Uhh with New Leaf you move to a town and they appoint you mayor. Your main goals are to fulfil the "perfect town" requirements (pretty easy tbh), commission/fund town projects, expand your house to max size (paying off loans as you go along), and get good scores on your house. Secondary goals are like, collect every fish/bug/sea creature/fossil and donate one of each to the museum. And get/upgrade all the possible shopping areas. And yeah it's cute lol. It's really hard to describe without making it sound boring af.
I pick it up only once in a while tbh I'm going to miss the winter-spring season again this year because Pokémon's coming out over that. Again. :P But I haven't finished the game and I won't drop it till i do~