My island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons isn’t really a location in the ocean. Instead, it feels like a small pause in the middle of my busy day. It is a place I make sure to visit at least once every single day. Just like the famous character Dale Cooper and his morning coffee, I don’t plan my visits. I simply let the moment happen naturally.

Between driving the kids to school, checking my email inbox, writing my work, and running errands outside the house, there is always a special moment when my Switch console calls out to me. In that moment, I wonder how my villager Spike is doing today. I feel that a quick trip to The Roost café would be exactly what I need right now.

This might seem surprising to some people. I have played every single Animal Crossing game released, and I believe I have played them all by now. Every game captures my attention, holds it tight, and eventually lets me drift away. I have certainly taken breaks from New Horizons. I have been away for weeks, and sometimes even for a whole month. But for some reason, I always return. I always do.

I honestly thought I would be finished with the game once I had a good group of villagers living on my island. I was completely sure I would stop playing once I finished filling up the art gallery. But I was wrong. Months later, here I am, still visiting. “How are you, Spike? Are you still grumpy today? 200 Bells for a coffee? That sounds pretty good, Brewster.”

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All of this makes the latest update feel a little strange for players like me. This update, which arrived in January with new items and features, probably isn’t for the players who never left the game. Instead, it seems designed to tempt players who have drifted back to their island for just a few more hours. Does a new megaphone do anything for you? What about a few quality-of-life improvements? Or perhaps an entirely new hotel where you can decorate the rooms one by one?

Well, I guess it is fine. All of these new additions are fine. And I actually love the hotel, mostly because who doesn’t love a strange hotel down by the seaside? It fits well with the feeling of transience and slight sadness that Animal Crossing always keeps hidden somewhere in the background. I went inside to check it out a few days ago. I lingered in the lobby, decorated one room in a seaside style, and tried to match the vibe for another room—though I cannot remember exactly what theme I was asked to create.

After that, I went outside and Tom Nook called me over. He asked me to do a favor that seemed so complicated and so unnecessary that I completely zoned out while he was explaining it to me. After that? Well, after that I went back to The Roost for another imaginary coffee. It cost me 200 Bells.

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There is a point to all of this, I promise you. And the point is actually quite simple. New content in Animal Crossing always feels like a test to me. The game presents a new chain of busywork. It offers a new collectible, a new token in an economy that is already filled with tokens. It is fun, probably, but it is a fun that feels like it is leading somewhere specific. You are decorating all the rooms in a hotel. You are filling up the art gallery and the dinosaur museum. You are paying off your mortgage.

I get drawn into these activities for a while, but then I realize what I think they are really for. It is the same thing I once felt lurking beneath the surface of the original Animal Crossing on the GameCube. The game offers you a treadmill to encourage you to reach your limit. It wants you to step off the treadmill, and then finally enjoy the little things in life.

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And this, I would argue, is where every Animal Crossing game truly excels, even one that can feel as sparse at times as New Horizons does. This is a game designed for endless, aimless wandering. It is for late-night rambles through the trees, for stepping out of your house and seeing a villager just messing around on the town square. My greatest pleasures here are not paying off a debt or collecting the last piece of a set. They are not even knowing that every guest in the new hotel is enjoying a room I put together.

The greatest pleasures are smaller and deeper. They are recognizing the time of day just by the music playing. They are wandering to a distant part of the island I haven’t visited for a while and staring out to sea. They are going back to Brewster just to check in and have that delicious virtual coffee.

To be clear: I think it is great that Nintendo has updated the game once again. In time, I probably will design a few more rooms in that hotel. But the more stuff there is in the game, the more reason I have to look past the stuff when I find that spare three or four minutes every day. In those moments, the stuff of my real life is temporarily at bay, and the Switch is calling to me.