Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream Review: It was designed to be shared

Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream It’s hard to explain. The best way to understand is to see it in action; A screenshot of Handsome Squidward and Bob Belcher falling in love over their shared appreciation for cannibalism shows that although it’s a life simulation, the game really is Humor generating machine. Live the dream On Nintendo Switch gives you more tools and fewer limitations to make those jokes weirder and funnier. But while Live the dream It provides more freedom for creativity, and it also has significant restrictions on sharing those creations, and the game seems to be content with the inside jokes that remain within its virtual walls.

Live the dream It is a sequel to the 3DS game that was called a decade ago.The strangest thing Nintendo has ever made“.It’s kind of like Sims or Animal crossingwhich is also somewhat similar to Tamagotchi. You play as the all-knowing caretaker of a small island populated by Miis, Nintendo’s cheerful avatars, and you must feed them and make them happy by fostering relationships and playing games. As you do this, the island will expand with more residents and more things to interact with, so that you’ll eventually have a Ferris wheel, a restaurant, and a TV news station.

What makes the second part interesting is that it opens you up to what you can do. The creation tools in particular are more powerful. There are so many options for designing Miis that, even though I’m definitely not artistically inclined, I was able to create very distinctive cartoon characters without much effort. It is worth noting, Unlike its predecessor, Live the dream It has options for things like same-sex relationships and non-binary characters, making it more inclusive and open. Likewise, the island itself has a lot of customization options, although they slowly unlock over time.

The real essence of the experiment is setting up situations and observing how things unfold. You can make characters become friends or romantic partners by literally picking them up and placing them next to each other. The game will repeatedly ask you about topics they might want to talk about, Mad Libs style. It’s an acquired taste, but for the right kind of people, it can be funny too.

Perhaps the most notable thing about it Live the dream It is that, at least as far as I can tell, there are no restrictions on what you can name the characters or what you can make them say. To really test this out, I let my 13-year-old run wild, and tasked her with creating the messiest island her teenage mind could think of. Now my Switch is home to the cast Owl houseWho like to chat with each other about Hitler, summoning Satan, and human trafficking. Nothing she threw into the game was off limits. (Also, I’m a little worried about her.)

This is all very surprising for a Nintendo game, especially in light of this Clean company image and Family friendly fare. This is almost certainly the reason Nintendo made it so you can’t share screenshots and videos using the Switch’s built-in sharing features. Without going into details, Nintendo wrote on the support page that Live the dreamThe freedom “can sometimes lead to humorous, surprising, or unexpected moments during gameplay,” but we also said that “we realize that scenes out of context may be misunderstood or may not reflect the spirit in which the game is meant to be enjoyed.”

grant Problems Nintendo has had with online sharing in the pastIt’s an understandable position to take. It’s also not impossible to share things; You can get around this limitation by using a capture card or simply by taking pictures of the Switch’s screen. players It’s already started Do this when Live the dreamThe demo came out.

Since so much fun Tomodachi’s life Pushing the game to its limits to see what you can make your little Miis do, Nintendo probably realized that there probably wasn’t any kind of filter they could put into the game that creative players wouldn’t be able to get past. Banning widespread sharing may have been the only option. But this decision also goes against the spirit Live the dream. Whenever I come across a really good joke, I immediately take a screenshot because I want to show it to people. My kid and I have been comparing stupid pictures all week trying to out-match each other.

Nintendo’s limitations won’t stop truly dedicated players. TikTok will almost certainly be flooded with more phone camera videos of cute little Miis talking about sex and violence. Because these types of players are exactly what this game is aimed at.

_{Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream Releases on Nintendo Switch on April 16.}