What is Animal Crossing: New Horizons?

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the latest entertainment to takeover your timeline. So what it is?

Social distancing is redefining the entertainment landscape in real-time, and as we all lean more heavily — for better and worse — on social media to provide information and escape, we’re learning more about everyone’s entertainment habits. For example, the last few days have revealed that (it feels like) everyone is talking, tweeting, posting, etc. about Animal Crossing. What is Animal Crossing — you, and your mom, might be asking.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a new video game from Nintendo Switch. The latest entry in the Animal Crossing series. The series itself is a real-time social simulation game. Previous versions have you starting out as the sole human in a town full of animals, New Horizons places you on a deserted island to start a community from the ground up.

And it is, by all accounts, delightful — the perfect way to occupy a weekend at home. (Though it may also tear your family apart?? So don’t be a tool?? Play responsibly, everyone.)

Rather counterintuitively, then, Andrew Webster, in his review for The Verge, describes it as “not the kind of game you marathon for hours at a time” because “its joys reveal themselves over days, weeks, and months. It’s a quirk of the premise: Animal Crossing is a laid-back life simulator that takes place in real time, forcing you to wait for things to happen.”

This also, though, explains why it has been so quickly embraced by the social distancers: We have nothing but time, so anything that takes place in real-time is frankly welcome. Plus everything else about it sounds wholesome and pure and just what the emotional health doctor ordered.

Webster, again:

"New Horizons still maintains the charm and style that have made Animal Crossing so beloved, but with a newfound sense of purpose: the satisfaction that comes from building something from nothing. It’s also the first Animal Crossing where I’ve felt truly in control."

Charm? Purpose? Control? It sounds perfect.

P.S. It is also incredibly cute.

For more quarantine time-passing recommendations, explore the Entertainment section of FanSided.com.