Nintendo reveals more Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream info, including its release date

Nintendo has revealed more information about its upcoming life sim sequel, Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream.

The information was shared during a 20-minute Nintendo Direct dedicated entirely to the game.

The game will be released on Nintendo Switch on April 16. There will be no specific Switch 2 Edition of the game, but it will of course be compatible on the console.

As in previous entries in the series, Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream lets players add Mii characters to a town and help them live their lives there.

Players can create their own Mii characters from scratch, using an enhanced version of the Mii creator seen on recent Nintendo consoles, featuring more facial parts than before. They can also use face paints to draw on a Mii’s face and make them look more unusual – in the Direct, Nintendo showed a bear-like character.

They can also make their Mii characters male, female or non-binary, and choose their dating preferences, confirming Nintendo’s previous pledge to make future Tomodachi games more inclusive.

The game’s island features a number of shops and other buildings which can be visited by the Miis during their day-to-day lives. These include a grocery store called Fresh Kingdom (where players try to find their Miis’ favourite foods), a clothing store called Where & Wear, a news station called MNN and a home supply store called T&C Reno.

Up to eight Mii characters can live in a single house, interacting with each other and building their friendships or relationships.

There’s also a shop called Palette House, where players can draw their own pets, coffee latte art, TV show images, clothing, home exteriors or the ground in the island.

The first Tomodachi game, Tomodachi Collection, was released for Nintendo DS in Japan only and sold 3.2 million units. This was followed by Tomodachi Collection: New Life, which was released in Japan in 2013 and was then ported to the West in 2014 as Tomodachi Life.

According to Nintendo, the 3DS game sold 6.72 million units, making it one of the best-selling games on the platform, with at least 2 million of those sales coming from Japan.

Nintendo’s announcement that a third Tomodachi Life game was in development for Switch was liked over 400,000 times on Nintendo’s Japanese X account, eclipsing January’s Switch 2 announcement (which had 385,000 likes) and likely making it the company’s most liked post to date.