Living the Dream was in development for 9 years

Ahead of its April 16th release, a developer interview Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream Strange revealed a lot about Life Simulator, including how long it took to make. The Nintendo Switch game will be the first new one Tomodachi Life Titled in more than a decade, the following Tomodachi Life On the Nintendo 3DS. Like its predecessors on the Nintendo DS and 3DS, Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream is a life simulator game where the player watches over an island of Mii characters of their own creation. While the player creates Miis and can dress them up, the Miis have a level of autonomy that can hilariously send the player's plans off the rails.

In the first game of the series Tomodachi collection The 3DS entry, on the Nintendo DS, was never released outside of Japan Tomodachi Life It has sold over 6 million copies worldwide. According to Nintendo's ongoing sales numbers, this makes it one of the best-selling 3DS games of all time — and many fans would argue, one of the best 3DS games in general. Fans wondered for over 10 years why Nintendo never made a third game, hence the announcement Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream Welcomed with open arms. It remains a mystery why it took so long, though; That is, until a recent interview confirmed the cause.

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Developers reveal why Tomodachi Life: The Dream took too long to live

In recent times Ask the developer Part of the interview on the Nintendo website Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream The development team answered questions about the game. Interviewed were director Ryutaro Takahashi, program directors Takaomi Ueno and Naonori Ohnishi, art director Daisuke Kageyama, and sound director Toru Minegishi. The interview is full of fun development stories that shed light on the team's creative process, but a particularly juicy tidbit revealed that living the dream Development began in 2017.

Takahashi: I believe development started around 2017, after things stabilized Miitomo. The producer, Sakamoto-san, and I both have a special attachment Tomodachi Life And has been playing the previous game on Nintendo 3DS for many years […] So, we talked about our desire to create a new one Tomodachi Life the game

This shows that there were plans for the game as early as 2017, which also explains why it's coming to the original Nintendo Switch almost a year after the release of the Nintendo Switch 2: it's been in development since the original Switch came out. Fans were still disappointed living the dream The Switch 2 lacks a handheld mode boost, though. As for what caused such a long development, it seems that it was simply because the team had so many ideas that they were having so much fun implementing.

A big focus during development was on the game's “user-generated content” (abbreviated as UGC in interviews), a feature that allowed players to create in-game content — Mii creation, island customization, and so on. Takahashi says that they originally anticipated spending only about a year to a year and a half on the UGC elements of the game, but came up with new ideas for it. In the end, the team took about “six or seven years” to develop living the dreamFeatures of UGC. but, living the dream No online content sharing.

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Tomodachi Life: Cut an almost beloved feature of living the dream

While 9 years in development is a long time, there was naturally still pressure related to deadlines in the process. Takahashi and Ueno how at one point, living the dream Due to time constraints, the favorite feature “Mi News” from the first two games was going to be cut. But a young designer, who was a fan of the series, objected and actually took the initiative to reach out to other people and managed to find a way to keep it. The interviewees mentioned how some of the team's passionate fans from previous games were involved in the project, and highlighted how their enthusiasm and passion helped. living the dream what is this

Screenshot from MIi News Network's report on Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream

While not everyone behind a product has an emotional attachment to it – in fact, sometimes it's best to work on something to avoid non-fans bias – it's very reassuring to hear. living the dreamThe team loved the previous games. Such a unique series that it needs people who appreciate that kind of humor to help it thrive. fans of Tomodachi Life Knowing that silliness is what defines the series, they were able to stand up for the silly elements instead of trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream is shaping up to be a labor of love that will hopefully make up for the 13-year wait between entries.