On an island in the middle of a distant ocean, I’ve been collecting people to live together. I experiment on them. I watch them react to foods I feed them and strange outfits I put on them. They call me Divine One.
I call this island Togetherness. This is totally fine, right? Everything is fine.
This has been my existence with Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream, Nintendo’s oddest Switch game in quite a while. A sequel to a Nintendo 3DS game I never played, it’s a life simulator — sort of like Animal Crossing, if Animal Crossing were absolutely unhinged and populated with people you created yourself.
It’s also a place where Miis — Nintendo’s game avatars that have been around since the Wii — are in the spotlight. You make them, have them meet each other, watch them do weird stuff and just… keep going. They offer an astonishing amount of customization and even come with their own creepy generated voices, which you can tune to be as annoying as you’d like.
I found comfort and joy just a few weeks ago with Pokemon Pokopia. This time around, it’s more about laughs and chaos. Don’t expect much agency in Tomodachi Life. You’re not personally “on” the island, controlling a character like you are in Pokopia or Animal Crossing. Instead, you’re the creator — building a world and introducing both helpful and chaotic elements.
It reminded me of something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Then, as I was watching a TV show with my kid he’d never seen before, it hit: It’s The Good Place.
Which is why I created Miis based on all the Good Place characters. I made Chidi and Eleanor fall in love and get married. And Tahani and Jason live next to each other.
You can customize Miis in a lot of ways. I like mine weird — this one isn’t mine.
For the other island residents, I made Miis named after all the prescription drug ads I saw on Hulu while watching The Good Place. Dupixent, Breztri, Nurtec, Tremfya… they’re all here and doing great, mostly.
“Ant farm” was the thought I had as my island slowly grew — more residents arriving, new facilities emerging, introduced by the game via news headlines: a clothing store, a home goods store, a food shop, a news station. As you go, new features start to unfold. Surprises. Sometimes, island residents fall asleep and have dreams you can watch, and objects manifest from them: a toy robot, a makeup kit. Sometimes a Mii interrogates me about my childhood obsessions.
As you go — feeding Miis things that make them happy, helping pick them up when they fall or playing games with them (red light/green light, guessing games) — you earn money, and they level up. Weird custom sayings or gestures can be layered on. You can give them gifts or send them on little vacations (just to take selfies, which I save to my Switch).
You can suggest topics for them to talk about — phrases inserted into chats like Mad Libs, such as “Weird Al” or “smooth grandma.” At one point, Jardiance and Lybalvi became obsessed with talking about Sam Darnold. Or was it Kisunla and Neffy?
Did I mention you sometimes bowl Miis over in a little game?
I felt myself becoming a bit drunk on my power. A bored god. All these Miis multiplying as I added more — calling me Divine One (my choice), doing their little weird things. The bizarre daily rituals made my kid and me laugh, but it’s also a game that sort of taps out after a half-hour session. You do what you can, buy stuff, solve resident problems, then watch for a bit, log off and come back later.
How far does this go? I don’t know. I’ve played about 10 hours and built homes for a dozen-plus residents. I can go further. You expand and customize the island through purchases — or even by painting or designing your own items. You can only build as much land as the game allows within a fenced-in boundary around the surrounding ocean, but that boundary keeps expanding as you add more residents. Each day, or every other day, brings new discoveries. Also, I’m a terrible island designer.
It’s hard to recommend Tomodachi Life. If you want a weird Mii habitat to take care of — or just some strange Nintendo in your life — dive in. But Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Pokemon Pokopia are better, more engaging games. The passive nature of Tomodachi also feels like it might be better suited for a phone or tablet. And at $60, it feels excessive.
Sometimes your divine hand just needs to descend to pick up a fallen Mii.
But am I happy to see Nintendo being this unflinchingly weird less than a year after the Switch 2’s launch? Yes. And I love that this game allows for nonbinary characters and gender-flexible relationships, a rarity for Nintendo.
And yet, Nintendo has made a strange move by preventing you from sharing screenshots — moments that would almost certainly be meme-worthy — to its phone app so you can show them off. Maybe that’s to keep your Tomodachi fantasies more private and safe. Or maybe it’s to protect Nintendo from players creating awkward or awful moments it would rather not see publicized. Just be prepared to keep your Tomodachi experiences to yourself, unless you resort to photographing your Switch screen, which I’m sure plenty of people will do. This game feels like a meme factory.
At least it’s playable on both Switch and Switch 2, unlike recent Switch 2 exclusives such as Pokopia. But I’m still not sure what to do with my residents on Togetherness Island. Do I love them? Sort of. Will I care for them? Probably not.
Stephan is the sports journalist for the Maple Grove Report.
