Over 12 years after the last one Tomodachi life game, Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream will finally launch on Nintendo Switch on April 16, 2026. A silly and cute simulation game, the latest Mii game lets players customize their own islands, not just in appearance, but in the residents who live there. Every day in real life, they will be able to control their islanders by talking to them or giving them gifts like clothes or decorations. Total, Tomodachi Life: To live the dream will be the perfect game for players who want to create their own unique island life… which is what makes it sound like a clone of Nintendo's greatest 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 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 focus on interactions between the actual villagers while Animal Crossing emphasizes decorating and the interaction between the villagers and the player. Well, that and the fact that Tomodachi life games feel like dumping grounds for all the ideas that Nintendo couldn't fit into Animal Crossingbut in the best possible way.
I Love Animal Crossing: New Horizons' Squirrel Villagers, and here are my official rankings
With Animal Crossing: New Horizons' 3.0 update bringing two new animals to the squirrel category, I thought it would be a good time to rank them.
Tomodachi Life doesn't have the depth of Animal Crossing, but it doesn't need to
Both Animal Crossing and Tomodachi life are games meant to be picked up for short bursts of play once or twice a day, but Animal Crossing offers much more for those who want to dive deeper than that Tomodachi life games do. Both series place great emphasis on decoration, with To live the dream be the first Tomodachi life game to include greater island customization. However, Animal Crossing has allowed players to choose individual furniture since the beginning, while Tomodachi life has limited interior design to pre-set interior apartment layouts until now. To live 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 is that character?
Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.
Start
Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.
Easy (7.5s) Medium (5.0s) Hard (2.5s) Permadeath (2.5s)
Along with the wider range of decoration 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 strategy work required to finish the museum. Can this fish be found in rivers, ponds or oceans? Does this bug only occur at night? How to tell if this painting is real or fake?
In the meantime, Tomodachi life never had such depth. The point isn't so much to interact with the island as inhabitants, but to create an environment to see your own inhabitants thrive in. You might have a “look-alike” Mii, and everyone acknowledges your presence, but you take on the role of a (potentially) benevolent deity watching over everyone. You don't overcome any big challenges like paying off a debt or completing an encyclopedia – you just see a lot of fun things unfold.
Tomodachi lifes lower focus on aesthetics can be a strength, however. Adaptation i Animal Crossing is very deep, especially i New horizonswhich can be overwhelming for some players. Neither series requires the player to invest too much time into it every day, though Tomodachi life is actually meant as a humorous distraction while Animal Crossing is a more elaborate 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, To live the dream will need more to do than its predecessors to justify its price point. Adding actual customization of the island is a good start for this, but the real appeal of Tomodachi life is to customize your inhabitants, not the landscape. While the interactions between Animal Crossing the villagers are mostly into window cleaning, one of the things that made people fall in love with it Tomodachi life was the ability to place whoever you want in the same building to see how those people would interact. And these interactions have real consequences for island life; how well the Miis get along can lead to marriage and even children.
This makes the series more similar The Sims in how it approaches relationships, where the appeal is to have characters like Beyoncé and SpongeBob SquarePants whine for fun rather than the player themselves bonding with other characters. Animal Crossingof course, not only does it (thankfully) lack a romance mechanic between the human player and their animal neighbors, but it doesn't track relationships between anyone other than 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 to tell the Miis if they can date their crush or not. IN Animal Crossingthe player decorates their dollhouse to look as pretty as possible, but the dolls themselves—the villagers—are more meant to be parts of the larger diorama than characters the player wants to follow. It is not a bad thing, and the many villagers design of Animal Crossing is part of what makes villager hunting so much fun. But the slow process of building up the perfect island aesthetic i New horizons is different from whatever happened to Hugh Morris in the Nintendo Direct.
New cozy game on Steam is essentially modern Nintendogs
This upcoming game on Steam is the perfect title for cozy gamers who grew up taking care of virtual pets on Nintendogs.
“Casual” vs. “Cozy”
Many games that would have been labeled as “casual” titles 15 years ago have been re-evaluated 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 was going to call Tomodachi life a more relaxed series and Animal Crossing a cozier one, like Animal Crossing has always been deeper – even when compared Wild world on DS and New leaf on 3DS to Tomodachi collection and Tomodachi life on the same system.
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 (world) |
Of course, To live the dream can prove me wrong and surpass New horizons in both creative freedom and accessible content, but the point of Tomodachi life is that it is stupid beyond anything else. The dialogue is repetitive, everything you collect is based on luck, and no matter how hard you try, you may not be able to stop your favorite couple from breaking up. But the nature of Tomodachi life with its Mii creation, even reused dialogue always means a new twist because it will so often involve new combinations of characters. Animal Crossing is for completion, 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 is exactly why a fan of one could still play the other and feel that the experience is fresh.
- Released
-
2026
- Developer
-
Nintendo
- Publisher
-
Nintendo
- Franchise
-
Tomodachi
