Journal with me: Documenting Animal Crossing in my Traveler’s Notebook

Back in March of this year I started playing a game that is called Animal Crossing: New Leaf on a Nintendo 3DS console that is owned by my brother.

My brother is over that game since many years, because it came out in 2013. But to me it’s all news in many ways, since I haven’t played a game other than Tetris like ones since I tried the first version of The Sims!

Animal Crossing is similar to The Sims as in that is also a Simulation Game, where you simply “exist” in a way.

I really love my little town in ACNL, so I wanted to document it in some way in my Randomosity notebook…

In Animal Crossing you play a character that becomes the Mayer of the town you get to be in charge of. I don’t take my official responsibility too serious and like to walk around just watering my plants and tinkering around, wearing my pink dress and a cat costume head just for fun… LOL.

The cute villager consist of different animals in cloths, all with different names, personalities and ideas on what you should construct next in town. They move into their own homes all around the green area of your town and ask you for favors or even volunteer giving you advice…

If you want to know what the game look like, there are a lot of “walk through” videos on YouTube, and even more of the new version called Animal Crossing: New Horizon that came out in March of this year. It is more advanced with super cute animations, and if I could afford it and this cute console, I’d definitely would’ve bought it already, but alas, I can’t (or a normal Switch with a pink case!). So I’m trying not to look at that version too much, but being content with the version I have available right now – for free courtesy, of my sweet brother!

Anyway, time to take out my traveler’s notebook to do a little journal with iHanna session, right?

In this notebook I’ve already shared videos of me creating an Easter spread, a birthday spread and documenting a bit about the pandemic, right?

So now it’s time to document my gaming life, closely related to the “stay at home” life too of course, and also my lack of energy…

Journal with iHanna: Documenting the game

I drew all the characters myself, and I’m pretty pleased with how they all came out…

Also, if you’re unfamiliar with the term Randomosity Journal, it might be because I made it up myself. You can get the full description on Randomosity Journaling here. :-)

Animal Crossing New Leaf

I found this old trailer for ACNL in case you want to see what the game is all about beyond my explanation above…

I can get really caught up in a game, so I have been avoiding diving in for many years. I know I could probably get into more games similar to this one, but I also know they are a real time suck… It can feel like I can’t move away from them, even when I want to… But since this year has been so special and we’re all told to stay away from friends and family and so on, I feel that it has been a blessing to have the Animal Crossing family always waiting, cheering me on and being so friendly to me.

I feel grateful to have it, and the moments of joy and surprise it’s given me through spring and summer. I also want to create a video with moments from the game, but that will have to wait for another day (year?)…

You are born alone. You die alone. The value of the space in between is trust and love.

Louise Bourgeois

As friends these in-game friends might be fake and silly, but I embrace silly, especially when it gives me respite from a horrible, dark world. Their company has made me feel a little bit less lonely, and that is good, right?

I’d love to know your favorite escape?

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