Nintendo as a video game company have always held an appeal based on a kind of surreal world. Games like the Super Mario and Animal Crossing franchises, among others, for instance, are set in worlds where plumbers jump over pipes fuelled by mushrooms and anthropomorphic crossover where animals live human lives within a realistic civic system. It is this sensibility and the fact that their products are modular, seem polished and considered, that sets them apart at a time where the games industry seems to be stagnating.
Nintendo has been in the business of porting popular games and formats from earlier incarnations into its most recent games console (Switch/Switch 2) refining its more established titles as well as bringing a new generation into its universe through tried and tested gaming models. Nintendo’s current hand-held console now sees a game called Tomodachi life: Living the Dream which is based on an earlier game model and is named after the Japanese word for ‘friend or acquaintance’. This is an immersive but simple game where you create and control fictional characters, known as ‘Miis’ (a feature carried over from the popular ‘Wii’ game console) and have them live on an island of your own making, forging relationships and interactions between each one of these Miis.
This is an immersive but simple game where you create and control fictional characters
These Miis respond to commands and environments of your creation as well as sporting quite complex behaviour models that try and replicate a sophisticated urban model with ideas around social interaction, neighbourliness and a stoic approach to life being brought to the fore. The game rewards these attributes and approaches in your game-playing. The narrative itself is open-ended, based on a series of awards and mini-tasks, ultimately holding your island in a state of contented equilibrium.
The new technology of the Switch allows some big updates in the gameplay, the graphics are sharper and better defined and this goes some way to sustain the illusion of a smoothly run island. The level of customisation is also much higher than previous versions with buildings being able to be remixed to match iconic facades and even the faces of the characters and the much desired ability to change the Mii’s sexuality and gender (which Nintendo had been criticised in the past for not including.) Communities of online builders and ‘modd-ers’ now abound as a result. There have been some amendments to the game model in this recent port however.
The Miis don’t behave in random ways or interactions and the population is now more limited to 70 Miis which, to some extent, limits possibilities in the gameplay. Nintendo, however, do tend to update their games over the air so, technical refinements aside, there is scope here for user feedback to add more charm and playability back into the title. The game certainly has potential to grow and be as popular as previous versions, games sales to date prove this with Japanese sales alone selling over half a million copies in the first four days