Highlights
- In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the color of planted trees is determined by the spot where they are planted, and there appears to be no way for players to influence the outcome.
- Players can only get the desired tree color through in-game seasons or special additions like cherry blossoms.
- While not a game-breaking issue, the inability to control tree colors can be a minor inconvenience for players who value creativity and design.
An Animal Crossing: New Horizons player recently discovered the truth about how the game decides the colors of planted trees. While some may think a tree’s colors can be deliberately chosen or influenced by the player, the answer seems to be simpler (and more frustrating) than that.
A big part of the Animal Crossing: New Horizons experience is a player’s freedom to decorate their personal island in the game. The game requires players to slowly and steadily expand the village on their turf to progress, and once they unlock most upgrades, they’re free to produce the most intricate creations possible.
New Horizons allows players to customize their island in much more different ways than before, and a key mechanic of the game is uprooting and planting trees as one method of landscaping. Some players will want to plant trees of the same color together for aesthetic purposes, but they’ll often find that they’re not always able to get it right. Redditor The_Rambling_Otter posted gameplay footage in which he thinks he figured out how tree colors are determined: just by the spot in which the tree is planted. His footage sees him uprooting a dull green peach tree, and upon replanting it in the spot next to it, the tree turns pink like the other one close by.
The game randomizes tree colors according to the particular spots on the grid where they’re planted, and there’s simply no way to influence the end result. Other Redditors have confirmed this observation by putting the theory to the test. In their own experiments, they were able to transplant many trees in the same spot on their own Animal Crossing islands and get the same color for all of them.
The closest ways for a player to get the tree color they want is either with the in-game seasons that the trees follow (like orange trees in autumn, for example) or with additions like cherry blossoms, which only appear on hardwood trees. It’s a small consolation for those who are particular about how the trees look on their New Horizons island.
While the lack of an ability to directly choose or influence the way trees look on a player’s island isn’t exactly a game-breaking issue, it does end up being a minor hiccup in a franchise that values one’s creativity, imagination, and design skill. With no clear plans for a new entry in the franchise anytime soon, Nintendo could perhaps address it in any possible New Horizons patches that may be coming sooner or later.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the fifth major game in the Animal Crossing series. This slice-of-life simulation game tasks the player with developing an abandoned island into a small town for its resident villagers. The game was released at the start of worldwide lockdowns amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which catapulted it into massive success. It’s currently the best selling game of all time in Japan.
- Franchise
- Animal Crossing
- Platform(s)
- Switch
- Released
- March 20, 2020
- Developer(s)
- Nintendo EPD
- Publisher(s)
- Nintendo
- How Long To Beat
- 61 Hours