Over 12 years after the last Tomodachi Life game, Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream will finally launch on Nintendo Switch on April 16, 2026. A goofy and cute simulation game, the latest Mii game will let players customize their own islands not just in appearance, but in the residents that live there. Each real-life day, they’ll be able to check on their islanders by talking to them or giving them gifts like clothes or decorations. Overall, Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream will be the perfect game for players wanting to carve out their own unique island life….which is what makes it sound like a clone of Nintendo’s biggest life simulator ever, Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
But for as many superficial similarities as the two share, fans who have played both series can tell you that Tomodachi Life is its own beast. Not only does the Mii-based life sim obviously use Miis over animal villagers, but it puts much more of a focus on interactions between the actual villagers while Animal Crossing emphasizes decorating and the interactions between the villagers and the player. Well, that and the fact that the Tomodachi Life games feel like dumping grounds for all the ideas Nintendo couldn’t fit into Animal Crossing, but in the best way possible.
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Tomodachi Life Doesn’t Have Animal Crossing’s Depth, But it Doesn’t Need It
Both Animal Crossing and Tomodachi Life are games meant to be picked up for short gameplay bursts once or twice a day, but Animal Crossing offers much more for those wanting to dive deeper than the Tomodachi Life games do. Both series put a heavy focus on decoration, with Living the Dream being the first Tomodachi Life game to include greater island customization. However, Animal Crossing has let players choose individual furniture pieces since the very beginning, while Tomodachi Life has limited the decorating to preset interior apartment layouts so far. Living the Dream will allow much more customization for the island as a whole, and it looks like some extra ways to decorate the individual apartments, but Animal Crossing thrives on the player’s decorative freedom.
Who’s That Character?
Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.
Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.
Easy (7.5s)Medium (5.0s)Hard (2.5s)Permadeath (2.5s)
Along with the broader range of decorating options, Animal Crossing has the museum for players to complete. This turns the series into not just a life simulator, but something of a collectathon due to all the strategizing that finishing out the museum requires. Can this fish be found in rivers, ponds, or oceans? Does this bug only appear at night? How can one tell if this painting is real or fake?
Meanwhile, Tomodachi Life has never had that kind of depth. The point isn’t so much interacting with the island as a resident, but creating a setting to watch your own residents thrive in. You may have a “look-alike” Mii, and everyone acknowledges your presence, but you take the role of a (potentially) benevolent deity watching over everyone. You’re not overcoming any huge challenges like paying off a debt or filling out an encyclopedia – you’re just watching very funny things unfold.
Tomodachi Life’s lower focus on aesthetics can be a strength, though. Customization in Animal Crossing is very deep, especially in New Horizons, which can be overwhelming for some players. Neither series demands the player invest too much time into it each day, but Tomodachi Life is really meant as a humorous distraction while Animal Crossing is a more fleshed-out escape from the real world.
Animal Crossing is About The Player’s Relationships, While Tomodachi Life is About Everyone Else’s Relationships
Being a console game, Living the Dream will need more to do than its predecessors in order to justify its price point. Adding actual island customization is a good start for this, but the real appeal of Tomodachi Life is customizing your residents, not the scenery. While the interactions between Animal Crossing villagers are mostly for window dressing, one of the things that made people fall in love with Tomodachi Life was the ability to put anyone you want in the same building to see how these people would interact. And these interactions have real ramifications for island life; how well Miis get along can lead to marriage and even children.
This makes the series more akin to The Sims in how it approaches relationships, where the appeal is making characters like Beyoncé and SpongeBob SquarePants smooch for the fun of it rather than the player themselves bonding with other characters. Animal Crossing, of course, not only (thankfully) lacks a romance mechanic between the human player and their animal neighbors, but doesn’t track relationships between anyone but the player and their neighbors.
The two series are on opposite ends of the “dollhouse” spectrum. Tomodachi Life is about setting up the dolls and following whatever story comes out of it, but the player’s only role in that story is telling Miis whether they’re allowed to date their crush or not. In Animal Crossing, the player decorates their dollhouse to look as pretty as possible, but the actual dolls — the villagers — are meant more to be pieces of the greater diorama than characters the player wants to follow. That’s not a bad thing, and the many villager designs of Animal Crossing are part of what makes villager hunting so fun. But the slow process of building up the perfect island aesthetic in New Horizons is different from whatever was happening with Hugh Morris in the Nintendo Direct.
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“Casual” vs. “Cozy”
Many games that would have been labeled as “casual” titles 15 years ago have been reevaluated as “cozy” instead. It makes sense; games like Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons may not be action-packed, but they have dedicated fandoms that are anything but casual in how deeply they actually engage with their mechanics. I would call Tomodachi Life a more casual series and Animal Crossing a cozier one, as Animal Crossing has always been deeper – even when comparing Wild World on the DS and New Leaf on the 3DS to Tomodachi Collection and Tomodachi Life on the same systems.
Tomodachi Life Series Games:
|
Title |
Platform |
Release Date |
|---|---|---|
|
Tomodachi Collection |
Nintendo DS |
June 18, 2009 (JP) |
|
Tomodachi Life |
Nintendo 3DS |
April 18, 2013 (JP) / June 6, 2014 (US/EU) |
|
Miitomo |
Mobile |
March 17, 2016 (JP) / March 31, 2016 (US) — Ended Service Worldwide May 9, 2018 |
|
Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream |
Nintendo Switch |
April 16, 206 (Worldwide) |
Of course, Living the Dream could prove me wrong and outdo New Horizons in both creative freedom and available content, but the point of Tomodachi Life is that it’s silly beyond all else. The dialogue is repetitive, everything you collect is based on luck, and no matter how hard you try you might not be able to stop your favorite couple from divorcing. But the nature of Tomodachi Life with its Mii creation means that even reused dialogue always has a new twist since it will so often involve new combinations of characters. Animal Crossing is for completionists, while Tomodachi Life is for people who only have enough time to play their Switch for 5 minutes during their lunch break. But the different depths between the two series are exactly why a fan of one could still play the other and feel like the experience is fresh.
- Released
-
2026
- Developer(s)
-
Nintendo
- Publisher(s)
-
Nintendo
- Franchise
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Tomodachi
