Animal Crossing New Horizon

Good morning everyone and welcome to another episode of Life in Pandemia. This time around I don’t only mean living in the time of pandemic but also because I named my Island in Animal Crossing New Horizons Pandemia. I mean this is the game that is going to get me through this crisis sane so it seemed fitting. First off you have to understand that I have never played an Animal Crossing game before. Well I have played Pocket Camp but I am rapidly learning that as far as games go it doesn’t necessarily count towards having played an Animal Crossing game. It did however introduce me to several of the characters and for that I am thankful, because I fully anticipated the Nook company shenanigans.

What I did not expect was to be quite so attached to my island home this early into the process. For the uninitiated in Animal Crossing New Horizon you are given the choice of four islands when you first start up the game. You should note that you will only ever be able to have a single island on that Switch device without I believe uninstalling the game and reinstalling it but don’t quote me on that process. I went with a design that has a little island in the center of the map with the ultimate goal of eventually relocating my home there. However that said I am kinda digging my little fenced off peninsula at the moment so I might just stay where I am. I know later in the game I can do some terraforming to make things a little more manageable.

Another thing that I did not expect was how much of a multiplayer experience this game would end up being. On Saturday I opened up my Island and posted on twitter that I had apples for free near the dock. I then proceeded to go afk for awhile and fix lunch, only to find that my island had become an unattended fruit exchange station while I was gone and throughout the course of the entire time I had it open I had somewhere around fifteen friends pop by to visit. There was a time period where as soon as one person had arrived I was getting a notice saying that another person was on their way. The end result was that I essentially had one of every fruit brought to me and I completed that achievement without actually putting any effort in.

Another charming as hell thing that happened is a bunch of people left messages on my board. I particularly think Stargrace’s Quail Life is adorable. I need to visit more islands and leave more messages. I left them all a version of the AggroChat intro on the board before I opened it up thinking that someone out there might get the reference. Ultimately I expected Animal Crossing to be a fairly solitary game where I am spending more time interacting with NPCs than I with other players, but if you open your island… folks seem to just show up. I think maybe it was helped by the fact that we were all hitting Day Two and having the Airport open for use about the same time and I just caught a wave of folks wanting to try out hopping to a friends island.

Having never played an Animal Crossing game before I was not exactly sure what the flow of gameplay would be. It seems each day you are presented with one or two new things that need accomplished and if you can somehow keep up with the demand you can keep progressing your island to a higher state. So for example I say that on Day Two the Airport opens, but I am not entirely certain if that is the case were I not to have done something that I did on Day One. I know you don’t get Blathers on Day Two if you did not manage to show Tom Nook five new creatures on Day One. I am sure somewhere in Reddit there is a complicated flow chart that shows what it takes to get everything. However I know that the earliest you can get the vaulting pole and shovel is day two and the earliest you can build a bridge and get your ladder is on day three for example.

We also happen to be in the middle of another Internet Zeitgeist as everyone seems to be playing the same game. When I took this screenshot I had 32 friends online and playing games and they were ALL playing Animal Crossing New Horizon. I was not exactly sure how I would like this game having never played one before, but on some level I feel like I have been missing out since the N64 era. Whatever it is about this game be it the cute animal friends or the low stress collection activities, but there is something calming about it. This is the game we need right now given the situation that we are all having to deal with. So sure I named my island Pandemia, but for now at least this game is providing a much needed respite from the world as a whole.

As you can tell by this image that I have discovered the pro creation suite within Animal Crossing. The cap, shirt, face paint, floor and wallpaper are all things that I created and honestly I have been spending as much time doing that as I have doing other things in game. The shirt was a must and it is patterned off of the one that Mae wears in Night in the Woods. The make up… no clue what I was going for there but I have changed it a few times so far. The flooring was inspired by the carpet in The Shining and I honestly went with something more simplified when I realized how hard it would be to translate the actual carpet design to pixels. I’ve changed the wallpaper a bunch of times and for now I am pretty happen with this simple pattern. Now however it is beginning remind me a little bit more of Wes Anderson than Stanley Kubrick.

So animal crossing veterans… How do I say I'm done with today and move to the next day?

— Belghast on ol Menawi Carants (@belghast) March 20, 2020

I feel like I have been through a very rapid evolution of understanding when it comes to Animal Crossing. From the tweet above I legitimately was not ready for what I found myself experiencing. However there is something relaxing about knowing that without cheating and setting your system clock forward… there is only so much that you can do in a single day. When you have reached the end of what you want to do then you can sit down the game and go on to do other things. I appreciate this greatly given that so many games are vying for my attention. I’ve still had time to hang out and grind rifts in Diablo 3 or poke my head into the other game that came out on the 20th, Doom Eternal. Animal Crossing can be all consuming, or it can not be if you choose to take it slow and easy and I greatly appreciate that a game isn’t trying to consume every moment of my waking hours.

On updates that are actually from the real world, which is also Pandemia… I am now entering my second week of remote work. My team was a bit of a vanguard for the entire work force and as of today I believe all but 10 employees are going to be remote leaving only a skeletal crew behind that either didn’t want to work remotely or could not for some reason. The weekend was really freaking weird when it more or less meant being in the same place that I was in for the entire work week. I’ve stopped doing my routine of getting up every morning and going to the corner convenience store because that exposes me to way too many people in the process. Instead we got a bunch of donuts from our local donut shop yesterday and plan on rationing them throughout the week. So far we are doing fine and we have a grocery pick up scheduled for this evening which should give us more options for food and such. I hope all of you out there are also doing okay. We will pull through this and hopefully at some point in the future we will get to return to normalcy. I do have to wonder what the world is going to look like on the other side of this. Metal detectors were the thing that spontaneously showed up in building designs after 911, and I am wondering if thermal imaging is going to be the hallmark of the pandemic so you can see when someone is running a fever. I remember one episode of the old television show Sliders where they landed on a timeline where everything was hyper aware of pathogens and food all came in hermetically sealed packaging. I hope we don’t end up going off the deep end but I do know there will be changes as a result of this, I just am struggling to predict them. Anyways have a wonderful week and I will see you again tomorrow.