Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream

When Nintendo first launched its now-classic Mii avatars, they were, in my world, an unexpectedly fun pastime, where my siblings and I would often sit and recreate various characters and personalities from different contexts, only to then have them face off in a baseball match in Wii Sports. The sport itself wasn't the main thing; the fun was in sitting there and commentating on matches where, for example, Chicken Little managed to hit a home run after Nikki Sixx had pitched the ball poorly, leading to the manga character Yotsuba, Kenny from South Park, and a "boomer" from Left 4 Dead to run the bases and score a handful of runs for the home team. Wii Sports was almost never about playing the sports but about seeing how all these different characters interacted with one another, and to some extent, creating amusing narratives that we could engage with. The genius of the concept lay in its simplicity, where Nintendo found a way to unleash our creativity with relatively limited tools. It was all about the image we projected onto the characters we recreated, and I remember thinking that we could have done so much more if our options for character creation had been just a little more extensive.

Nintendo was one step ahead and released the life simulator Tomodachi Life for the 3DS a couple of years later, and although it unfortunately flew under my radar, I have now finally been able to come back and live out my Mii dreams in a game that focuses entirely on precisely what we were trying to achieve in Wii Sports; namely, letting creativity flow and watching my little creations interact with each other as friends.

In Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream, it's all about building your own community of unique personalities on an island that you're assigned as soon as the game starts. Right from the beginning, I was impressed by the ability to not only name your Mii characters' shared home, but also to customise the way it's pronounced. In fact, whenever a name needs to be created or a catchphrase designed, I first have to type it out in plain text and then, on a new line, decide on the pronunciation. This is particularly handy when I want to introduce Swedish characters or expressions to the island, and although my Mii characters' pronunciation is rarely quite perfect, the language difference never feels like a hindrance to my creative endeavours. To clearly establish my role as the island's leader, I decided that I should be addressed as "Captain", but every time a Mii tries to pronounce my name, they must call me "Oh Captain, my Captain". Simple, yet oh so fun.

Speaking of Miis, it's these little charmers that Nintendo has poured almost all its energy into in Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream. The first thing that happens after I arrive on my personal continent is that I get to create my very first resident; Ozzy Osbourne. It goes without saying that the character creation tool has evolved since the Wii days, but when I first browsed through the menus of eyes, noses, hair, and other physical features, I still felt a little joy in my heart at seeing just how much love and personality I can project on my little creations. I'm presented with a veritable gallery of options, where I'm also largely allowed to tweak and adjust my characters' facial features until I'm completely satisfied.

A character is more than just their appearance, something Nintendo is well aware of, so before Ozzy could be let loose on the island, I had to design his personality. By answering questions that didn't seem too far removed from a classic personality test, his character began to take shape. The voice is another key feature of every unique personality, and although I feel that absolutely all Miis tend to sound a bit too mechanical for my taste, I appreciate how I'm allowed to customise everything from voice pitch to intonation so that each character's voice has the chance to find its own unique tone.

Once Ozzy has found his identity, he is finally released onto the small island and I get to experience the core mechanics of Tomodachi Life. It's all about the desires, dreams, and development of my Mii characters, where the development of both the continent and each individual character is based on fulfilling the inhabitants' wishes and needs in one way or another. The rewards for developing my Miis are never particularly grand. Instead, each advanced level allows me to identify a new piece of the puzzle in a selected character's personality. Each individual reward certainly feels rather modest in scope, but it also builds a desire within me to continue investing in my little characters so that, in the long run, they can develop into completely unique individuals. Whether I choose a distinctive walking style or create my own catchphrase for a character to say every time they eat something, I feel that the gaps in the personality puzzle are slowly but surely being filled in. When it comes to designing new sentences and phrases, which my Miis then start using in everyday life, it's unexpectedly fun, and the first few times I heard Ozzy say "I wish they would serve bats" before tucking into his lunch, I couldn't help but laugh.

As new residents move to the island, a small town begins to take shape, complete with residential buildings and various shops, where I'm often given further opportunities to be creative. Personality traits aren't the only thing that can be customised, as in time, I also get the chance to design everything from clothes to personal items. The tools used for creation are admittedly a bit fiddly and take a while to get to grips with, but ultimately I feel it's worth the effort since the level of detail that can be achieved with a bit of work is definitely worth the trouble. Seeing my inhabitants wandering about in personally designed outfits and picking out various unique trinkets contributes greatly to the feeling of a living, personal world. The more time I spend creating new details, the more the island feels like my own unique creation.

As the continent's leader, it naturally falls to me to act as the urban planner for my residents' growing community. As more people move in, the island's size expands, and just as with individual characters, I have the opportunity to shape the world to my own liking. In my opinion, however, this is Tomodachi Life's weakest aspect, as I often find it a bit of a faff every time I have to rework the layout to make room for a new shop or some other kind of expansion. The game also insists that I place a newly unlocked building as soon as it becomes available, without giving me the option to rearrange my existing town centre first. If I choose to let the game decide the location itself, it usually picks the first available open space, which can, for example, result in the island's large sandy beach being used as a storage area until I've come up with a more sensible solution.

As I wrote in the introduction, my enjoyment of Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream isn't about gameplay mechanics but about the interaction between characters, just as it was in Wii Sports all those years ago. On the whole, Nintendo does a pretty good job of capturing the lively feel of different personalities meeting and interacting, but despite this, I can't help feeling that something is missing. Once I've got used to all the personal catchphrases, unique clothing styles, and nicknames, I feel that the illusion doesn't quite go the whole way. My Miis generally end up in roughly the same situations and say roughly the same things to one another, which eventually makes everything start to feel repetitive and a bit predictable. The interaction worked better when it was all just ideas in my head, and as I start to see the seams, as I miss that sense of life, which for me, was the whole point of the experience.. at least fundamentally. It might be an unfair comparison to pit Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream against the very idea of a personal and dynamic community, but that's where I end up.

Despite the charm of its simplicity, the Mii design isn't Nintendo's strongest suit either; in my view, it's rather anonymous. Especially when compared to how the gaming giant's other icons tend to boast both colour and formal brilliance, the Mii world falls rather flat, and ultimately, feels a bit dull to inhabit from a purely aesthetic perspective. It simply becomes a bit too bland, and if, like me, you're after that unique interaction between characters, I think you'll go further playing something along the lines of The Sims.

On the whole, I think it's important to keep expectations at a reasonable level, and if I'm to assume this is a series that originated as a free gimmick for the Wii, it's really fun to see how willing Nintendo is to build on all its brands, however unexpected they may be at first. It should also be said that I have mainly enjoyed Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream during longer sessions on the sofa, whilst in hindsight I can imagine it's a game far better suited to portable gaming in short bursts.

Although my time with Ozzy and his friends hasn't been entirely flawless, my experience is nevertheless positive. Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream is cosy and full of creative joy for anyone willing to take the time to build a Mii community with personality. I would argue that it requires a fair bit of imagination on your part as a player to get the full value out of the experience. By that, I don't just mean a desire to create visually, but also an overarching concept of who your characters are and what their relationships with the other residents should look like. Essentially, build your own story and see what happens. For me, Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream is primarily a great tool for creative thinking, whilst it's then up to us as players to decide what we want to create.