Cardamom Island

My first build at Bear Bay Island was a pink tastic barbie themed island. I wanted to channel my love for all things doll to make what is essentially a virtual dollhouse. So when I picked the game up again 3 years later - I needed a different theme. I went the opposite direction to create my dark academia school campus. I would be creating dorms, classrooms, sports fields, and even a little “downtown” area for the townies.

one of my friends was able to share a couple of catalogue items for me on their cottagecore farm. This helped me a lot to get the street lights and vending machines that I wanted. The pallet of browns and greens was really important to nail.

Midway through I had also i had also incorperated the ACBVoCC which guided a lot of my building decisions. I wanted to effectively do all 4 classes builds to show what a “fully complete” challenge would look like… that clearly did not happen because adhd.

But here were my plans i had in my head if you want to take them

• I was building a large soccer field where I hoped to use the life gaurd chair as a ref/announcer stand
• My chosen mascot was the bears! (nod to bear bay)
• for the “campus mystery” build I was going to make a secret witchy meeting space in the forrest behind the academic buildings. I’d gotten a crystal ball and some of the star decor for the area. This forrest also helped separate the downtown area.
• There was a period when I had Jacques in my neighborhood and I turned his home into a club in the town that students could go to after a hard day of studying.

The most impressive build I’ll say I tried to make was a chapel entrance for my island. I was thinking about how a lot of old campuses usually had a little church for early morning meetings and I liked making a non-specific, stain-glass building to welcome in visitors! I used ovens and the wedding bell to make cool steeples up at the top. I used a lot of terraforming to create little wall spaces leading up to the “alter”. I wasn’t able to figure out a way to make it finished but the thought was there.

Another one I was pretty proud of was my science lab on the south west corner of the island. I collected a bunch of insects, fish, and other creatures to be displayed in the lab. This was also the area where I did my flower breeding which really fit nicely in there. ACNH has a lot of good materials to make a science classroom be it inside or out.

When I last played the game I did a class photo day at Harv's Island. I kept the uniforms simple for that day - even thought the school colors were meant to be green and white. Oh well. This was a super cute part of the game play where I really felt like I was building a functioning school.

I picked a lot of villagers based on who had a hobby in education - that way I could see them roaming around the island looking like good students. Smug personality types also fit so well on a preppy ivy league esque island. Leopold was an easy decision for school principal. Lopez, Coco, Velma were inteded to be forever villagers as well. The rest of those freaks couldn’t get off my island soon enough whoops. I think eventually I hoped to get mapel, kid, shep, vivian, timbra or wolfgang - mapel especially bc my mascot would be bears. Can you imagine mapel as the head of the school spirit commitee?

What great memories…fuck now I feel like playing acnh again

---