Add More Ambience to Your Designs With Soundscapes in 'New Horizons'

With the Animal Crossing: New Horizons' 2.0 update, players have had almost all of their wishes fulfilled in the game's biggest (and last free) major content update. Along with this new content update came the Happy Home Paradise DLC, offering players an opportunity to flex their creative muscles and design vacation homes for villagers.

The DLC also offers new features players can take back with them to their islands, like the Room Sketch app and soundscapes. But what are soundscapes?

Arguably one of the coolest parts of New Horizons is the ability to play literally any of K.K. Slider's songs throughout your island or in your home (so long as you purchased the record). But with soundscapes, you can play much more than the popular pooch's entire discography — you can add other ambient noises to your spaces!

Soundscapes are actually just a rebranded version of the Sound Scenery from Happy Home Designer, which was created for the Nintendo 3DS.

With the soundscapes, you can add sounds like seagull noises, café sounds, or just simple rain noises to a space, really creating a feeling to go with your room.

There are three different "waves" of soundscapes you can unlock, with each featuring eight different ambient sounds to add to your environment. You'll unlock the sounds slowly as you progress, and once you have access to them, you can even use them in your house on your island!

Like all of the cool features presented to you in the Happy Home Paradise DLC, you'll have to complete vacation home requests to unlock this feature. Once you complete 17 different vacation homes, Lottie will prompt you to go on a break, noting that Wardell is also on his break. She'll suggest you find him on the beach, listening to the waves.

Once you find him on the north side of the beach and sit with him, it'll trigger a cut scene where the Happy Home Paradise employee talks about his love for the sounds of the ocean.

This cut scene is what will give you the ability to use soundscapes, unlocking the first wave of noises. This includes echo, ocean, fields, jungle, wind, rain, and space.

Once you've unlocked these soundscapes, you'll be able to use them in any room you can open your designer tools in. When in a room you're designing, press the left button on the D-pad (that's the block of four buttons on the left of your Switch controller). This will give you the ability to change the room size, windows, lighting, and soundscapes.

Select from the options you've unlocked to use the soundscape in the room you're in, and voila! Your room will now have ambient sounds to go with your design.

Unfortunately, if you do not have the DLC, you won't be able to unlock the soundscapes feature — so if you've been on the fence about the add-on material, it might be worth the consideration.