You’ve likely seen people talking about the newest installment of Animal Crossing—“Animal Crossing: New Horizons”—all over social media for the past month and a half. Released on March 20 for the Nintendo Switch, it’s become the video game of choice while people are stuck at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, its massive popularity is not just hype—this game really is great. You can enjoy it regardless of your age, gender or whether you’ve played a game in the series before.

Animal Crossing as a series has been around since 2001, so it is by no means a new phenomenon. The first game in the series that I played was “Animal Crossing: Wild World” for the Nintendo DS, which came out in 2005 when I was eight years old. Ever since then, an installment of the series has come out during each stage of my school career from middle school, high school and now college. It’s been something that’s been present throughout my life, and it holds a special place in my heart and the hearts of many other long-time players.

For many people who have never played the series, the game’s appeal can be confusing. It’s difficult to understand what the game is really about or what you actually do in it. Essentially, you are the sole human in a town full of anthropomorphic animals, and you can interact with those animals as you go about your daily life. You can expand and decorate your house, customize your town, catch fish and bugs, add to your town’s museum, participate in events and visit your friends’ towns through the multiplayer system.

The game is meant to be played a little bit every day because the time in Animal Crossing syncs with the time zone on your Nintendo Switch. With this set-up, you get different experiences during the day and night and in spring, summer, fall and winter.

In New Horizons, you start out on a deserted island. There are no buildings except a Resident Services tent run by Animal Crossing’s infamous capitalist raccoon, Tom Nook, and his young business partners, Timmy and Tommy (even though many people believe they are his sons, he emphasizes they are NOT related to him).

This is a first, since all Animal Crossing games up until this point have had the player come to a town that was already somewhat established with basic amenities and local businesses. The player has to work and start transforming the island into the quaint little town it is known as in the previous games. Over time, you can start constructing bridges and ramps, new shops, an official town hall, resident homes and eventually you can terraform the geography of your island yourself.

One of the best parts of New Horizons is the DIY crafting mechanic, something that hasn’t been seen in any other Animal Crossing game except for the mobile app installment, Pocket Camp. Much of your early days with the game will consist of desperately scrambling to collect enough materials to craft flimsy tools that break after around 25 uses. The extremely frustrating goal you’ll be tasked with in regards to crafting is collecting 30 pieces of each type of wood (there are three types) and 30 pieces of iron ore to construct the general store known as Nook’s Cranny. This task will leave you cursing whatever furry Animal Crossing god that exists for giving you such unlucky item spawn rates. Once you’ve completed that, however, resources become a lot easier to come by.

After making it past some of the early stages of the game, you are left to choose how you want to spend the days of your virtual life. You can spend your days fishing, catching bugs, digging up fossils, mining resources from trees and rocks, buying and/or crafting clothing and furniture, upgrading your house, hanging out with your animal neighbors and so much more.

This is where some of the creative genius of Animal Crossing players comes to life. Just look through any social media platform for Animal Crossing content, and you’ll find amazing custom pattern designs, impossibly complex town layouts and different ideas for games to play over multiplayer. People are even having birthday parties, graduations and even weddings in the game to make up for the fact that they couldn’t attend said event in person.

The developers of New Horizons recently revealed they were planning on continuously releasing new features for the game, increasing its longevity and accessibility. 

The game director, Aya Kyogoku, stated: “We want to make sure that in two years or three years down the road, players will still continue to find new surprises in the game.” 

This has already started with updates bringing seasonal events, such as the cursed “Bunny Day” event in early April which went on for 12 days and had players drowning in colorful eggs any time they wanted to hunt for resources. Permanent gameplay features have also been added, such as the ability to plant shrubs and bushes and buy (possibly counterfeit) art pieces from lovable con-artist fox Crazy Redd (now rebranded as “Jolly Redd”) in order to donate them to your island’s museum. The promise of continued updates to the game is exciting and encourages people like me to keep playing and experience everything the game has to offer.

As any person who has played the series can tell you, Animal Crossing is incredibly helpful for easing feelings of anxiety and depression. Having an unstressful (well, unstressful except for when you lose a fish, get stung by wasps or get chased by a tarantula or scorpion), peaceful and cute game to play every day is motivating. You can complete routine tasks, have a creative outlet to design and create things and get some form of social interaction.

One of my favorite video essays on YouTube expresses just that. The creator of “Animal Crossing and (My) Mental Health” talks about how having a routine to look forward to every day and friends to talk to—even if they’re virtual—helped his depression. It slowly got him out of that hole enough to take steps towards getting better. It’s a video that brought me to tears when I first watched it because I could completely relate in terms of my struggle with depression. To many, it may seem trivial that a cutesy video game about talking animals can help ease feelings of depression. However, any fan of the game will let you know that it’s much deeper than many people give it credit for. 

There’s a couple video games that I see as “comfort games.” I play them for a reprieve when my everyday life is not going the way I want it to and I need some sort of outlet. They are games you can get sucked into for hours, and they make you temporarily forget all of the things causing you problems in the first place. For me, those games are Fire Emblem, Pokemon, The Sims and, of course, Animal Crossing.

Yet, Animal Crossing is different because of its “real-time” mechanic—something none of the other games I listed have. Sure, you can get sidetracked for hours fishing or decorating your house, but just like in real life, shops close and neighbors go to bed as it gets later into the evening. That makes you realize that you should probably go to bed too because then, you can get up at a good time and play the game in the morning. It’s easy to see how this could cultivate a positive routine in those struggling to find control and balance in their life.

The original creator of the Animal Crossing series, Katsuya Eguchi, came up with the idea after moving from Chiba, Japan to Kyoto and feeling lonely and stressed. 

When describing the reason he created the game, Eguchi said, “Animal Crossing features three themes: family, friendship and community. But the reason I wanted to investigate them was a result of being so lonely when I arrived in Kyoto! Chiba is east of Tokyo and quite a distance from Kyoto, and when I moved there I left my family and friends behind. In doing so, I realized that being close to them—being able to spend time with them, talk to them, play with them—was such a great, important thing. I wondered for a long time if there would be a way to recreate that feeling, and that was the impetus behind the original Animal Crossing.”

The familiarity of this sentiment is not lost on me—it’s one that many people have expressed during the current pandemic. People are lonely. They feel disconnected from their friends, family and the world. Zoom calls provide little relief in terms of meaningful social interaction, and they are usually more stressful than fun the majority of the time. Finding something that is simply positive and sweet and doesn’t confine you with certain requirements or expectations is a reprieve. 

Let’s face it—this quarantine has been hard, especially if you’re a student. When not scrambling to try and balance my schoolwork with my extracurricular obligations, I spend what little free time I have practicing “self-care.” And by self-care, I mean binging Netflix shows and going on Twitter. 

I’m doing my best to maintain a healthy routine during this time, but it’s difficult. It’s hard to get up in the morning if you know you’re not going anywhere, and it’s hard to find time to exercise if you can’t go outside because of seasonal allergies (screw you, pollen). But I still get up and go through my day, and Animal Crossing helps give me that push. I can’t afford to miss buying turnips from the “stalk market” if I don’t get up before 12 p.m., and I’ll never complete my museum if I don’t catch the fish that only appear in the mornings.

Things aren’t perfect, but I’m hanging in there. Some people reading this might scoff at the current Animal Crossing fervor online, but the game helps people take their mind off all the stress they might be feeling right now. I don’t see what’s so bad about that.

If you feel lonely and stressed during this pandemic, give “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” a try. You might be surprised how much enjoyment you get out of it and how much talking to an animated bear will lift your mood. If you get hooked on the game, come on down to my Animal Crossing town, and we can hang out. I’ll even trade some fruit with you. Everyone needs a friend sometimes.