Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream Hands-On Impressions – Same Silliness, Fresh Sims Seasoning

The Switch 2 is having a bit of a cozy moment right now, with Nintendo delivering a major update for Animal Crossing: New Horizons and the unexpectedly excellent Pokémon Pokopia in recent months and now they're dipping back into their cozy bag of tricks with Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream. While the last Tomodachi Life was a surprising success, moving nearly 7 million units on the 3DS, not many expected a follow-up to the Mii-focused life sim as it felt like the series' moment had kind of come and gone. Of course, Nintendo marches to the beat of their own drum and none of their franchises can ever be said to be truly dead.

Does Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream continue the current relaxed roll Nintendo's been on? I've had the chance to go hands-on with the game and can currently talk about the first few hours of my experience, so do kick up your feet and scroll on for my early impressions...

Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream revolves around those now-largely-neglected bobbleheads, the Miis, with the game specifically encouraging players to create pre-existing people, whether they be your friends and family, celebrities, or even fictional characters, as having recognizable faces doing questionable things together is kind of the series’ whole gag.

The Mii editor remains one of the most surprisingly-versatile character creators out there, allowing you to spin up everyone from your cousin Bob to Steve Buscemi with a decent level of accuracy. And if the premade parts aren’t quite meeting your needs, you can now "paint" on characters’ faces, allowing you to draw whatever specific features you want. Gender and dating options have also been expanded, with Miis potentially being male, female, or nonbinary and romantically interested in any combination of male, female, or nonbinary fellow Miis (or simply nobody at all). Perhaps the most interesting part of the whole Mii creation process comes at the end, when you determine how your creation will behave via a small selection of sliders -- are they polite or direct? Serious or relaxed? These determine a personality profile, which can be surprisingly accurate (I'm a Thinker, thank you very much).

Once you've created a Mii, you drop them into your island community where they're provided with a basic house and are free to get down to the business of... just hanging out. You don't directly control any of the Miis, but instead act as a sort of God (you're represented by a large pair of hands that directly interact with your island’s residents). Miis have a lot of requests -- they're hungry, they want new clothes, a better-decorated house, etc. -- and it's up to you to satisfy these needs. Miis also develop relationships with each other, even falling in love sometimes, and you're expected to grease the wheels there too.

Doing things for your Miis earns a player both money and a type of experience called “warm fuzzies,” with both individual Miis and the island itself leveling up. Leveling up Miis allows you to customize their behaviour further, assigning them favorite items to use, various personality quirks, and catch phrases. Upgrading the island gradually increases your Godly pool of resources including various useful buildings and other features.

"So… is that all there is to it?" Tomodachi newbies might ask, and, in the past, the answer would have more-or-less been "yes." On the 3DS, your island was little more than a touchscreen menu and interplay with your Miis was largely passive and limited to vignettes and short snippets of interactivity. The result was a game that felt like a often-amusing gag without a solid core to hold it together. Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream changes this up by having your island be an actual living space, which you can customize to your heart's content ala Animal Crossing.

Your Miis wander around this customizable island in real-time, dynamically getting into situations with their fellow island residents. Occasionally, a Mii will call out to you, giving you the option to click on them to trigger a cutscene or play a minigame. You also now have some ability to directly interfere with your Miis' relationships, as plucking one up and dropping it next to another Mii will trigger some sort of social interaction. I put both my wife and myself in my game, and was able to fairly quickly engineer a romance (although, shockingly, my wife's Mii rejected my Mii's first request for a date – points off for accuracy there, Nintendo).

An extension of this focus on creativity is the new Palette House, which allows you to craft your own clothes, food, items, pets, and more, which, in classic quirky Tomodachi fashion, are often represented as basic 2D sprites out in the world. Palette House is a lot of goofy fun, although it is one of the few places you really notice this is a Switch 1 game with no Switch 2 Edition as of yet (mouse controls would be a nice addition for creative stuff). Thankfully, aside from some control limitations, Living the Dream looks fairly sharp, if simple, on the Switch 2.

I'll admit, I never entirely vibed with Tomodachi Life on the 3DS. Sure, the game provided some chuckles, but given its limited presentation, the joke only went so far. The additions made to Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream result in a far more absorbing experience. Something that feels more like a full-on life sim than a tossed-off knick-knack. The ability to play on the big screen is also a welcome addition, transforming the game into more of a communal living room experience instead of a private joke.

Current Thoughts on Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream

Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream retains the series' trademark oddball humor while expanding the series' core gameplay, resulting in something closer to a screwball Nintendo-flavored take on The Sims. While I still have more to play, it feels like those just looking for a few laughs and those hoping for something a bit deeper should be able to coexist happily on this island.

Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream will be available on Switch (and Switch 2 via backward compatibility) on April 16. Expect a full review closer to launch day.

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