Journal of Game Studies

Animal Crossing: New Horizons (ACNH) is a widely popular life simulation game known for its calming, non-competitive environment. This study examines how the game’s mechanics and design specifically appeal to autistic players, providing a sense of structure, control, and opportunities for creative expression. By combining game design analysis and ethnographic methods and further enriching the findings with insights gathered from autistic players on social media, this research explores the intersection between neurodiversity and player experience. The analysis highlights key elements such as the game’s predictable routines, highly customizable environments, and simplified, non-intrusive social interactions with both NPCs and other players. These characteristics align with the sensory, cognitive, and social preferences of neuroatypical individuals, offering escapism that reduces anxiety and promotes a sense of autonomy. The ethnographic case study, complemented by feedback from autistic players online, sheds light on the lived experiences of these players, demonstrating how ACNH fosters relaxation, creativity, and emotional well-being. This research contributes to discussions on inclusive game design, suggesting that games like ACNH can provide meaningful, positive experiences for neuroatypical communities, ultimately fostering greater accessibility and inclusion in digital environments.

This paper bridges phenomenological theory with practical game design by examining how players of ASCII Roguelikes develop unconscious mastery through mental simulation—a process with implications for interface design, player onboarding, and cognitive load management in games. While the framework is philosophical, its applications extend to empirical player experience research, particularly in understanding how minimalistic or abstract interfaces can leverage embodied learning. Employing a postphenomenological framework, I take ‘Roguelike’ video games, which use ASCII graphics, as a case study for examining ‘mental simulation’, which is described in neuroscience as an automatic, unconscious process by which the mind readies us for performing tasks that we have learned from previous experience. The experience of playing ASCII Roguelikes is analyzed phenomenologically using the concepts of ‘intentionality’ and Heidegger’s ‘ready-to-hand’, and through this analysis the connection of these concepts to mental simulation is explored. I argue that the development of the capacity for mental simulation runs concurrently with the different stages of intentional disclosure and the development of what Heidegger calls ‘readiness-to-hand’, in which our intentional relationship and level of conscious engagement with an object changes as we become more familiar with it.