Rumor: Ubisoft Working On Animal Crossing Inspired Social Sim Game

Back in 2020, Nintendo released Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which quickly took the world by storm and became one of the highest selling games on the Switch, remaining in the Top 2 all the way till the waning years of the console’s life.

Now, it seems that Ubisoft may be looking to capture some of this success for themselves. According to a report from Insider Gaming, Ubisoft Montreal has been working on “an Animal Crossing-inspired social sim” for the past 18 months.

This project is allegedly codenamed “Alterra” and is a voxel based game where players inhabit an island alongside NPCs called “Matterlings”, who reportedly look similar to Funko Pops and have appearances inspired by real and fictional animals. Players would be able to leave their home island to explore various biomes, where they can encounter new types of Matterlings, enemies, resources, and even other players. Resources can be gathered and used to craft various things, akin to Minecraft.

According to Insider Gaming, the game is still a few years away, with its Creative Director being Patrick Redding (Gotham Knights) and Ubisoft veteran Fabien Lhéraud helming as Lead Producer. As evidence, Insider Gaming points to Lhéraud’s Linkedin page, which has a “Next Gen Unannounced Project” that could be referring to this title.

As with all rumors of this nature however, we caution readers to take them with a grain of salt. Stay tuned for more as it comes.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.