In 2026, it feels like all games are either boring $69.99 hyper-realistic singleplayer adventures with hours of story, or cheap, simple multiplayer cashgrabs you play with your friends for 3 hours– and then never touch again. What if instead of waiting for your friends to dish up $9.99 for the next regrettable experience, you all lived on an awesome tropical island? You could try hundreds of unique foods, thousands of stylish clothes, decorate to your liking and become friends with… Shaggy from Scooby Doo?
Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream launched on April 16, 2026, for the Nintendo Switch family of systems, continuing the unique character-creation-based series with a new art style and thousands of customization options. Tomodachi Life revolves around the player creating Mii characters, which can resemble real people or fictional characters, and watching those characters develop friendships and interact with the environment. The player can influence decisions the Miis make, play games with them, solve their problems, and much more while customizing their appearances and the world they live in.
Living the Dream is the third game in the Tomodachi Life series, with Tomodachi Life being released internationally on 3DS systems in 2014, and the Japanese-exclusive Tomodachi Collection being released on DS systems in 2009. The game, which was in development for roughly nine years, has many new features, from customization of an entire island to expanded Mii creation tools, Living the Dream far surpasses the previous releases in the series. It’s not just customization improvements either, the game features a unique cartoony art style focusing on flat colors for characters, whilst still keeping some more realistic details for things like food, plants and terrain.
Living the Dream is great, offering more customization than players could’ve ever dreamed of 12 years ago, while still keeping the original feel of the game. When a similar game, Animal Crossing: New Horizons first released on the Switch, a common complaint was that all the freedom and customization options available to players made them feel less like a neighbor (a large theme in previous games), and more like the ultimate controller of the island. While having complete control over an island and the people who live on it likely wouldn’t work for many other game series, it integrates perfectly with Tomodachi Life, where you’re already established to be a sort of observer with a (literal) helping hand.
However, there’s a downside to all the freedoms Living the Dream provides, for example, the maximum number of Miis a player can have on their island was decreased from 100 in the previous game to only 70, likely due to how much 100 Miis walking around would affect the performance of the game. Players also cannot directly share Miis which, while unfortunate for those who want to share recreations of famous characters, is likely a good thing for a game aimed at young players that promotes recreating people from their real lives. The biggest restriction is being unable to share screenshots and videos from the game directly from the console, which helps prevent media that includes content that may not be deemed family-friendly from being spread online, however, players have found workarounds to share content from the game.
Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream is a game where the most realistic thing is the food you give your Miis, offers as much fun and content as games such as PEAK or REPO and has unbound customization to make your experience truly unique. Whether you’re looking to live on an island with your friends, watch your favorite fictional characters fight, or a mix of both, you’ll be able to do it in this game. It’s a unique experience that anyone can enjoy.