Animal Crossing: New Horizons Gave Me a Purpose

There have been a lot of think pieces and takes about how the new Animal Crossing game came at the perfect time during a global pandemic, and this one is no different. On Monday, March 23 I was laid off from my job. When I got home that afternoon I, like millions of Americans applied for unemployment and put my financial ducks in a row. Then I loaded up my island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the newest game in the long running Nintendo series.

In this game you live your daily life establishing a new town for you and your villagers to live on. You start the game living in a tent with your first task is paying off the expenses and eventually upgrade it to a house. Soon enough you’re put in charge of establishing the infrastructure of the island, such as picking where your villagers' homes and shops are placed, setting up bridges and inclines to make traversal easier for everyone. Animal Crossing’s main mechanic is that it uses the Nintendo Switch’s real time clock to determine the date and time in game. If it’s 9 AM on April 16th in the real world then it’s the same in the game. There’s plenty of reasons to play every day. The shops get new items, buildings get built and so on.

This is why this game gives me a purpose. Helping these little villagers build a better life for themselves. Talking to everyone to learn more about them. Watching some of my villagers do yoga in the town square, fishing or catching bugs. There’s also the zen like nature of the game. Walking along the beach collecting sea shells to sell, digging for fossils to donate to the museum, also catching fish and bugs throughout the day. Doing these things really helped me with the anxiety I had the first week of unemployment.

It’s weird to think a slice of life video game with animals that speak in gibberish can give me a purpose, and even help with anxiety, but in those cases it has. Every morning I load up the game, do my “chores”, and then spend time just relaxing in game. Animal Crossing: New Horizons helps keep my anxious mind off the real world, even if it’s just for a few hours at a time.