Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream Review

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Fast Facts

It’s All About Mii

Welcome to the world of Tomodachi Life. An island where you play the omnipotent ruler of all aspects of day to day life for up to 70 Mii characters. This is the 3rd game in the Tomodachi Life series, and it’s fair to say the previous game in the series, Tomodachi Life for the Nintendo 3DS was an absolute viral banger. Launching in 2013 it exploded onto the scene during the Vine generation of short video social media. Everyone was sharing their Mii’s, comedic activities, inappropriately named characters or environments and so much more.

So now 9 years in the making, what can we expect from Tomodachi Life: Living The Dream? More of the same? Well yes, and no. The game opens with a tiny vacant island, and the player assumes the role of the islands caretaker/fearless leader. Graphically the world bares similarity to Animal Crossing: New Horizon and your task is to add Mii characters one at a time to this environment and slowly develop the world around you. Creating Mii’s can be incredibly simple or vastly complex and your journey with the game will really define your approach.

The character designer allows you to assign Skin colour, Hairstyles, facial anatomy, age, gender, personality attributes and voice with the ability to custom design voices with pitch correction and inflections. However you can also go really deep here as the game progresses, with custom options and hand drawn creative designs.

So if you want to have simple Wii Sports like Mii’s? This games got you covered. If you want to fall down a rabbit hole of design and create your own Agent 47, Waluigi, Ava Wong and Ditto like I have you can spend hours doing this too. All for the gratification of sharing through social media.

Only.. the world has moved on a bit from 2013 and we are more digitally interconnected socially than ever before. As such Nintendo did make the decision to block the sharing of screenshots and videos of Tomodachi Life: Living The Dream to social media to seemingly ensure inappropriate content or visuals aren’t creating controversy that leads back to Kyoto. You’ll notice there is a way to share your content however, as I have done so in this review. You just need to transfer your captures across to a PC first, tedious yes but it can be done.

Mii, Myself & I

So what’s next? You’ve made your Mii. Next up, build them a house and landscape the island. There’s plenty of choice for interior design enthusiasts, and as the game progresses you can unlock new shops and design studios to create your own. If you want a Haunted Halloween themed house, we’ve got you covered. As the game progresses you are rewarded with new buildings. Shops, design studios, mysterious night markets, restaurants and ferris wheels. The game expands alongside you.

As you begin to progress you can add more and more Mii’s to the island, and as you start to hit milestones of residents a land reclamation project begins to expand the size of your habitat so you can continue to build. Homes, to gardens, to roads, benches, seesaws. The world’s your oyster! Each day your Mii’s need to be fed, entertained, socialised and will eventually start to forge lifelong friendships, relationships, love, marriages and even babies.

Each Mii has its own evolving personality, and throughout the whole experience your role as their fearless leader and advisor will help to guide their decision making. Which food is keeping their tummy filled, which outfit is likely to impress their love interest, which toy or accessory will stimulate their afternoon on the beach. A few days in you begin to realise this expanding world is a bit of an ant farm. You can just sit back and observe their interactions with one another.

There’s a true layer of independence in their actions and it’s staggering just how much fun can be had watching the awkwardness of people meeting for the first time and establishing common interests. All of which is up to you to decide. My Mii’s enjoy watching Scrubs, talking about Dungeon & Dragons and boasting about their long term friendship with Barack Obama. If you can think it.. it can happen.

This sense of freedom is the funnest aspect of Tomodachi Life. It feels so liberating to just build a world that’s open and thriving, and it’s hilarious seeing the sheer level of comedy and joy that’s been written into the characters. There’s a truly British sense of humour layered into this world, being called mate, bruv, pal or even hearing about a guy, who knows a guy who knows a guy. Truly impressive and I wonder if they’ve captured this sense of culture across the world.

To You, To Mii

In terms of how it plays, it has a similarity to The Sims. Perhaps on a simpler scale. Designing the roads, houses, gardens and land boundaries of the Island is a relatively simple endeavour. The interior design of the houses are just purchasable templates. The materials are quite limited with a handful of choices such as concrete and cobblestone. However for those most creative players, possibilities are quite endless as you draw your way to the most unique options.

Creativity is not my strong point, and the broadest extent of creativity on my part was sticking a flame emoji on top of a slice of cake to make “Fire Cake”. Others however are making wonderful things, and I think this is what creates longevity in the world of Tomodachi Life.

The currency in this world is earned by donations that can be collected each day as contributions from the Mii residents of the island and left at the central foundation. Dystopian Communist Society? Yes, I think it probably is. This money can be spent on Food, Toys, Clothing, Flowers and many other accessories designed to improve the lives of your Mii populous and level them up!

In Closing

In reflection Tomodachi Life is a deep and intriguing life sim, that is drenched in hilariously wacky storytelling and side splitting funny moments throughout. It’s Bishi Bashi Special levels of bonkers humour, with mini games galore allowing you to play and care for your emerging population. With space for up to 70 Mii’s on your island you can expand at your own pace. Now 15 hours and 20 Mii’s into my playtime there is a long runway to enjoy many more hours in this rich and wholesome world!

Rapid Reviews Rating

4 out of 5

4

Tomodachi Life: Living The Dream is available now on the Nintendo eShop