Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream – Cozy, Chaotic, and Unhinged

Gojo and Madara having a heated debate? Power and Frieren becoming best friends? If you’ve ever wanted to bring all your favorite anime verses together and watch the chaos unfold, Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream is the ultimate life-sim sandbox game for you.

I created an island of my favorite characters to see how they would interact – and the most chaotic, absurd events unfolded before my eyes. I’ve been laughing over hilarious encounters, orchestrating island drama, and decorating my cozy, cherry-blossom filled island for the last three days. Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream is the perfect mix of the Sims and Animal Crossing New Horizons.

Fill your island with anyone you can imagine and let the chaos ensue. Watch them develop bonds (over the strangest things), navigate messy relationships (frenemies, bromances, unrequited love – you name it), or just live their day to day life. The island is your oyster!

Create the cast of your island – aka the crossover of your dreams

The first thing you have to do is create a character – this is the fun part. You can make yourself, your friends, your family, your partner–or–you can create your favorite fictional characters. That’s the route I took! On day 1, I created Itachi, Madara, Sakura, Power, Gojo, Frieren, and Himmel. You can have up to 70 Miis on your island, but it takes a bit of playing to unlock more space.

The customization options are pretty decent. Choose male, female, or nonbinary genders and customize pronouns and dating preferences. You can change hair, facial features, height and body type. There are 16 personality types you can get by adjusting sliders in Movement, Speech, Energy, Thinking and Overall. This is similar to the MBTI personalities! I’ve created daydreamers, visionaries, perfectionists, and charmers to name a few. This will determine how your Miis interact with others, what they dream of, and how they form relationships.

Once you have your characters, drop them on your island and see how they interact with each other! They start hungry so you’ll have to feed them – try various foods to learn what they love, like, or loathe. You can also give them different clothes and customize their room. When you give them something they like, they gain happiness, that’s how you level up the Miis and island. The more happiness, the higher your island’s level and the more you unlock in terms of island customization options, hobbies, quirks, and buildings. Keep leveling as you’ll be able to make your own clothes, food, and furniture!

Romance: Play Cupid or expect the unexpected

This game is a true romance sandbox for all the crackships, rarepairs, and fandom favorites. Your Miis may become interested in others on their own, but you can also encourage this by dragging them to each other often. The most unexpected crush bloomed on day 1 – Itachi fell for Sakura at first sight!! Unfortunately not all feelings are mutual. Sakura rejected him and he fell into a state of despair for hours (the game follows your real-time). Sometimes it’s love at first sight and sometimes they just don’t vibe. 

Crushes can fade, but it can also bloom! I’ve seen one sided crushes turn into mutual love, and mutual love turn into marriage. Quite a few of my Mii’s have moved in with each other as close friends or partners. I’ve also seen Mii’s fall out of love and move out from living together. Anything can happen! Even love triangles. You can be hands-off on the romance and let them make their own decision if you want a slow burn or you can actively play Cupid.

The more the merrier or just more chaotic?

On day two and three, life was a little too peaceful on the island so I added wildcards and villains. Denji and Aki to complete my favorite trio, along with Getou, Ichigo, Orihime, Hu Tao, Makima and Sephiroth. Friendships blossomed, romance was in the air, and Makima was sus as hell (why is she always watching Denji from afar?). At some point, Orihime started growing paranoid, seeing things on her ceiling, and running away from nothing.

Let’s just say, things got even more entertaining. The only downside of having 18 Mii’s run wild on your island is that it begins to feel difficult to keep track of everything going on. You can’t be completely hands-off because they still need to be fed and sometimes they just need your help! Make sure you manage the status icon that appears over your Mii’s.

Final thoughts:

After playing Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream for three days straight, staying up until 2:00 AM under the covers with my Switch every night, it’s safe to say this is the most humorously entertaining game I’ve played in recent memory.

It has the social/life sim element of the Sims but more chaotic and silly, and the cozy build-your-own-island vibes of Animal Crossing. Whether you want to make your island into an aesthetic, cherry blossom dream or watch your favorite anime characters from different verses argue at Pizza Hut, this game delivers in the most unexpected ways. I’m excited to see what else I’ll unlock the more I play!

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