Rhythms of the Everyday in Animal Crossing

Some days you wake up and it’s winter and it’s raining and that isn’t going to change, no matter how much you wish for it to be a warm May afternoon. On those kinds of days, the only thing you can do is make the most of it. And how else can you do that but by not only accepting the gloom, but leaning into it? Get comfortable, crack open a good book, and start listening to one of the dozens of YouTube videos called something along the lines of “Animal Crossing music + rain sounds.”

It’s fascinating that there’s a segment of the internet where Animal Crossing ‒ a game primarily about getting outdoors and hands-on with everything that’s out there ‒ is synonymous with cosying up and listening to the rain. But it also seems an inevitable side effect of how the game itself does weather and seasons. Just like in real life, there’s no escaping winter and showers in the Animal Crossing series. Both changing seasons and variable weather have been a feature since the very first game released in 2001, and they’ve remained a constant right up to the release of New Horizons in 2020. 

In both real life and Animal Crossing, you actually wouldn’t want to skip through cold seasons and bad weather. Despite the general dreariness of these kinds of days, look a little closer and you’ll find that they have their own charms: snowfolk, coloured lights, firework shows, the appearance of the Coelacanth. (Okay, maybe you can’t find one of these at your local beach just because it’s wet out – but have you tried?) And of course, there's having a coffee with Brewster and enjoying the noise of the falling water on the roof, or simulating the same experience in your actual home with a good YouTube video.

Yes, there’s novelty and beauty waiting for you in spring, summer, and autumn. But Animal Crossing resists giving you everything at once. You can’t see the egg festival and a summer evening thunderstorm and the leaves turning red and gold all at once. You can’t get all the bugs and fish without spending at least a year trying; the museum is a long-term project no matter how many hours you put in per day. But as you step back and see that the seasons have been turning, and you have been making progress, the fact that you had to wait makes them that much more fulfilling. 

Technically, you could jump ahead. Nintendo can’t stop you from changing the date on your console and checking out May Day at any time, or getting an early ticket to wedding season when it should be in June, or Cowherd & Weaver Girl day (late July). But skipping through time causes all the side effects that happen when you’ve been away from Animal Crossing for a long time: cockroaches and weeds will appear; villagers may leave unexpectedly; and your character will have a bedhead. Technically this is what happens if you just don’t play, but isn’t that the same thing? 

You could sleep through your real life, but you would miss the small things - and neglect the upkeep and attention and appreciation for the small things that make up the crucial rhythms of everyday life, that add up to the making of a year. The first crocuses of spring, the sudden realisation that the sun isn’t setting quite so early in the day, the sound of swifts in early summer, blackberries on the bushes in August,  autumn colours, and yes, days spent inside away from the cold and wet. They all have to come together to make a cycle, and Animal Crossing gives each of them the care and attention that they deserve. 

In a landscape where it feels more and more like games shy away from holding anything back, unless it’s for the artificial scarcity of a battle pass or a gacha banner, it’s refreshing to be encouraged to be patient. In fact, it feels different from the media landscape as a whole. New TV shows are dropped all at once so you can get your fill without ever having to wait and digest and wonder what might be coming next. New movies are advertised by how many familiar characters will reassemble in them. There’s always more, and it’s always all there for you to consume all at once. 

But (at time of writing) it’s spring in Animal Crossing. In a few days, the cherry blossoms in New Horizons will be out. On my daily walk around the block, there’s a plum tree that’s pink against the blue sky. I don’t get to see either of these things except for a few days out of every long year. And if the winter creeps back, like it so often does with the dreary UK weather, I know that “rainy town + thunderstorm ambience” on YouTube has my back.

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