If the coronavirus is making you feel like moving to a deserted island right now, I have some good news: Animal Crossing: New Horizons is out on Nintendo Switch in a few days and it lets you do exactly that (albeit virtually). When I first started playing it a couple of weeks ago, it was merely a welcome escape from tending to the ceaseless needs of my two small children. Now, though, it’s become an escape from … well, everything about the world’s current situation. The absence of noise and urgency on my little island has made it a vital sanctuary, and it looks as if it will be greatly needed in the weeks and months to come.

This isn’t a high-pressure survival story. It’s more of a mellow holiday fantasy. Sign up for a getaway package with a notorious raccoon tycoon called Tom Nook and you are dropped on to an untouched paradise with a tent and a few tools to go about making it your home. Your island is well provisioned with fruit, internet shopping and some company in the form of the aforementioned business raccoon and his two nephews, your island development guides. Your days are spent chasing bugs, chopping wood, arranging furniture and watering flowers, not scrounging for food/water/weapons and fighting people.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The image of community we need right now ... Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Photograph: Nintendo

Over time, more animal neighbours turn up to live the good life, and you accumulate DIY recipes for furniture, bridges and other things to make with wood, rocks and a lick of paint. Your time with the game is marked by the burgeoning individuality of the island space and the gradual accumulation of bells (money) and Nook miles (reward points) to spend on your little paradise. I’ve started laying down paths and fencing off parks with lawns and flowers, and I made a little chillout zone on the beach with a campfire, hammocks and a boombox. My eccentric home decor is cobbled together from found or created bits of furniture, including a garish flamingo, a terrarium and a cooker that is rather ill-advisedly constructed from wooden blocks.

If all of this sounds like a kind of relaxing pastel wander, be aware that it is also almost aggressively cute and gaudy, with contrasting colours pounding your eyeballs and round-headed characters flashing vacant smiles. After a few days, this becomes so normal that you cease to even notice it until, say, you’re browsing screenshots to show your sceptical partner what you’ve been doing on the Switch in every spare minute of the day.

A wonderful thing about Animal Crossing is that it encourages a slow pace. The days and seasons pass as they do in real life, and you can play for maybe an hour or two a day before you naturally run out of things to do. This isn’t a game that’s trying to suck you in and dominate your attention, but one that builds a relationship with you over the long term. There’s something exciting to come back for pretty much every day – a visiting camel carpet salesperson, the opening of a bug and fish museum, the construction of a bridge – but it fits into your daily routine, into a commute or a half-hour before getting out of bed.

It took just over a week of play before my island was starting to look more like the villages of older Animal Crossing games, with shops and houses instead of tents, and a slowly growing population of kooky creature companions. My current neighbours include a fashion-conscious anteater, a dreamy elephant in a dress and a tedious body-building obsessed mouse whom I’d quite like to push into the sea (alas, this game is entirely non-violent). I really am just at the beginning. When the game is out, I’ll be able to invite friends to my island and board a little seaplane to visit theirs, running around on the beach together and swapping fruits and homewares. Much of New Horizons is cannily Instagram ready; taking carefully posed and nicely filtered shots of your island is both easy and encouraged.

It’s been a long time since I played something that’s had me hiding from my kids just to catch 10 minutes with it. As a bonus, because it’s on the Switch, I can play it anywhere I like, and it’s a much nicer preoccupation while on the go than staring at Twitter with a mounting sense of horror. Animal Crossing is everything I have been craving: it is gentle, soothing, social and creative, and my group chats are already buzzing with hype about beetles and villager fashions. If there was ever a perfect time for a game such as this, that time is now.