Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream has a demo out now, and players are already using it to create absolutely ridiculous Miis and throw them into silly situations. But a word of caution if you’re playing the demo yourself: don’t play too much. If you get too far into the demo, eventually all your Miis will lock themselves in their houses and only robotically talk about buying the full version.
This extremely silly and apropos way of limiting a free demo has been discovered by multiple players already. Apparently, after you play the demo for a while, you are prompted to create a clothing store. If you make one for them, you’ll be stuck on a pathway to the whole demo shutting down: you’ll create a third Mii, build a clothing store, and then everyone will go into their houses, refuse to leave, and start telling you to buy the full version of the game.
There is a way around this: simply don’t create that third Mii. Once you create that third Mii, you’re set on a forced track to the end of the demo, even if you try to avoid building the clothing store afterward. But if you never make the third Mii, it seems you can keep playing the demo infinitely, though that does mean you never get to make more than two Miis or dress your Miis up until the full game comes out in April.
It’s not really a shock that the demo has a cut-off point: it’s a free demo, after all. If it let you play infinitely, it would just be the game. But it is a pretty funny way to stop people from playing more, and may come as unexpected to players unaware they’re about to be shut down. It’s also an appropriately silly way for a game like Tomodachi Life to end a demo – the fun of Tomodachi Life is in silly interactions and reactions from the characters, so everyone suddenly becoming a shut-in and trying to sell you on the full game just kind of works.
Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream just got a brand new extended gameplay look from Nintendo, which shows off the depth of Mii customization options, including the ability to just draw their faces freestyle (uh oh). That probably explains Nintendo’s signficantly more strict image-sharing restrictions implemented for Living the Dream, which drew criticism when they were announced in January.
Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream will launch, and free your homebound Miis from their prison, on April 16.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
