With the current stay-at-home order, online classes, and a halted economy, there’s a lot of uncertainty hanging over all of us. None of us can see our friends and family without fear of spreading the virus. E-learning isn’t the same caliber of education. Financial troubles are also rising for everyone. No, 2020 had not passed the vibe check.

In the midst of a world-wide pandemic, there has been a silver lining: Animal Crossing. The quaint social simulation game, exclusive to the Nintendo Switch, has provided a peaceful escape from these trying times. The game has gone viral and exceeded sales of the competing demonic First-person-shooter Doom Eternal, which was released around the same time as Animal Crossing back in March. Since then, people have decked out their islands, invested in the turnip market, and enjoyed island life with their villagers (Non-player-characters with unique personalities who live on your island with you.)

Twitter, in particular, has taken a storm of people showing off their fully decorated islands. The game has unlocked everyone’s creative potential with each person decorating their islands in unique ways. With over thousands of obtainable furniture items, the design possibilities are endless. This is the game’s most appealing feature. There’s nothing more fun than touring other people’s islands to see what they came up with and sharing your island’s design with others as well. Even YouTube has seen a quite an influx of island tour videos that have racked up millions of views. Though, with it’s explosion on social media, the game has created an effect similar to Instagram where people compare viral islands to their own and thus lower their Animal Crossing-esteem.

Since nobody has anything else to do but play video games, Nintendo has been hard-at-work providing more content for Animal Crossing. The most recent update added features such as a museum extension. Blathers, a very cute owl who runs the museum, asks for donations of unique fish, critters, and fossils to put up for display. It’s up to you to find these unique collectibles to fill the museum. Now, Blathers is looking for unique art to display in the new art wing.

Where can you find art? From Jolly Red, a tricky fox who comes to the island by ship. He’ll have about four art pieces to sell to you each time he comes, but keep in mind that he’s also a scammer. Only one of the four art pieces are actually genuine, and the rest will be fake.

The art pieces are actually real life art, but will be altered in some way for fakes. For example, you might find a fake Mona Lisa with her eyebrows raised higher than the original. This is where being well-versed in Art History might come in handy, as all the art pieces will be generically renamed. The Mona Lisa is actually called Famous Painting in-game, as well as The Starry Night being called Twinkling Painting.

With more events and things-to-do being added to the game consistently, Animal Crossing is the perfect quarantine game to play by yourself or with friends. It’s a peaceful game that detoxes you from the real-life stress of COVID-19. There’s no killing or fast-reflexes needed. All you have to do is build your island from the ground up with villagers who are actually nice to you (I’m looking at you Stardew Valley).

In other words, quarantine life is now island life, and I’m honestly content with that.