Along the way, friends-both real and artificially intelligent-stop by to visit and admire what you’ve done with the place. Eventually, you can “terraform” the island itself, paving its pathways with different materials, and erecting bridges and hills. You can buy and arrange furniture, tchotchkes, flooring, and wallpaper. The main activity on Animal Crossing is design. Your tropical island is populated by cute talking animals there is an elaborate currency scheme based on turnips, a complete absence of violence, and an abiding ethos of neighborliness and cooperation. Like Sim City or Minecraft, Animal Crossing involves inhabiting and building a virtual world, the details of which are surreal, or maybe preposterous. But in my household, with a 7- and 10-year-old home from school, another virtual environment rushed in to fill that void: the candy-colored islands of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, an elaborate new video game released by Nintendo in March, which has since sold more than 10 million copies.