Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a wonderful game that we couldn’t recommend highly enough, but there are a handful of things that could make the experience just a touch more streamlined.

We’re talking, of course, about the little things that slowly but surely start to irritate as you approach your 50th or 100th hour of gameplay. The fact that you can’t access your storage when crafting, or that you can’t craft multiple copies of an item in one go, and all manner of similar little things that feel a little more drawn out than they perhaps need to be.

The video above, shared to YouTube by Nick Ha, presents a list of welcome features that would improve gameplay dramatically for anyone who wants things to speed up a little. It’s presented in the style of an Animal Crossing Nintendo Direct and the entire formula – including the animation, script, and narration throughout – is absolutely spot on. Apart from the odd joke here and there, it looks and sounds exactly like the real deal.

We’ve shared it because it’ll no doubt give New Horizons players a good chuckle, but the ideas presented within are importantly sound. In fact, many of them have been brought up before by you lovely lot in a poll of ours.

Would you like Nintendo to reveal these updates in a future Direct? Or do you prefer the way things are now, with everything running at a charmingly slow pace – even if it can grate after a while? Let us know with a comment.

Thanks to Kalmaro for the tip!

If you’re in the market for a new, thought-provoking puzzler, you’ll probably want to keep an eye out for The Almost Gone.

Happy Volcano’s award-winning narrative-based puzzler is headed to Switch this summer, bringing a variety of diorama-like head-scratchers along for the ride. It’ll be launching on the Nintendo eShop on 25th June. Here’s an official description and feature list:

Poised between life and death, isolated and alone, you must unravel the poignant truths that led to your fate. Dig beneath the beautifully rendered façades and interiors of an ordinary suburban lifestyle to discover a contemporary tale crafted by an award-winning author.

From your own home to eerily deserted streets, beautiful apartment blocks to abandoned hospitals, you must search forensically for clues and the path forwards. Each new revelation takes you one step closer to understanding, and to the people and places that surrounded you, in your all too short life.

Features:
– Experience an emotional and immersive story written by award-winning author Joost Vandecasteele
– Explore every nook and cranny of each beautifully rendered diorama
– Play through five compelling chapters, with each revealing more secrets and twists that will lead you to the truth
– From an unassuming sitting room, to a tent in a forest, from a police car in a tree to an abandoned hospital, a hauntingly different suburbia is yours to discover

It’ll be available on Switch for $14.99 / 14.99€ / £13.49, with a 20% off launch price also being available for a limited time.

Are you liking what you see? Think this might be your cup of tea? Share your thoughts with us below.

The Gamasutra Job Board is the most diverse, active and established board of its kind for the video game industry!

Here is just one of the many, many positions being advertised right now.

Location: Roswell, Georgia​

Tripwire Interactive is looking for talented, dedicated, and passionate individuals to join the Tripwire Interactive family! Tripwire Interactive is an independent video game development and publishing company, famous for shooter titles like Red Orchestra and the wildly popular Killing Floor series. With its next project poised to blow previous projects out of the water, Tripwire has solidified its spot as one of the brightest rising stars in the games industry.

At Tripwire Interactive, we pride ourselves in our ability to move to the beat of our own drum. Our existence as an independent studio and publisher means we are able to develop games on a schedule that reassesses what has become the status quo in the industry as a whole. We’re located in Roswell, GA just north of Atlanta; where cost of living is relatively low and opportunities are high. So if you’re looking to work in an environment that changes the game in more ways than one, look no further than Tripwire Interactive.

*Note: During this unprecedented time, we are looking for individuals who are able and willing to work from home until all restrictions have been lifted in relation to COVID-19. At such time, the position will be located on site.

Responsibilities:

• Utilizing your technical skills, you will collaborate with designers, artists, audio designers, and various other specialists to design and develop best-in-class game experiences
• Exemplify and promote standards for code, design, development, debugging, optimization, reviewing goals, testing and documentation
• Interface between multiple departments with varies approaches to game development. You are responsible for translating creative intent into code tasks
• Help to lead development teams to meet high-level project goals. Understand the intent of the creative direction and translate it into actionable descriptions of work
• Participate in hiring process to grow our engineering team with an ever-rising quality bar
• Identify technical and developmental risks/obstacles and generate solutions to overcome identified risks
• Design and Implement engineering solutions in many areas of game development such as procedural generation, game mechanics, AI, animation, physics, rendering, localization and UI
• Keep up to date on state-of-the-art software engineering methods, practices, and technologies
• Write well-architected code with an eye towards performance and re-usability for multiple experiences. Evaluate other engineers code to make sure it meets the department’s expectations
• Empower and guide the career(s) of your direct reports to promote their growth as engineers. You are responsible for providing feedback for your team to assist in their growth
• Establish workflow pipelines and cost/time analysis required for taking a game from early prototype stages all the way through to pre-production, production and release

 Qualifications:

• BS (or higher) in Computer Science or similar discipline
• Minimum 6 years game industry experience with 3+ shipped titles
• Excellent C++ programming and systems design skills
• Experience with implementing network gameplay, AI, or physics
• Ability to judge feature quality in relation to other current competing games
• Adept at working with designers and artists to implement gameplay features
• Experience in reviewing code and work to provide critical feedback used in career management

Benefits: 

• Profit Share
• Medical, Dental, & Vision 100% of premiums for the family covered by Tripwire
• Up to 30 days of PTO
• 16 paid Holidays
• Short Term Disability & Long Term Disability
• 401k Match
• Flexible Spending Account
• Flexible Hours
• Employee & Family Team Building Events
• Volunteer Days

Preference to applicants with:

• Significant Unreal Engine experience
• Passion for first person shooters
• Proven ability of tackling challenging projects
• Experience in full software development lifecycle of shipping a game
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Ability to work well under pressure, flexible, positive and focused

Interested? Apply now.

Whether you’re just starting out, looking for something new, or just seeing what’s out there, the Gamasutra Job Board is the place where game developers move ahead in their careers.

Gamasutra’s Job Board is the most diverse, most active, and most established board of its kind in the video game industry, serving companies of all sizes, from indie to triple-A.

Looking for a new job? Get started here. Are you a recruiter looking for talent? Post jobs here.

Today, we’re hosting the first-ever fully digital Microsoft Business Applications Summit. Just six weeks ago, the community expected we would be together this week in Dallas, Texas. Now, of course, we are looking forward to connecting with you virtually.

In these past weeks, every business has shifted focus to adjusting to new and unexpected challenges, and doing so at lightning speed. Our team has mobilized efforts to help organizations stay connected to customers and maintain business continuity. Big transformative initiatives that would have taken months or even years are being executed in a matter of weeks, or in some cases just a few days—especially in healthcare.

For instance, in the United States, a New York state “Tech SWAT” team, stood up a new self-screening and test scheduling solution built on Microsoft Power Apps in days. On the other side of the globe, the Australian Red Cross rolled out a new platform in less than a week to connect volunteers with people who are self-isolating—built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service.

This need to remain agile and rapidly adapt to change is a key focus for this year’s Summit. Across dozens of breakout sessions and networking events today, we’ll share and discuss how you can use technology to align your business to this “new normal.”

Helping you move business forward

A lot of organizations are still in crisis response mode, and that’s completely expected. During this time, we are supporting customers impacted by lockdowns, as well as organizations battling COVID-19 on the frontlines. At the same time, we’re looking ahead to how we help organizations move from crisis into rebuilding, when the time is right.

Different industries are impacted in different ways, and the challenges faced by a large multinational corporation look much different than the challenges of a small business. Responding to the current situation requires also laying the foundation for the future—thinking a few steps ahead to be ready to restart and reshape the business to move forward with confidence.

No matter what specific challenges you face, there are several ways we can help your organization respond.

First, it’s all about enabling people and teams to work from anywhere. Working from home isn’t an easy transition for a lot of people. That’s why it’s so important for your teams to have a shared, collaborative workspace to keep business moving. If your teams haven’t installed the Microsoft Dynamics 365 app for Microsoft Teams, now’s the perfect time to do so. Your sales and service teams can update and share customer records from within a Teams channel, and use bots to search for records or account details.

The next thing we’re doing to support organizations right now is helping them rapidly respond to changing business needs. Organizations need the agility to stand up crisis response solutions quickly, adapt their workflows to changing needs, save time and money with automation, and surface the insights and analytics to make critical decisions faster. The Microsoft Power Platform makes this all possible. Here in Washington, we worked with Swedish Health Services to quickly build a Power Apps solution that tracks critical inventory like masks and gloves, and an influx of patients who needed lifesaving care. The app places this lifesaving information right in the hands of the healthcare providers who need it most, supporting critical decision-making across the entire Swedish network of care facilities.

We’re also helping organizations maintain business continuity even in a volatile global environment, with solutions to sell, service, and deliver on customer expectations in a remote world. With Microsoft Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, we’re enabling new types of workers to be remote, keeping people safe while keeping critical functions running. And with increased call volumes straining contact centers worldwide, Dynamics 365 Customer Service allows organizations to provide consistent, personalized support while working remotely. On top of that, solutions like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce keep customers engaged with your company, even when they can’t visit you in person.

Moving forward, businesses will need the agility to reshape the buying journey to better serve the needs of customers. IKEA Sweden is one organization doing just that—by equipping sales teams with tools to more smoothly take customers through the process of building and upgrading a kitchen. They are creating a collection of apps built with Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, collectively referred to as the IKEA Sales Tool, which enables the tracking of the sales process from the first meeting with the customer to the installation of the kitchen. Learn how the solution will help sales teams make the kitchen buying experience more personal.

Organizations also need to focus on ways to track customer health and improve long-term relationships. Chipotle Mexican Grill, one of the most popular chains of fast casual dining, is using Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights to create more meaningful customer experiences. They chose our Customer Data Platform to unlock real-time, up-to-the-moment understanding of their customers to drive relevant and intelligent engagement. They can now leverage data across channels to better understand their customers’ needs, personalize offers and repivot messaging around delivery and take-out offers, and adjust media plans in real-time to serve ads on channels that are more widely used. Watch the demo at the Microsoft Business Applications Virtual Launch Event to see the solution in action.

These are just a few of the ways we’re supporting organizations around the world and in every industry. You can learn more about this work at Microsoft.com/together. We also encourage you to join us at today’s event, or access additional content on-demand after the event. When your team is ready, engage with the Microsoft Dynamics 365 community—ask questions, learn from qualified experts, and join the conversation.

We look forward to supporting you on your journey.