Animal Crossing and the Joy of Simple Games

As I’ve got older, I’ve become acutely aware of how quickly the sands of time are running out. I started my gaming journey with a Sinclair Spectrum +2, way back in the mid-80s, but games have been a fairly constant part of my life. Lately something has shifted. Fun, not a second job... Gaming in the mid 2020s is pretty bleak. The push towards derivative ‘live services’ that want to occupy all of your time is something that leaves me feeling pretty cold. I watch the latest week of gaming news and releases and there may be one game in a whole year that grabs my attention. I don’t want to put hundreds of hours into it something just to get to the good parts. I don’t want the stress of endless checklists, of competition or to put time into something that just wants to waste that time. The irony of all this is that the only games I seem to play these days (apart from MarioKart) are what you might call job simulators —mainly trucking simulators, or ‘cosy’ games. For the past few months I…