The Serenity and Serendipity of Animal Crossing: New Horizons

The perfect game for an unprecedented time.

Video game releases are hardly random events. Studios and publishers invest a lot of time and effort into finding the perfect date on the calendar to maximise the commercial returns of their games. From the start-up indie level all the way to the heights of triple-A development, the release date of a game is the result of a meticulously thought-out strategic decision influenced by numerous factors.

What is random is the world that video games release in. Global events and trends can seemingly come from nowhere and have a major effect on the gaming market. Often, this is to the detriment of the game and the poor decision-makers whose perfect release date now lies in ruin. But sometimes, the unforeseeable worldwide context that a game launches in can actually boost the product’s relevance.

Candy Crush Saga being released the year before smartphones became the dominant form of portable gaming certainly helped it explode in popularity. On a more bitter-sweet note, Grand Theft Auto III allowed millions of gamers to escape to a New York-inspired urban playground only a matter of weeks after the September 11 attacks.

And then there’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons—the game I believe had the most serendipitous launch in the history of video games.

Nobody likes to talk about Covid. In spite of or, perhaps, because it dominated our lives for so long, there’s always a very understandable audible groan whenever someone brings it up. Which makes sense. Talking about the pandemic means talking about loss—the loss of opportunity, the loss of connection, the loss of loved ones. The ripple effects of that horrible disease continue to impact so many to this day through ongoing financial and health complications, both physical and mental.

So it is with great care and the gentle promise that we are about to talk about the cute animal sim game, that I ask you to cast your mind back to five years ago. Specifically, to March 20, 2020. Chances are your head is filling with vivid memories of the world shutting down around you and the crippling uncertainty that swept in with the pandemic.

I was there. I remember. 2020 was going to be my year. Whatever that meant. The year began with me moving in with a good friend and landing a cool new internship at a media publication covering the local film scene. The future looked bright! You already know how the next chapter plays out. Shutdowns and social distancing and the only certainty being how “unprecedented” this whole disaster was for everyone. So much for my year.¹

For me, the one sliver of light in those dark times was the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons on March 20. As a diehard Animal Crossing fan since the Wii era, I had been anticipating a Switch entry long before the game was officially announced in 2019. All the pre-release material showcased a game that took the series forward in exciting new directions without sacrificing the heart and soul of what made Animal Crossing so special. In short, I was psyched and the countdown to March 20 felt even longer as those lockdown days seemed to stretch on forever.

When release day did finally arrive, I drove to the only video game store within a ten-kilometre radius of my home, picked up the game, and got to work. If you have played Animal Crossing: New Horizons—specifically during those early months—then you probably know how this next chapter plays out as well.

The game became a part of my life in a way that few pieces of media ever have. It absorbed into my day-to-day existence, becoming a staple of my routine in the same way as brushing my teeth or making my morning coffee. That isn’t to say the game was boring—it was a joy getting to gradually create my island into something that reflected me and my interests. Every day I would spend at least an hour chatting with my villagers, checking out what the shops had in stock, collecting rock money, wandering the halls of the museum, building infrastructure, accruing Nook Miles, pulling out weeds, and so on and so forth.

In a way, Animal Crossing: New Horizons was monotonous, but it was a certainty I could hold onto. Which in those times, meant everything. You may even say every play session of the game was very much “precedented” by virtue of its wonderful repetitiveness. Here was this serene little world where I was in complete control and didn’t have to worry about anything other than how to construct an in-game cricket stadium (which I pulled off!).

The other reason I will be eternally grateful to Animal Crossing: New Horizons is because it gave me a way to stay connected to my two sisters in the middle of lockdown. The three of us had already bonded over Animal Crossing on the Wii, so we were really hyped for the release of New Horizons. Both my sisters, Maria and Abigail, even bought their Switch Lites specifically for this game.

Of course, none of us could have anticipated the pandemic. Or how those thousands of kilometres already separating us along Australia’s east coast would soon make it feel as though we were living on different planets. The game was one way in which we stayed connected during Covid, and I will always have fond memories of our AC lockdown hangouts. But instead of me telling you all about it, I am going to pass the keyboard over to Maria and Abigail to share their stories from the game.

Maria’s Thoughts

Animal Crossing, for me, has always been tied to family.

My journey began when we got Animal Crossing: City Folk on the Wii. Playing on the one console, my siblings and I could share our village, villagers, and limited resources. Mum would put the timer on the microwave to ensure we all got our fair turn. However, the envious position was whoever went first as they tended to gobble up all the finite resources for the day.

Still, I remember long Australian summers of building our AC empire together, mourning the villagers that would randomly leave, and abusing poor Mr. Resetti.

When Animal Crossing: New Horizons came out, I no longer needed to set the microwave timer to ensure I got my fair share. My family was grown and scattered. Covid-19 was in full swing, meaning that, like so many, I had not physically seen my family in a long, long time. The distance and isolation were hard. But we did have one way to escape the chaos of a global pandemic. We could visit each other on our AC islands.

We still shared (stole) resources from each other, showed off our island designs, and spent time with the villagers. But what AC really gave us was a chance to be together, even if it was just in a digital world run by a Bell-hungry tanuki.

Abigail’s Thoughts

2020 was a hard and lonely year in many ways for many people. Personally, not only was I separated from my local friends, but having siblings in different states with borders closed meant I had family whom I didn’t know when I would see again.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons was such a life saver for this. We siblings had played other versions of Animal Crossing together in the past and loved it, so we were super excited for a new game in the series.

Booting up this game and building my island immediately flooded me with memories of the Animal Crossing world. Meeting new and old animal friends and decorating and designing to my heart’s content was a joy. But what was really special about this game was the way it allowed my family and I to connect.

Using the Dodo airport systems, we could travel to each other’s islands and hang out in this cute and delightful landscape. We would call each other and narrate our adventures from elaborate island tours to fishing, friendly trade, or just grabbing a coffee at the museum. Not only was it a fun activity for us to do from afar, but it also gave us hours of conversations as we would update each other on all our island shenanigans and goings-on.

I really appreciate the time I have spent on Animal Crossing: New Horizons with my family. It certainly made a very hard pandemic year significantly more enjoyable.

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Our stories with Animal Crossing: New Horizons are just a minuscule fraction of what so many people experienced with this game. I remember joining large forum chats and Facebook groups dedicated to passing on New Horizons knowledge and anecdotes, and it became clear that the game was as much an escape for those people as it was for me and my sisters. An escape from the anxiety of the unknown and the sadness of what was and continues to be a very real global tragedy.

Animal Crossing had always been a popular series for Nintendo, but New Horizons took things to a whole new level. The previous best-selling game in the series was New Leaf for the 3DS which sold around 13 million copies. At its latest count, New Horizons was sitting at 47 million units sold.

There was no way Nintendo could have planned the release of a game about relaxation and connection to coincide with the onset of a pandemic. Call it luck or fate or a savvy capitalistic ploy by Tom Nook himself, but when the world was closing in on us all, we had the perfect game to help us look towards new horizons.

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The Video Game Storyteller is a free Substack written and formatted by Harry Fritsch on the lands of the Jagera and Turrbal people, the Traditional Custodians of Meanjin (Brisbane).

All images were either captured directly by the author or sourced from publicly available promotional screenshots.

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If you wish to contact Harry, you may do so by emailing him at harryfritsch98@gmail.com.

1. Later in 2020, I would land my first regularly paid writing job and meet my now-wife. So, in a way, it was still my year… just with a few more curveballs than I was expecting.