In 2002, Animal Crossing was the ultimate casual gaming experience before anyone was using the casual label for games, or knew what it meant.

In Animal Crossing, there are no enemies to kill, there are no goals to accomplish, other than those you set for yourself. There is no “ending” to the game. You exist in a little forest town that you name yourself. You have animal neighbors in this town you can do tasks for or chit-chat with. As you invest more time into it, the game peels back like an onion and you become engrossed in its depth and possibilities. Your town becomes your custom-made garden of relaxation and casual, laid-back fun.

There are many things you can do in Animal Crossing if you choose, but there’s nothing you have to do, or feel any pressure to do. In its own adorable, relaxed way, Animal Crossing is the Seinfeld of video games. It’s a game about nothing. Or nothing in particular. The Animal Crossing series is arguably the most unique thing Nintendo has done in the last 15 years.

Here are some ways the Switch version could be the best yet.

Leaving Town And Having Visitors

Nintendo billed the original Animal Crossing on GameCube as a communication game. Visiting other towns is a major component of the Animal Crossing experience, and up to this point, it’s a facet of the game that hasn’t been very accessible for players without easy access to real-life gaming friends.

Animal Crossing: New Leaf’s Dream Suite was a welcome addition, which allowed you to visit the towns of other random players. However, you can’t take anything back with you from your visit, like fruit or furniture. It’s a step in the right direction, but still limited.

Making it easier to leave your own town to visit a friend’s town online will instantly open the game up for many players who don’t know other people who own the game in real life, and therefore have limited opportunities to visit other towns.

In Animal Crossing: New Leaf, you can only visit someone else’s town if they’re playing and their gate is open. Sure, you can visit their town anytime through the Dream Suite, which is good – but it’s not the same. Give players the ability to send letters to a friend or visit a friend’s town even if they’re not playing or online. This would instantly make the Animal Crossing experience a more connected one. And a more connected experience with friends will be a welcome improvement to the next game in the series.

Trading Items

There are hundreds of items you can get in any Animal Crossing game – clothing, furniture, wallpaper, carpets, fish, bugs, fossils, art, you name it. The game actually encourages you to try and obtain as many pieces as you can, and keeps track of it all in a catalog at Tom Nook’s store.

A record is kept of every item you obtain, whether you buy it, get it from a friend, or get it from one of the animal inhabitants in your town. In that sense, Animal Crossing has a Pokemon ‘gotta catch ’em all’ aspect to it.

That being the case, why not let players trade items online like you can in Pokemon? You need that last piece of furniture to complete one of your furniture sets? You’re looking for a certain carpet for your house that you can’t seem to get your hands on? Why not be able to go online and see if you can trade for it? It’s a whole economy that could be created that would add yet another way to play.

Giving Players Their Own Yard

We already have the ability to buy a house, expand that house, furnish and decorate it as we please, and even change its exterior. Now, expand that out and give players a chance to have their own yard and relax in it. Think about laying back in your own yard at night and watching a meteor shower, or the northern lights. Or how about being able to have your neighbors over for a BBQ in your backyard for a birthday or special occasion? Or maybe even a courtyard. It would be a nice addition.

This seems like the logical next step in the evolution of Animal Crossing interior/exterior decorating. In fact, Nintendo made a whole Animal Crossing spin-off game called Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer for 3DS that revolves around interior and yard decorating. So if this doesn’t make it into the next main Animal Crossing game, it will be pretty puzzling.

My dream: In Animal Crossing for Switch, I want to own my own castle complete with courtyard, portcullis, drawbridge, and moat. Please allow this to become a reality, Nintendo.

Restaurants And Cooking

We already have The Roost, a coffee shop where inhabitants of your town can come and enjoy a hot cup of steaming goodness. If you’re a frequent customer, you even get the opportunity to work in the coffee shop and prepare coffee for your animal inhabitants.

How about expanding the coffee shop idea to cooking and restaurants? Allow players to not just catch fish, but also cook them. Be able to do some actual cooking or baking with all the fruit that’s growing in your town – like baking a pie for instance.

Be able to mix and match ingredients and come up with their own delicious (or not so delicious) recipes. Give players the ability to put a restaurant in their town and work there, serving your neighbors their favorite dishes.

The cooking process wouldn’t have to be complicated, but it’s a whole other level of depth waiting to be realized. With restaurants being in Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer, hopefully this can become a reality in the next game as well.

Landmarks In Your Town

Animal Crossing: New Leaf is the first game in the series that allows you to be the mayor and call the shots. Being able to design your town however you want is a major evolution for the series. But it needs work.

The Welcome Amiibo update for Animal Crossing: New Leaf made the interior decorating of your house much more intuitive. Animal Crossing on Switch needs a similar upgrade when designing your town.

Make it easier to put landmarks exactly where you want them without the irritating restrictions of being too close to another landmark, or too close to the river. If you want to put two landmarks close to each other, then the player should be able to do that. Make it easier and more customizable.

There’s nothing more irritating in Animal Crossing: New Leaf than having the perfect place for a landmark, only to be told by Isabelle that you can’t do it. Nintendo needs to find a way to take the restrictions off the landmarks and let players make their town completely the way they want.

Animal Crossing is a series with a world of potential and possibilities, especially when you put it online. I’m hoping Nintendo will continue the trend of significant improvements to the series as it hopefully heads to the Nintendo Switch in the future.

And if you have a Nintendo DS, 3DS, Wii, or GameCube and have never played an Animal Crossing game, you should check the series out. I guarantee it’s like nothing you’ve ever played.