Tomodachi Life: Living The Dream Review - Mii's Gone Wild
I’ve always been a fan of any game that allows me to create my friends and I and then include them in the experience. Whether it was making all of us beat the snot out of each other in WWF: Smackdown vs Raw, or going on a grand adventure in Baldur’s Gate 3, there’s something about character creation that has always provided me with tons of entertainment. The original release of Tomodachi Life on the Nintendo 3DS gave me this enjoyment and then some. Now, 13 years after its release, we’ve finally gotten a proper sequel with Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream on the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2.
“Tomodachi” is the most commonly used Japanese word for “friend”, and while Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream lives up to its namesake, it’s more than a simple life-sim that revolves around making friends. That’s a huge part of it, don’t get me wrong, but the full game is so much more bizarre than one would assume from its title alone. I’ve seen my Mii creations’ dreams, nightmares, little tiffs and arguments, and moments that feel ripped out of a Twin Peaks dream sequence. I’ve seen the game blend both realistic representations of how my friends and I would navigate an actual conversation with absurd moments like stalking my friends through town at night and scaring them with a flashlight (I promise I would never actually do that) or shaking miniature clones of themselves out of a tree. Tomodachi Life is weird in the best way.
At the start of the game, players will create their first Mii. This can be done by either answering a series of prompts or by diving into all the options at your disposal straight away. I chose the prompts, then tidied a few things up with the full editor after. Having played the original Tomodachi Life as well as Miitopia, I was pleasantly surprised by the ease of creating a character, as well as the expanded options available. You can even add face paint to your Miis, allowing you to basically recreate any character you can think of, so long as you’re able to draw them.
After creating your first Mii, they’ll take you through the basics of the game. Your Mii has basic wants and will have a thought bubble above their head indicating what kind of request it may be. White is a basic chat, where they will say any old thing that pops up in their head. The more you customise and share with the game, the more Miis will have to say with these bubbles. Orange is about increasing the relationships between Miis (“I want to be friends with…”) yellow is a direct chat with you (the player), yellow lines around one or more Miis indicate a cutscene event, pink indicates a Mii wants to pursue a romantic relationship with another Mii, etc.
What’s great about Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream is that while your Mii has conversations they want to share with you, basic (and sometimes more advanced) requests and more, you are free to pursue these at your leisure. I quite often prioritise interactions between Miis over playing a game with a Mii. I’m free to zoom past the game and come back to it when I’m done patching up disagreements or cheering someone up. Heck, you could even just keep adding Mii ad Mii before you even dedicate yourself to building rapport with them. You could even spend a massive amount of time customising the island before you lock into building relationships. The island is your oyster.
Completing the requests from Miis builds up their happiness, which acts similarly to an RPG experience level. Reach a new level, and you’ll have a gift to offer your Mii. Reaching new levels of happiness also rewards the player with Warm and Fuzzies, which are used as currency to grant wishes as the Wishing Fountain in town. These wishes can include new props for Miis to use, island customisation options, interior decorating for your Mii’s homes, tickets for a holiday for some of your Miis, and more. I’ve had the final build of Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream for about 3 weeks. I’ve played the game consistently each day, sitting down with it for over an hour at a time. I’ve completed some of the unlockable item categories, but there are still a few more to go.
There really is quite a lot to unlock, though if I’m being honest, recreating my friends and family has made me not want to reward my Miis with things they wouldn’t want. I can’t see my fiancee wanting to throw a baseball around, nor kick a soccer ball. This means that upon her Mii levelling up, I am forced to give my Mii a gift, and quite often resort to giving them new expressions to say just to use the level up itself. There’s no not using a level up gift.
That being said, at a certain point in the game, players will unlock the Palette House, a building that allows them to design new clothes, foods, building interior and exteriors, landscape features, treasures, etc. This is pretty straightforward, allowing players to customise existing items, use a variety of tools including patterns and stamps, or free-draw the item entirely. The only problem is you can’t create new props or customise existing ones. I’d love to have my actual guitar in-game, but alas, it isn’t meant to be.
Of course, if demo playthroughs people have uploaded onto YouTube are anything to go by, Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream is going to be the ultimate meme game, where Donald Trump will want to have a chat with someone about “clapping them cheeks”. People will share how to make just about any character, item, or building, so you’ll be able to create fan-fictions of your favourite TV shows or see how Goku and Vegeta would get along as roommates. The only thing arguably more bizarre than vanilla Tomodachi Life is what will happen when the internet gets its hands on it.
And the game is truly bizarre, in the best way. Some of the cutscenes and Mii interactions are something out of a fever dream. Occasionally, when a Mii goes to throw away garbage into a bin, the bin will scold them for doing it improperly. A face even appears in the bin bearing another Mii’s features. Another time, one of my Miis shook a tree by jumping at its base, only for miniature clones of the island’s other Miis to fall out and run away.
Now, this next part could just be me, but when I have recreated people I know and tried my best to recreate their personalities, their Mii counterparts even interact with people in a strikingly similar way. Left to themselves, real-life couples began to confess their love for each other, and my friend, who is the ultimate troll even interrupted me confessing my love for my fiancee’s Mii in a restaurant and caused a scene. It’s like when people say The Simpsons can predict the future. It’s art imitating life…somehow.
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time with Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream and will continue to play it for the foreseeable future. That being said, I do feel the game would benefit from future updates, similarly to Animal Crossing: New Horizons. If you’ve played the original 3DS Tomodachi Life a lot, Living the Dream is going to feel like a re-tread. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I would like to see more variety in the events that take place, more prop items to reward Miis with, and even some Nintendo fan service thrown in. Animal Crossing has Mario Pipes for fast travel, why can’t I give my Mii a Starfox Arwing and see how he reacts? I suppose though, it won’t be long until someone on the internet helps me create an Arwing. It just won’t function.
Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream is an engaging little life-sim that has given me plenty of entertainment. I’ve chuckled at the odd similarities between my Miis and their real-life counterparts, smiled at some of the more wholesome moments between Miis, and found myself drawn to play the game every single day since I got it. As it stands, this is a great game, but with a few small updates, it could be a must-have for every Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 owner. Here’s hoping it happens.
Tomodachi Life: Living The Dream was reviewed on Nintendo Switch with a code kindly provided by Nintendo Australia.
