Avoid This to Get the Most Out of the Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream Demo

The demo for the highly-anticipated Nintendo Switch life simulator Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream went up on the Nintendo eShop back on March 25, but fans are purposefully avoiding a major game mechanic in order to stretch things out as long as possible: dressing up their Miis. Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream is the latest in the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2’s large library of life sims, and fans are dying for the release date of April 16 to come at last.

The long-awaited sequel to the 3DS cult classic Tomodachi Life puts Nintendo’s player avatars, the Miis, back in the spotlight for the first time in a long time. As the caretaker of an island inhabited by Miis of their own creation, the player will be able to dress Miis up, feed them, give them gifts, and even watch them fall in love. But what separates Living the Dream from games like Animal Crossing or The Sims is just how surreal the game can get. If the player rushes through the game’s demo, though, they might miss a lot of that absurdity, so fans have started taking care to avoid triggering the demo’s end.

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How to Avoid the Infamous “Lobotomii” in the Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream Demo

As shared by WeirdHumanBeing (@weirdbeingg) on Twitter, if the player completes the tutorial in Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream‘s demo, Miis will be put on “house arrest.” In other words, they will stop leaving their homes to interact with each other or play with their gifts, and will only talk about why the player should buy the game’s retail version if spoken to. If the player stops just short of finishing the tutorial, however, the Miis they made will still roam the island, chat with each other, accept gifts, and more.

To keep Miis from isolating themselves in their homes, players can go as far as making a third Mii in the demo. After the third Mii is made, the first Mii will get a “problem bubble.” Players should not click that problem bubble, as the Mii will have them open the “Where & Wear” clothing store, which will lock them into buying something and dressing the Mii up. From there, the Miis will stay homebound, whether they were gifted threads or not, only willing to accept gifts and chat about the wonders of the retail version of Living the Dream, which comes out April 16.

So, to keep the demo going for as long as possible, there are 2 main options: either don’t make a third Mii, or don’t click the first Mii’s problem bubble if you do make a third Mii. If the player does make a third Mii, the first Mii won’t leave the house of their own volition, but they can still manually drag them outside to interact with the others and even get some non-problem dialogue. Once the clothing store is built, though, it’s over.

It makes sense that the demo for Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream would be so short and have such a strict cutoff point. The main appeal of the game is seeing the Miis interact, so letting the player make a lot of island residents or having Mii relationships progress too far would defeat the point of a demo. Nintendo wants people to buy the full game, so they naturally made sure that the demo excluded parts that fans are really excited for. Still, it’s disappointing that players can’t at least make more Miis to experiment with the face paint system, even if they have to wait until the full release to actually add them to the island itself. Fellow Mii game Miitopia let players make as many Miis as they wanted in its Switch version demo, but put the extra Miis in a sort of “storage” so they couldn’t appear in the actual story until the player bought the full version.

Even if the player avoids the clothing store, the Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream demo is very limited. The island can only hold 3 Miis, relationships can’t progress beyond crushes, and there’s a set number of Mii problems to solve. That little taste of the game did its job, though, as the fact players are refusing to build Where & Wear in the first place so they can keep playing shows. From what is known about the full version of Living the Dream, fans have much more to look forward to.