Make friends, make islands, and then make friends do stuff on those islands in Nintendo’s new game
During a focused Direct today, Nintendo revealed loads of new info about its upcoming Switch (and Switch 2) game, Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream. The game, a cozy life management sim not unlike The Sims but way, way more Nintendo, will put players in control of an island and its residents. While this may sound like what Animal Crossing’s latest iteration does, it veers quickly from that similarity.
In LTD players don’t directly control the characters, rather playing a sort of god that just nudges them, letting them take their lives into their own hands. Players will create characters using an in-game Mii creator or a Q&A feature that will create one based on their answers. No Mii import feature was revealed at this time, so we don’t know if we’ll be able to bring the little people we’ve already created that are loving on our Switches already.
New to the series is the ability to add quirks, little things that define a character’s uniqueness, and the ability to set a dating/love preference. Players will also be able to fully create their island(s) as they see fit, adding buildings, landmarks, and even designing the shape and colors of the island from the ground up. Want one that looks like your face? You can do that.
The Palette House Workshop is a new feature that will let players create custom images to use on TV screens to represent their favorite shows, on clothing, in latte art, and even to become living pets in the game. It’s worth noting though that Nintendo is putting some restrictions on how images can be shared, removing the ability to share directly to our phones (because that’s how Nintendo does it, we guess) so you probably won’t be able to make risque selfies of your in-game characters or draw boobies and send them to your Facebook friends as shirts. Well you WILL (we know you!) just not as easily as you can with Animal Crossing.
And then there’s also the dream aspect, which even though Nintendo hasn’t fully revealed much yet could be a fun way to add even more strange events to the experience.
Tomodachi Life has always included tons of events, character interactions, customization and surprises that make playing it seem like watching our favorite reality TV series, and has often led to players bonding (often emotionally) to their in-game characters. Living the Dream looks like it will take that to charming new extremes when it launches on April 16 for the Switch (and playable on Switch 2).
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