Animal Crossing has recently gone what, in a less awful time, we might have called viral.
Released on Friday, March 20, after weeks of fans clamoring unsuccessfully for an early release, Animal Crossing: New Horizons sold a record-shattering 1.88 million physical copies in Japan in its opening weekend, the biggest-ever launch for a title on the Nintendo Switch console. Stateside, it has become a genuine crossover phenomenon: social media-clogging fan art and memes, headlines in The New York Times and CNN, big-name fans that include Lil Nas X and Brie Larson (“K.K. Slider is a mega star for me,” Larson told Elle.com, referring to the series’ guitar-toting Jack Russell), and everyone from the Museum of English Rural Life and fast food giant Wendy’s joining the fun.
If you ever desperately needed to escape into a videogame, it would be now. In the midst of a devastating global pandemic, gaming is a responsible way to self-isolate and observe social distancing guidelines while offering an anxiety-alleviating retreat from reality. And certainly there are plenty of games other than Animal Crossing that would provide blissful, engrossing distraction. But as many have realized, the specificity of the experience offered by Animal Crossing is uniquely and uncannily suited to the current crisis.
As Animal Crossing begins, you are a wide-eyed wayfarer embarking on a new life, deposited in a picturesque, randomly generated locale that feels equal parts small country town and fairytale forest. So far, so familiar; it could be the opening of a heroic quest. But then you meet a raccoon in a sweater vest, and find yourself—where most games would entrust you with a mission—with a mortgage.
And then … you do what you want. You might renovate your home, buy a bunch of stuff you don’t really need. You might pick fruit, plant flowers, go fishing. (The game has been cited as an inspirational touchstone for “cottagecore,” a movement dedicated to rustic mundanity.) You might dig for fossils, monitor turnip prices (the in-game equivalent of the stock market), contribute to public works projects or compose the town jingle. And you might mingle with the anthropomorphic animal denizens of the land, the sole human in a never-ending Aesop’s fable.
“Animal Crossing was already going to be a welcome relief from what’s happening in the real world, but the timing for New Horizons is incredible,” says David Thair, host of just one of a bountiful crop of Animal Crossing podcasts.
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