Two weeks have passed since Animal Crossing: New Horizons came out, and almost everyone on the Kotaku staff has poured themselves into trying to make our new desert islands feel like home. It’s been...a process—full of blood, sweat, and a lot of broken axes—and we have some thoughts about it.

The latest Animal Crossing: New Horizons patch addresses a bug that prevented balloons from spawning in the skies above players’ islands under “certain circumstances.”

There’s a lot of music out there. To help you cut through all the noise, every week The A.V. Club is rounding up A-Sides, five recent releases we think are worth your time. You can listen to these and more on our Spotify playlist, and if you like what you hear, we encourage you to purchase featured artists’ music…

Resident Evil 3 releases today. The action-packed reimagining of 1999’s Resident Evil 3: Nemesis is a nonstop zombie blasting thrill ride. If that action wasn’t enough, there’s more in the form of Resident Evil Resistance. It’s a multiplayer monster mash where four players try to escape from another player who can…

It’s been several weeks since we’ve begun “physical distancing,” and everyone is figuring out how to maintain their social relationships with people they can’t see anymore. But what about the people you are forced to see too much?

Even for streamers who can comfortably do their jobs from inside their homes, seemingly indefinitely, it’s impossible to ignore covid-19. Before it’s all said and done, everybody will be impacted. To help streamers make ends meet, Microsoft-owned Mixer has given all its partners $100.

In the state of New York alone, there are over 90,000 people behind bars.

HBO is getting in on the social distancing relief. The network has announced that dozens of its shows and Warner Bros. movies have been made available to stream without a subscription, starting today. We’ve picked some things you might want to check out, and some to probably avoid. You’re not that desperate.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the island getaway we all need. My island paradise is covered in coconut trees, red tulips, and peacock butterflies. It’s perfect… a little too perfect, perhaps. The game presents a glamorous tale of island life when the reality is much more complex.

Today on Highlight Reel we have virtual classrooms, Animal Crossing pranks, Call of Duty: Warzone kills, and much more!

The weekend is for needing to do laundry, because I’ve hit the “all I have left are sweaters” point of staying home a bit earlier than expected. I’ve read you can do your laundry in the bathtub, so I guess I’m going to try that? That leaves lots of time for games while things soak.

This morning, the publisher Square Enix put out a new trailer for its upcoming video game Final Fantasy VII Remake. We here at Kotaku would like to offer some friendly words of advice: Don’t watch it.