Assassin's Creed meets Animal Crossing in wild-sounding new game

A new game from Assassin’s Creed publisher Ubisoft just leaked, and insiders describe it as a mix between Animal Crossing and Minecraft.

As exclusively revealed by Insider Gaming’s Tom Henderson last night, the new game (which is currently going under the codename “Alterra”) is a “social-sim” with “voxel” style graphics (think Minecraft or BattleBit Remastered).

Leakers told Insider Game that the project has been in development “for approximately 18 months” and even sent the outlet some images of its characters (which they cannot display for legal reasons) that Insider Gaming describes as “Funko Pop figures in their design” due to their overly “large heads”.

Henderson explained that Alterra was described to him as “an Animal Crossing-inspired social sim that will see players inhabit a home island that will consist of interactable NPCs named Matterlings.”

“Sources said that players will be able to leave their home island and go to other worlds,” he continued, “which consist of different biomes, different types of Matterlings, enemies, materials, and more, where they’ll also be able to interact with other players.”

Alterra’s gameplay also features something “somewhat similar to Minecraft’s building mechanics” and will require the player to visit different biomes (like an “ice world”) to collect specific resources.

According to Insider Gaming’s sources, Ubisoft Montréal (the folks behind almost all of the Assassin's Creed titles, Watch Dogs and Watch Dogs 2, and For Honor) are the developers behind the game.

Personally, that’s the most surprising part of the leak to me, considering Ubisoft Montréal is already working on the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake, Assassin's Creed: Project Hexe and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Mobile.

No specifics on when Alterra might see the light of day, although Insider Gaming did note that the title is “likely still a few years away.”

However, if the game is as far along as the leak implies, we’ll probably see something sooner rather than later.