Until recently, my experience with Animal Crossing: New Horizons had been a very limited one. I never played any of the previous games, and so I didn’t board the hype train at launch. It wasn’t until a few weeks later that I finally bought the game, and I am glad that I did.
The game initially was a form of escapism for me. The world outside had turned on its head and I needed something to play, to distract myself. I saw that it was methodical, mundane and it was easy to create a routine in-game.
Pick some fruit, catch some bugs, pay off a little bit of your mortgage, etc. Rinse and repeat the next day, and the day after that. I needed something slow in my life, as I was living through some pretty historical stuff outside of that brightly coloured world full of adorable animals.
At the start of the pandemic I was struggling to maintain a healthy work/life routine, as, like many of us, I was working from home for the first time. This was a completely new experience and the lack of having a clear divide between my work time and my home time, like a commute, was getting to me. I remember seeing jokes about people putting on their backpacks and holding onto their shower curtain rails for 20 minutes like they were riding the tube into work. It was funny, but also quite relatable.
This is where Animal Crossing: New Horizons came in. Turns out, the game was a way of helping me build my schedule. To structure my day. Something to replace that commute.
After work, I would usually sit on a bus for half an hour, disconnect slightly from the world, leave the workplace behind and begin my mental transition from office worker to guy in pyjama bottoms and fluffy socks. I didn’t realise how important that period was to me until I had no bus to sit on. I needed something to break that commuter mindset.
And so it continued like that for a month. I woke up, got showered and dressed, had breakfast, then sat down to play Animal Crossing for a while. When it came time to “clock in”, I put the game down and started work. Once it was time for the perceived commute home, I sat straight down to play for a while and then went about my normal housework-type stuff. Putting on food, doing a bit of cleaning. The usual. I had all this extra time in my day and I didn’t know what to do with it. It was an alien experience and it made me feel guilty for some reason. Sure, some people could say that I should have used that time to better myself or learn a new language or something like that. I did have all this free time, but bettering myself wasn’t what I needed at that moment.
I needed some way of easing my mind. Dividing my day. Rebuilding a routine. And Animal Crossing unexpectedly helped me to do that.
As I said, I did this for about a month. I played every single day. I enjoyed developing my island and looked forward to seeing Isabelle’s happy face every morning. And then I stopped. Cold. Something just clicked off in my brain. I didn’t want to play anymore. So I didn’t, but that feeling of structure remained. I was getting used to the idea of not having to commute. I felt less stressed about having all this extra time I had somehow reclaimed. Which I guess is a weird thing to say, but it was a weird time back then.
Using Animal Crossing to alleviate that inexplicable stress helped pave the way to hours of reading more books, taking courses to learn things, creating content for my YouTube channel, and also just using that extra time to look after myself and relax.
It also made me realise just how much of my weekly life was spent commuting. I could have used that weekly commute to do practical things, like reading or learning languages (I did!), but it strikes me now that doing those things were just ways to pass the time. It wasn’t all that enjoyable, or even that beneficial, especially when you are crammed onto an overcrowded bus like a sardine. I’m not sure if this working-from-home craze is going to stay, and I will probably have to go back to commuting in the future. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about that. Luckily, my Nintendo Switch is a portable machine so maybe Animal Crossing can help me transition back into that commuter mindset?
I didn’t log back in for about 9 months after that initial binge. I missed all of Summer and Autumn, and only caught a few days of Winter until it rolled around to Spring again. I’m sad that I missed out on a lot of seasonal stuff, but overall my experience with Animal Crossing, although short, was a very enjoyable one, and something that I needed at that specific time. I’m back to playing again, not as structured for sure, but I’m still chipping away at my mortgage. I’ve also started streaming the game and had some wonderful social experiences.
It’s a game that keeps on giving and I am thankful to Nintendo and Animal Crossing for that.
Now please excuse me as I have some flowers to flog whilst Nook’s Cranny is still open.