Have we considered that now is the correct time to move to a deserted island (run by raccoons) or start a (digital) farm?
Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley have been the perfect pair of games to recharge with
Shit sucks, man. It's real bad.
In the US, everything is a nightmare, especially in Minnesota. Globally (and also especially in the US), the video game industry is just in shambles. Whether you are a human being with humanitarian interests (all of us, hopefully) or just a big ol' worker/consumer: bad.
Obviously, we should all do what we can to fight tyranny and support those around us who need help (again, help Minnesota here). But we also need to unplug, and pull away sometimes. As your therapist would tell you: we cannot have the energy to help others if we do not allow ourselves to recharge. Taking a vacation or blowing up your life to go down a "simpler" path probably isn't in the budget right now – it isn't for me, at least – but starting a new Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley save is.
Listen, I love a good cozy game, but it's not the main thing I spend my gaming time on. My wife plays all of them, so I get good recommendations and I definitely check them out when I can – and there are a ton of great ones every year – but sometimes you have to "dance with the one that brung ya," as they say.
I jumped back into Animal Crossing: New Horizons because it got a Switch 2 performance upgrade and I got a code for it from Nintendo. I started a brand new island, and quickly remembered that I'm a parent that can only play this game between the hours of 8 p.m. and midnight most days, so my island is forever in darkness. However, I was able to immediately build a snowman, and experience haphazardly signing up for debt: the two best parts of being a Midwesterner! I've already built myself a real house, and helped out my neighbors, and, very soon, those two rascally nephews of Tom Nook are gonna have their very own store.
I initially started a new Stardew save because I wanted to keep the chill times rolling once I'd done everything I needed to do on my Animal Crossing island for the day. It has since become the main one of the two that I'm playing, and I'm really kicking ass on this farm. I don't talk to any of the weird people that live near me – true to my own life – and I've only passed out in the mine once and it was from exhaustion – also true to life.
The best part of Stardew is that I haven't played it in earnest in many, many years – likely before I ever even introduced it to my wife about eight years ago. It's probably her favorite game of all time, and she plays it easily twice a year. So now I'm asking her a bunch of annoying questions, which she totally hates. And I'm getting a lot of joy out of that, personally.
Right now I feel like I should be spending my couch time replaying Resident Evil 4 and some other games I have on my "return to" or "backlog" list, but – as previously stated – everything is shit right now. And there's just something about farming, and picking weeds, and shooting balloons out of the air, and annoying my wife that takes me away a little. Maybe it's that I'm chilled out, so I'm using less of my brain to stress. Or maybe I'm hyper-focused on completing tasks in my village and making an efficient farm. Either way, it's helping keep the horrors at bay.
It's important – now more than ever – to keep your eye on the ball. To focus on what is happening, speak it aloud, and try to figure out what you can do. But there are times when we need to just ... plant some parsnips, man. And when you've called your senators, and protested with your local community, and run out of funds that you can donate from your budget, it's nice to live – for just a few hours – in a world where your main concern is not getting stung by bees.
