![]() Slowly, the island became a digital substitution for my real life. Right now, it helps to look for the little pleasures wherever you can find them, and Animal Crossing is packed full, each precious incident serving as a bite-sized mental-health break. Whenever the crushing tonnage of real-world news was too much, I would check into Akbar, where I could simply collect shells on the beach, watch a meteor shower or encourage a teal squirrel named Nibbles to pursue her dreams of pop superstardom. Over the next few days, the game became a balm. One of my fellow island-dwellers, a small cat named Rudy, greeted me with a present: “This denim hat,” he told me, “is so Akbar.” How did he know? I downloaded Animal Crossing: New Horizons on a recent Friday night and named my island Akbar, in honor of the neighborhood bar my friends and I frequented before the quarantine. Why not spend a half-hour every morning - well, I always say it’ll be a half-hour, and then suddenly it’s dinner - in the company of some charming cartoon characters on my digital island? That sort of sustained commitment is why I had resisted previous installments in the Animal Crossing franchise: As I grew out of my teenage years, I preferred shorter games that would more easily slot into my busy life.īut now that we’re all trapped inside by the coronavirus, time has slipped off its hanger and lies in a heap on the floor. in the game, and different events are possible depending on the time or even the day of the week. You’re encouraged to check in with the game every day, since the island runs in real time: 3 p.m. New rooms can be added to your home once you pay off debts to the real-estate baron Tom Nook - a raccoon tycoon who wears Tommy Bahama button-downs - but if you’d rather spend your play sessions gossiping with the island’s bevy of anthropomorphic animals, go right ahead. Nothing is all that urgent in Animal Crossing, where the goals are breezy and can be put off indefinitely.
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