Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream releases today on the Nintendo Switch, and as an example of the scope and depth of what players can make in the latest installment of Nintendo’s life sim, the devs recreated Nintendo’s Kyoto HQ in-game for their Mii avatars.
Nintendo’s Ask the Developer series recently interviewed five Tomodachi Life devs about the game’s new features. In Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream, players not only get to customize their Mii sims even more than before, but also have free reign to customize and build on the island where they live. To show off this build mode, the devs recreated the desk-filled office interiors of Nintendo’s HQ in Kyoto, Japan.
“This is an island called Development HQ Island that one of our staff members created,” said the game’s director, Ryutaro Takahashi. “Everything you see here uses the Island Builder feature to recreate the development team’s office, which is inhabited by Mii characters of the development staff.”
Both Japanese and English speaking users on social media greeted this demo with a mixture of amusement and surprise. “Just imagining the dev staffs’ Miis working hard on development within the game is hilariously surreal and absolutely peak,” one user reacted. It also prompted discussion on X about how plain and hospital-white the in-game interiors of the House of Mario’s headquarters look (in contrast to the bold and colorful worlds of the majority of Nintendo’s games).
However, this does seem to be the reality of what is behind the square-windowed, cube-shaped building that is Nintendo HQ. As can be seen in photos from previous Nintendo annual reports (collected in this Medium article), it appears to have open plan, minimalist work spaces divided into individual cubicles.
But it’s not all work and no play, certainly not in the virtual spin on Nintendo’s offices in Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream. “Actually, each desk is a Mii character’s home. Everyone’s talking or lounging around instead of going to their desks,” laughed Takahashi. The game lets you create pets, with the devs opting for Pikmin pets. “Our Mii characters were taking them for walks,” revealed Takahashi (which is a pretty cute image). The devs also created a bunch of custom items including a ‘Ryutaro Takahashi security card,’ and ‘pay check’ items that can be used as gifts.
In the game, Miis will ask you questions and the answers to these will later pop up in gossip sessions between your creations (for example, Takahashi told his Mii that he could talk about getting over his shoulder issues for hours. Much later, when he eavesdropped on a Mii conversation, the game told him, “They are passionately talking about frozen shoulders being cured.” These convos and the custom items you can create leave room for some funny moments and inside jokes with your friends. “We thought that if we developers got a laugh out of it, players will have just as much fun coming up with their own inside jokes,” noted dev Takaomi Ueno.
Although Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream gives players more creative freedom than before and can lead to some absurdly hilarious moments (Mii versions of Samus Aran and Reggie Fils-Aimé having a huge argument over the reality show Survivor, anyone?), our reviewer also found that the game is currently hampered by sharing restrictions that make it difficult to fully enjoy the social aspect of the game. Hopefully these will get fixed later.
Verity Townsend is a Japan-based freelance writer who previously served as editor, contributor and translator for the game news site Automaton West. She has also written about Japanese culture and movies for various publications.
