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While I never played the original Tomodachi Life, I vividly remember the period in which it launched. Copies sold out everywhere, and social media was virulent with ridiculous clips capturing its countless emergent moments. I never really felt that it appealed to me directly, but I’ve always had a passing interest in it. After spending some time with the early hours of Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream, it’s becoming clear to me why the original is so beloved.
For the uninitiated, Tomodachi Life is a social sim that combines elements from games like Animal Crossing and The Sims. Miis will come to live on your island, each with their own personality, quirks, and behaviours shaped by the decisions you make when creating them. They’re dropped off on your little island and mostly left to their own devices, socialising with each other, interacting with their omnipotent overlord (you), and just generally going about their lives. It’s a fairly passive gameplay loop, where you’ll spend time manufacturing different social situations or finding remedies to unique problems.
This preview portion covers the opening hours of this experience, laying the general foundations of the island while inviting new residents to come and live in your curated paradise. The thing that struck me the most about this is how quick-moving it is. These kinds of games often meander in their opening hours, slowly rolling out features and gameplay systems, some of which are even time-gated to keep you from blowing through all the content. While I can’t comment on how this was handled in the original, Living the Dream gets things rolling very quickly.
New systems and ideas are rapidly introduced, explained, and built upon in a way that never feels like it’s bringing things to a crawl. It’s refreshing to feel so engaged so early on in a game like this, and if the pace is maintained, it paints an exciting picture of how much there is to influence and change within this world. What helps this a bunch is just how much customisation there is here. Miis can be curated down to every detail or generated through prompts, and your island is rapidly iterated upon through terraforming, construction, building placement, and more.
These are all things that would take dozens of hours to unlock in a game like Animal Crossing. It makes it clear that Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream’s number one prerogative is getting these tools into the hands of the player as soon as possible. They aren’t stretch goals you work towards, they form the foundational layer of Tomodachi Life’s north star – customisation is king.
All of this is built around manufacturing social situations between the different Miis that inhabit your island. Specifically, their quirks, behaviours, and interests, all of which are dictated by you, will shape how they respond to and interact with each other. Even in these early hours, it gives way to emergent narrative moments that feel unique to my island. Only my Miis could have this kind of conversation, and that’s without factoring in the way you can encourage them to cover certain topics that’ll plant the seeds of a burgeoning friendship.
This is the most entertaining aspect of Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream so far. It always finds ways to get a chuckle out of you, often referencing past conversations or happenings on the island in ways that are different depending on which Miis are conversing. It’s always worth listening to their conversation topics. I even caught two of my Miis talking about how they feel as though they’re being watched by a higher power, which they are.
There are also several ways you can improve the overall happiness and mood of a Mii living on the island. You’ll need to keep them fed, and they’ll often request to be clothed in a way that aligns with their personality traits and their house decorated to match. They’ll also often come to you for island improvements, such as placing light posts or benches to improve the overall quality of island life. It’s all fairly straightforward, but the relative complexity comes in the form of trying to provide your Miis with what’s going to make them happy. It’s fun to try and match these things and uncover what your Miis like, but I’m unsure if these systems are going to have legs in the long-term or if they’ll just turn into busy work.
I’m also eager to see how social dynamics and the island itself grow as more residents move onto the island. The preview portion only covers up to six residents, which is a small number relative to how many Miis you can have on your island in total. I can only imagine that the number of potential social interactions will grow exponentially as my island grows. I’m a bit concerned as to how it’s going to all go from a management perspective, especially given that I love to fine-tune designs, but maybe part of the fun is embracing the chaos and all the moments that come with it.
If there’s one thing I take away from my time with Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream so far, it’s that I’m enjoying it far more than I thought I would. As someone who chases experiences that are more directly engaging, the relaxed atmosphere of island life and spending time with my Miis is a nice way to unwind at the end of the day. Much of that time is punctuated by moments of pure hilarity in emergent narrative moments. I’m eager to see how these experiences grow and evolve alongside my island as the resident count grows and more systems are introduced.
Tomodachi Life: Living The Dream releases on Nintendo Switch on April 16th. You can grab it on Amazon for $74 with free shipping.