I didn’t expect the world the US to still be a burning pile of tires here, in August, but here we are. How have you been coping? Me? I’ve become deeply invested in the lives of a bunch of pixel animals and their fictional dramas.
Yeah, I’m talking about Animal Crossing: New Horizons, because that is how I have been getting through the days and nights of life during this trying time. This is my first real game from the franchise. I played Pocket Camp for a little while (and re-downloaded it long enough to get the exclusive items for New Horizons and damn, has it gotten micro-transactiony), but I don’t really count that one as a true Animal Crossing experience.
I delight in how beautiful this game is. There is meticulous detail in so many things. The first time that I actually docked my Switch and played on television, I sat and just stared at the flowers for several minutes, just marveling over how lovely that they looked. As for the rest of it, I obsess over how much my animals like me. My best friends are a small squirrel with a unibrow, a blue unicorn horse, and a cat with heterochromia. I have become utterly charmed by a zebra horse called Savannah, who keeps refusing to love me. My fairy godmother is an alligator who resembles a wealthy widow in both looks and personality. I have taken as a mentor an octopus that resembles a snack:
Indeed, Zucker. Let all of us yell “bloop” hard today.
And you know, sometimes that’s what it’s taken for me to get through the day. The idea that this shall be the day that I, too, will go hard. It doesn’t always work out that way, but I try.
To say that I am obsessed would be a gross understatement. Sometimes the only reason that I wake up and keep going is the fact that I don’t want my beloved animal friends to miss me. It’s been a very therapeutic experience. I will take any light that I can find in this dark place, and this game has been a huge ball of sunshine for me. Further, this game has managed to enrich my life in other ways, namely in allowing me to connect with people both already in my life, and utter strangers that I may chat with one time.
The game has a deceptively simple premise. One is given tickets, which are routes that you must complete with your tiny plastic trains. You complete these routes by drawing color cards that line up with various lines between major cities. Any routes that you do not complete by the end of the game result in negative points. As I said, it’s deceptively simple. Children can play the game. However, a ton of strategy comes into play. I’ve had to make backup plans for my backup plans in past games. We ended up playing this game with our friends during the last two weekends. After the first game, our friends enjoyed the game so much that they both bought the mobile version. Last weekend, we played twice. One of them solidly trounced both Mr. Price and myself. We’re planning to go a little further and introduce them to 
TITLE GOES HERE, CASEY 