Tomodachi Life

Tomodachi Life
North American cover art
Developer	Nintendo SPD
Publisher	Nintendo
Directors	Ryutaro Takahashi Eisaku Nakae
Producer	Yoshio Sakamoto
Designer	Mai Okamoto
Programmer	Masanobu Nakagawa
Series	Tomodachi
Platform	Nintendo 3DS
Release	JP: April 18, 2013 NA/EU: June 6, 2014 AU: June 7, 2014 KOR: July 17, 2014
Genre	Social simulation
Mode	Single-player

Tomodachi Life, known in Japan as Tomodachi Collection: New Life,^[a] is a social simulation game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 3DS. It is the sequel to the Japan-exclusive Nintendo DS title Tomodachi Collection (2009). The game follows the day-to-day interactions of Mii characters residing on an island as they build relationships and solve problems, all of which is overseen by the player.

Much of Tomodachi Collection's staff returned to produce the sequel, including directors Ryutaro Takahashi and Eisaku Nakae. The directoral foundation for Tomodachi Life was planned to be a more focused and grounded process compared to its predecessor. The team established a sociable and warm atmosphere, seeking to inspire players to observe their real-world relationships more positively through the Miis, whom were intended to represent friends and family. Art director Mai Okamoto wanted to elevate the series' visuals to a "next-generation" aesthetic, and worked closely with returning programmers Masanobu Nakagawa and Eisaku Nakae to develop the game's surreal situational comedy.

The game was initially released as Tomodachi Collection: New Life on April 18, 2013 in Japan. Unlike its predecessor, Nintendo also rereleased the game overseas, and undertook major localization efforts to appeal to differing regions. Under the title Tomodachi Life, it released on June 6, 2014, in North America and Europe; June 7, in Australia; and July 17, in South Korea. It sold over 400 thousand units in Japan in its debut week and has sold 6.72 million copies worldwide. The game received generally mixed reviews; it was praised for its humor and overall charm, but critiqued for its repetitive gameplay and lack of user control. An inability for Miis to have same-sex relationships was criticized by reviewers and the subject of online controversy.

A third installment in the Tomodachi series for the Nintendo Switch, Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream, is scheduled for release on April 16, 2026. Among other customization additions, the player can manually select their Miis' sexualities, permitting same-sex pairings.

Tomodachi Life is a social simulation game^[1] that centers on the everyday lives of Mii characters who live on a remote island, the player being their creator and omniscient observer.^[2][3] The player can either create Miis from scratch or import them from the 3DS's built-in Mii Maker application.^[4] While constructing Miis, the player assigns them a distinct personality by selecting various temperament attributes.^[5][6] Miis speak through a robotic text-to-speech voice that can also be manually altered.^[7][8] Much of the game's interactivity, such as interacting with the Miis and visiting island landmarks, comes in the form of physically tapping a desired target on the 3DS' touchscreen.^[8] Time on the island passes parallel to that set on the 3DS' internal clock.^[9]

Gameplay begins with the player naming their island and creating a Mii "lookalike", who is intended to visually resemble the player.^[10][11] The Miis, including the player's lookalike, together populate several apartments located in the Mii Apartments building.^[8][10] By continuously adding Miis and completing miscellaneous objectives, additional buildings, shops, and attractions throughout the island become unlocked. These include food and clothing vendors, an amusement park, observation tower, café, and other venues that Miis can occasionally visit in their own time.^{[3][8][10][12]} Occasionally, in-universe news broadcasts occur to inform the player of recent events on the island.^[13]

Tomodachi Life is open-ended, having no clear end condition.^[14][13] Instead, the game's primary objective is for the player to continuously maintain each of their Miis' happiness, which is indicated by a personalized meter.^[10][15] At random intervals, Miis will notify the player of a particular problem they have. These issues range from requesting food or clothing, soliciting relationship guidance, and asking to compete in various short minigames.^[3][10][16] Appeasing a Mii increases their happiness gauge, which awards the player with in-game currency usable for purchasing items. This currency is also obtained elsewhere through daily donations from the Miis and selling valuables at a pawn shop. Each Mii has a "level" that goes up every time their personal happiness meter is completely filled, upon which the player must give them a present.^[10] The player can optionally eavesdrop on the Miis' dreams while they sleep at night.^[17]

Miis have the ability to form social bonds autonomously, largely outside of the player's control.^[18] Miis can randomly choose to become friends with one another or engage in heated conflict, the latter of which the player can indirectly remedy.^[10][19] If two Miis of the opposite gender and similar age are friends for a sufficient duration,^[5][10] one can harbor romantic feelings for the other. Once the player approves of the relationship, the Mii will confess their love; if the confession is successful, the two are paired as a couple. This can lead to marriage after further interactions.^[11][16][20] Couples can have children; once the child grows up, the player can either move them to Mii Apartments or dispatch them via the 3DS' StreetPass mechanic to appear on other players' islands.^[5]

Tomodachi Life was developed by Nintendo SPD.^[21] It originally released as Tomodachi Collection: New Life in Japan as a direct sequel to Tomodachi Collection (2009). Many of Collection's key developers returned to work on New Life. Rytaro Takahashi and Eisaku Nakae, both of whom directed Collection, once again led production of the sequel. In an interview with Satoru Iwata, Nakae commented that he consulted with programmers and designers to establish a clear directional foundation for New Life. This mentality was divergent that used during Collection's development, which Nakae characterized as a simpler and less focused process.^[22] As with its predecessor, the team wanted to give the Miis defined, autonomous personalities as opposed to their usual status as symbolic avatars. Producer Yoshio Sakamoto stated that a key goal of development was to create "entertainment which is fun just by watching."^[13]

Mai Okamoto served as New Life's art director after doing so for Collection. Okamoto sought to remaster Collection's visuals to elicit a "next-generation" aesthetic, but was particular about retaining the Miis' robotic voices, deeming them integral to the series' identity and players' perception of the characters. Incorporating surreal situational comedy was a primary goal of Okamoto, and to this end worked closely with returning programmers Masanobu Nakagawa and Eisaku Nakae.^[22] One gameplay mechanic introduced in New Life is the ability for Miis to have children. An issue encountered during concepualization was the potential for the game to pair two children, or a child and an adult, with one another as the game's age specfication system could not differentiate between the two groups. This was partially remedied with the inclusion of an "adult spray" item that is applied to a romantic partner if they are underage, physically converting them into an adult. New Life's StreetPass functionality, allowing child Miis to visit others' islands, was conceived as a means for players to grow emotionally attached to their Miis. The development team incorporated an atmosphere of "familial love" to New Life. They hoped the title woud inspire players to perceive their real-world interactions with friends and family in a more genuine, positive light through the Miis.^[22]

On March 13, 2013, Nintendo announced in their latest Nintendo Direct that along with two new special edition 3DS LL^[b] colors, a follow-up to Tomodachi Collection was to be released.^[24][25] In another Nintendo Direct broadcast on April 3, 2013, Nintendo revealed more details related to the 3DS sequel, including the ability to import Mii data from the original game to the sequel.^[26]

Nintendo had previously attempted to localize Tomodachi Collection for Western markets. However, the plan was scrapped because the voice synthesizer used for the Miis, having been originally built for Japanese speech, could not replicate English phonemes. Concerns were also raised over a potential lack of overseas appeal.^[27] In late March 2014, although the company still had not announced a release of Tomodachi Collection: New Life for regions outside Japan at the time, Nintendo of Europe launched a survey containing multiple screenshots of what appeared to be localized versions of the game in English, French, and Spanish.^[28]

Bill Trinen, senior director of product marketing for Nintendo, said that a key focus during development was to increase its worldwide appeal outside of Japan without sacrificing its core gameplay.^[29] One of the most difficult challenges during production was regional localization, one example being a sumo wrestling mini game in the Japanese release being replaced with football in North America. Trinen remarked in an interview that the localization of Tomodachi Life for North America was approached similarly to that of the Animal Crossing series, in that determining how to successfully market the title to consumers in the region heavily guided the development process.^[30] In an interview with IGN, Trinen noted that the Japanese word "tomodachi"—literally "friend"—was retained in the game's overseas name to elicit intrigue and make itself distinct.^[29] Sakamoto spoke of the localization process as requiring significant alterations to make "the Tomodachi feel like real Western people." Such adjustments included replacing some of the Miis' body gestures with those found in other territories, translating local currencies, and extensively reviewing the translated dialogue to ensure they felt natural to speakers of other languages.^[13]

On April 10, 2014, Nintendo released a Tomodachi Life Direct to their YouTube channel, featuring the Mii characters of Nintendo's staff, such as Bill Trinen, Reggie Fils-Aimé, and Satoru Iwata. Other Nintendo employees and Nintendo characters are used to demonstrate the gameplay mechanics, such as Eiji Aonuma, creator of The Legend of Zelda series, conversing with Princess Zelda. The Direct goes into detail about Tomodachi Life and the idea of creating Mii characters of anyone.^[31]

On the North American Tomodachi Life website, certain Miis of celebrities were shown that could be added into the game with the QR codes attached to them, such as Christina Aguilera and Shaquille O'Neal, each including their own custom clothing.^[32] Nintendo of Australia collaborated with singer-songwriter Dami Im to promote the game, with videos featuring her playing Tomodachi Life with her personalized Mii released via a YouTube.^[33]

On April 18, 2013, Tomodachi Collection: New Life was released in Japan. It released alongside a special edition Mint x White Nintendo 3DS XL, with speech bubbles representing the game.^[34]

On April 10, 2014, Nintendo announced in a Nintendo Direct that Tomodachi Collection: New Life's localization would be releasing as Tomodachi Life in North America and Europe.^[35] In May 2014, a playable demo of the game was distributed to Platinum members of Club Nintendo in North America, the data of which could be transferred to the final version to unlock a bonus in-game item.^[36] In North America, it released alongside the Sea Green color variant for the Nintendo 2DS on June 6, 2014.^[34][37][38] Tomodachi Life would later release on June 7 and July 17, 2014 in Australia^[33] and South Korea respectively.^[39]

Tomodachi Life received "mixed or average reviews" according to review aggregate site Metacritic.^[40]

Many critics commended the title's humor as quirky and unique. The New York Times and Jose Otero of IGN called Tomodachi Life comedic;^[16][43] Polygon's Griffin McElroy and Nintendo Life's Damien McFarren both applauded the game's humor as its triumph.^[10][19] The various in-game cutscenes depicting the Miis interacting with one another were seen by GamesRadar+'s Henry Gilbert as amusing and "well-written", comparing the humor to that of the WarioWare and Rhythm Heaven series.^[18] Many hailed the game's status as an informal crossover, with players incentivized to make Miis of friends, celebrities, and fictional characters, as compounding its situational comedy.^[c] Eurogamer's Martin Robinson was more critical, opining that the surreal humor could not single-handedly remedy Tomodachi Life's tedious gameplay.^[17]

An overall lack of deliberate user agency was criticized, and some felt Tomodachi Life's core gameplay quickly became monotonous. Many reviewers perceived the player's inability to directly control which specific Miis, especially those based on non-fictional people, would enter romantic relationships as jeopardizing the game's focus on imitating real-life interactions.^[19][41][46] Critics lamented the impossibility of same-sex relationships as needlessly restrictive for player freedom.^[d] Martin Robinson critiqued the gameplay loop of making islanders happy as becoming exceedingly trite.^[17] Some thought the minigames were too rudimentary,^[18][46] and Griffin McElroy criticized certain minigames as mechanically frustrating.^[19] Daniel Bischoff of Game Revolution felt Tomodachi Life's simple control scheme of tapping the 3DS's touchscreen led to an unengaging and detached experience,^[8] a view shared by Sam Machkovech of Ars Technica. Machkovech thought that Tomodachi Life would better fit as a mobile game, owing to its basic controls.^[4] Damien McFarren, while praising Tomodachi Life's entertainment value, acknowledged its potential lack of appeal for non-casual gamers, and also likened it to mobile titles.^[10]

Tomodachi Life was a best-seller in the Japanese video game market during the week of its release, selling 404,858 units.^[47] By September 2014, its global sales reached 3.12 million units.^[48] As of March 31, 2023^[update], Nintendo has sold 6.72 million units of the game worldwide.^[49]

Following the announcement of a worldwide release, the absence of same-sex relationships led to fan controversy. In May 2013, a rumor emerged that a bug in the original Japanese version of the game that enabled such relationships was patched by Nintendo.^[50] This was refuted by Nintendo in a statement made in April 2014, explaining that same-sex relationships were never possible, and in fact a different issue was fixed.^[51] Nevertheless, many players remained angered by the lack of such relationships, starting online campaigns to add in the option.^[52]

Nintendo stated that it would not be possible to add same-sex relationships to the game after the fact, as they "never intended to make any form of social commentary with the launch of the game", and because it would require significant development alterations which would not be able to be released as a post-game patch.^[53][54] The company later apologized following further backlash, and stated that if they were to create a third game in the series they would "strive to design a gameplay experience from the ground up that is more inclusive, and better represents all players."^[55]

On March 27, 2025, Nintendo announced a sequel, titled Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream, via a Nintendo Direct presentation. The sequel is scheduled for release for the Nintendo Switch on April 16, 2026, and will also be compatible with Nintendo Switch 2.^[56] During a dedicated Nintendo Direct livestream for the game on January 29, 2026, it was confirmed, alongside added customization features for Miis' physical appearances, that same-sex relationships would be allowed, with additional options to make Miis non-binary or aromantic.^[57]

• Animal Crossing – a Nintendo franchise with similar game design

• Official website