Why Animal Crossing Is The Loneliest Game I've Ever Played

I remember the first time I bought a chair and table combo in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, elegantly placing them in between the museum and town centre thinking "That'll be a cool place for things to happen!"

I sat on the chair, and it hit me: No one cares. The A.I. aren't programmed in any way to say "Hey, cool chair!", and as I sat there, emote-waving to an invisible camera in the sky so I could share this image with the world, I felt a profound sense of loneliness.

It's this sensation that's stuck with me - in differing degrees - whilst playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons for another 70 hours, and it's something I need to dissect, because everything about this game is fascinating. I just can't tell whether it's for better or worse.

Now, I'm not this guy, and I have plenty of great memories to mull over, but after living on my "island paradise" for almost two months - alongside being a pernickety sort who makes his living thinking and talking about video games - I have a TON to say.

First off, New Horizons is certainly a solid game; a peaceful one, and in the current climate of all Hell breaking loose, it's been a welcome reprieve from the omnipresent doom and gloom.

With so many deliberate systems and an immaculate sense of polish, the biggest defenders will say you can't chastise it for something it doesn't do. That clearly its mechanics are designed in a way to give you the purest sense of relaxation and zen-like calm, and to get annoyed that you can't "craft multiple things" or use the mountain bike you just bought, is folly.

I'm totally with that in theory: Animal Crossing is as Animal Crossing does, and what it does, is provide a freeing, customisable space to exist in.

That side of things is - again, in theory - exemplary, but I'd contend that breakable tools, being ludicrously in debt and relentlessly mining or crafting things to advance are far from tranquil. To me, nothing here feels like a genuine interaction that endears a character to me, in a way that millions of other titles do.

There's always something missing - something buried amidst distractions like constantly flimsy equipment, the consumerist capitalist grind that is goal-setting overall, and the fact that for as much as Nintendo TRY to set up an intricate matrix of conversation, causality and remembrance, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is not an idyllic utopia of endless possibilities, dreams coming true and friends giving gifts left, right and centre.

It's The Truman Show.

By manufacturing this sense of "eternal goodness" where you're the centre of attention, juxtaposed with the reality of what you're doing to deserve or maintain that spotlight, robs this life sim of the one thing needed to be truly worthwhile: Honesty.

And if we're being honest, there are things in here that don't add up.

Gameplay systems that are the barest minimum of interaction, and the constant fallback that no matter who you talk to; no matter how much you build, you're still left living alone on an island governed by repeatable systems designed to keep you in a specific lane.

Thankfully I'm not the only one when it comes to suggesting gameplay improvements, but let's break this down.