First Impressions of Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream

I heard on the wind, a whisper. It said, "Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream demo on Nintendo eShop now!" I knew what I had to do. I had to download this demo onto my own Nintendo Switch and make myself, my mii, ready for her island.

The demo feels, as you'd expect, remarkably like the old Tomodachi Life on the 3DS. The same charming sounds and expressions of pure madness are here, filtered through these beautiful, smooth new graphics and a slick little island that we now must fill with little people. It's lovely.

One thing I noticed immediately is that, of course, it's not as into its touch screen. On the 3DS, there was a lot of emphasis on picking miis up and shaking them about and such. Prodding them. It was a wonderfully tactile experience, and they've translated it here into more of a computer interface thing - you interact with the miis via cursor, rather than directly as the stylus allowed. This feels a little bit odd because I'm so familiar with that earlier control scheme. I want to tap on that screen and feel that keen sense of direct interaction, but it's understandably pulled back for the Switch.

Still, the controls feel buttery smooth, and the overall experience reminds me of the pleasure of booting up Animal Crossing: New Horizons for the first time. Nintendo have headed towards a meticulously crafted, satisfying rounding off of every mechanic and visual. It looks and feels good as hell.

What I don't love is the level of tutorialising that bombards you. I can't remember how much the previous game badgered you with tuturial info at the start, but regardless, it feels like a bit of an overstep. This is true of a lot of Nintendo games, and I just wish they would focus more on communicating game mechanics and controls in more intuitive ways, because even with a short demo, I just wanna get right into the game. The entire demo spends its time throwing explanations at you. It's not the most fun way to explore a new game.

Living the Dream follows the same general structure as its predecessor - you add miis to your island, you give them food and stuff, and that's more or less the deal. You're free to dress them up and introduce them. I made a version of Peter Griffin for my island, and he seems happy.

Once you've introduced three miis to the island, the demo pretty much ends there, and you can no longer really talk to them. They'll just say stuff about the FULL GAME to taunt you, and their happiness levels can't grow. While I suppose the slice of life nature of this game meant that it made sense to cut you off in this way so quickly, I do wish they'd left it a little bit more playable at the end point. For completing the demo, you get a hamster outfit to transfer to the full game, which is iconic and good, but it would have been nice to be able to play around with my three miis a little bit more.

I suppose I can buy them different outfits, but I can't speak to them unless I wanna hear "HEY BUYING THIS GAME IS REALLY COOL BTW YOU CAN DO ALL SORTS OF STUFF IN THE REAL GAME". Okay. My miis are salespeople for this thing. But I just don't think Peter Griffin would say that.

Will I be getting the full game? Almost certainly. Peter needs my help.