You populate an island with Mii characters — yourself, your family, your friends, or people who have never existed. Then you step back.
You do not control them. You feed them, dress them, furnish their homes, settle their arguments and hand out advice, and they get on with living. Friendships form. Grudges harden. Somebody confesses their feelings in the middle of the street. The comedy comes from how little of it you actually chose.
Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream is the Nintendo Switch entry in the series, and the first in more than a decade. Get to know your residents, design a world worth exploring, and watch the whole absurd thing unfold.
Everything on the official Nintendo listing, in one place.
| Release date | |
|---|---|
| System | Nintendo Switch · Nintendo Switch 2 |
| Publisher | Nintendo |
| Digital price | $59.99 US eShop price at the time of writing. |
| Game file size | 6.3 GB on Nintendo Switch · 6.3 GB on Nintendo Switch 2 |
| Supported play modes | TV modeTabletop modeHandheld mode Compatibility and the play experience may differ on Nintendo Switch Lite. Additional accessories may be required, sold separately. |
| Players | 1 player on a single system · up to 2 over local wireless |
| Nintendo Switch Online | Save Data Cloud supported A Nintendo Switch Online membership is sold separately. |
| Family-group lending | Supported through a Nintendo Account family group |
| Supported languages | American English, British English, Canadian French, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin American Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Traditional Chinese — 13 in total |
| ESRB rating | Everyone Comic Mischief, Mild Fantasy Violence. |
Your island is only as interesting as the people on it. Here is what you can do with them — and what they will do without asking you first.
Build a Mii part by part, or answer a run of questions and let the game sketch one for you. Set height and body type, pick a voice, tune personality traits, and set their dating preferences. This entry adds face paint and parts the older games never had, so pure originals work as well as lookalikes.
Every resident arrives with likes, dislikes, opinions and a way of speaking you discover by living alongside them. Watch who they drift towards and who they avoid, and their personality fills itself in over the first few days.
Food, clothes, treasures, advice. Give a Mii something they love and you will know instantly. Give them something they hate and you will know that too, at volume. They are never subtle about their taste, which makes them easy to read.
Keep a resident happy and their happiness gauge climbs. Max it out and they level up, unlocking rewards — new quirks, new expressions, new catchphrases. Teach one a phrase and they will start working it into conversations with everybody else.
Residents begin as strangers. Introduce two of them and they start talking on their own, and from there it goes wherever it goes: best friends, housemates, long-running grudges, dramatic confessions, the occasional love triangle nobody asked for. Up to eight can share one large house.
Catch a Mii moping alone indoors and you can simply pick them up and set them down beside somebody else to get a conversation going. You can also drop in on any home to see what is happening inside, and redecorate while you are there.
Move homes and shops wherever you want them, open new hangout spots, and pull trees and shrubs from the Island Design Centre. Residents chip in with their own suggestions — a path here, a flowerpot there — and acting on them makes the place noticeably livelier.
Stores across the island restock regularly, so it pays to check back. At the Studio Workshop you build things from nothing: house exteriors, ground tiles, clothing, food, even pets. Anything you make can be traded with other players over local wireless.
