner of scary or spooky islands, it can be difficult to pull off, since Animal Crossing is a kid-friendly franchise.
This means creators often have to put in even more effort than usual into creating something truly horrifying. This makes Moondust unique and even appealing to players who want to see something new and well done.
Horrifyingly Imaginative
As stated before, scary islands are especially difficult in Animal Crossing. Most spooky items are more on the “scary-cute” end, to not terrify any of the younger players. As a result, scary-themed islands have to rely on their own creativity and imagination to bring their visions to fruition.
Moondust utilizes custom designs and seemingly innocuous items such as campfires and termite mounds to create their desired apocalyptic atmosphere. To get the player further into the spirit, they even gift visitors with an ax upon arrival, as if to defend themselves from the zombies.
Elaborate and Detailed
Resident Representative Yuna certainly went all out. From disturbingly well-done blood splatter to broken windows and giant ‘help’ signs in blood, they made sure to paint a vision of a town destroyed and overrun by zombies.
Many of the structures are forced perspectives and realistic town structures, such as junkyards or tech stores made of flatscreens and neon signs. The sky's the limit for Yuna, who clearly doesn’t intend to allow the game’s furniture limitations to stop them from creating a proper apocalypse.
3. Sonder Island by Rosalie
Finally into the top 3 is someone certainly deserving of the honors. Sonder island is a breathtaking botanical garden island. Its Resident Representative and sole human villager is Rosalie.
Scenic
Sonder is a botanical garden island. As such, having beautiful scenery everywhere is almost par for the course.
Still, it takes effort and dedication to create an island that consists entirely of photogenic scenery. Guests will be sure to find this appealing, whether it’s to take pictures of their own or simply enjoy walking through the pathways and enjoying the view themselves.
Perfect Atmosphere
Rosalie makes sure to create an atmosphere that suits the theme of a botanical garden island. Sonder is bright and inviting, much like any picturesque garden or meadow would be. The flowers and furniture are vibrant without being painful to look at, and there’s a wide range of them to keep from being monotonous without them clashing.
Cohesive
The cohesion on Sonder island is one of the biggest contributors to this perfect atmosphere. As previously mentioned, there’s a variety of colors on the island. The palette is a selection of pink, white, yellow, orange, green, and blue.
All of the shades are bright without being obnoxious. The colors selected for each section complement each other well, and it all comes together perfectly.
2. Camen Island by Annie
Coming in second place is Camen Island! This is a fantastic Christmas-themed island, for all your festive winter needs! Their Resident Representative goes by annie, with an intentional lowercase “A”.
A Well-Loved Aesthetic
Christmas is the most celebrated holiday in the entire world. This makes it an extremely relevant and appealing theme for a wide variety of guests. This island would sure put anyone who likes Christmas into the holiday spirit!
Scenic
Every inch of Camen island is aesthetically pleasing. This makes it perfect for photo-ops or just having a lovely stroll. Visitors would love taking pictures for social media or simply imagining themselves living in an eternal Christmas winter wonderland.
Easy Navigation
As lovely as many of the more elaborate islands are, it’s an unfortunate side effect that some of them have the tendency to be difficult to navigate. With an abundance of items often causing switches to lag or clutter up a space, some players will easily get lost in more complicated island builds even with their maps.
Fortunately, Camen island manages to have a lot of decor without obscuring any pathways. The walkways are mostly wide and clear, so players can freely explore without fear of getting stuck or lost.
1. Wonderland Island by Tigerlily
Finally, here is our number one best, most amazing island! Last but certainly not least is Wonderland island by Tigerlily! This island is a stunning sprawling botanical garden set in a castlecore town.
An Immaculate Aesthetic
Wonderland’s castlecore garden town is a combination of some of the most aesthetically pleasing and popular themes currently circulating online. As such, this aesthetic is one of its biggest selling points. Who wouldn’t want to stroll down a delightful winding stone path surrounded by flowers and old castle walls? It truly lives up to its name.
Creative and Elaborate
While this is definitely one of the most common points on this list, it certainly takes a lot of effort to come up with and properly execute a design for an entire island. It deserves to be commended.
Especially when creators go above and beyond to not only create items that don’t exist, but build huge structures using a couple of strategically-placed items. And Tigerlily certainly went above and beyond in this category, repurposing anything from storefronts to lighthouses to make giant multi-level buildings.
Scenic
As mentioned, Wonderland island is incredibly stunning. Unsurprising, since it’s a giant garden! There are flowers everywhere, as well as stone walls and paths and lovely waterfalls. There isn’t a single place on this island that wouldn’t make an amazing backdrop for pictures!
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