With no new entries in the venerable The Sims series coming out for the foreseeable future (or ever, as long as EA can keep squeezing money out of The Sims 4), challengers to the life-sim throne have begun to emerge. InZoi is the big one, but in a surprise upset, Nintendo has just thrown its own multibillion-dollar hat in the ring. Say hello to Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream.
Tomodachi Life started its tomodachi life as a Japan-only life sim for the Nintendo DS, which was later taken international in a 2013 sorta-remake sorta-sequel for the 3DS. Since then, though, the series has sat dormant for more than a decade, only to have the dust blown off it the second Nintendo needed something to grab all of that The Sims market share.
In typical Nintendo fashion, it's a quirky, lighthearted take on the genre, encouraging you to create people you know in real life as cute, simplified versions of themselves called Mii and then unleash them on an island you develop over the course of the game. Each Mii has a high level of independence and self-determination, meaning that surprises are the name of the game here, from surrealistic dreams to sudden love affairs. The 3DS version is still one of my favorite Nintendo games ever, and I can't wait to see how it's changed after thirteen years in the oven.
