Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream and an “Aro Button”

[mrsluigivargas]

I’ve written about Tomodachi Life and aromanticism before (Part 1, addendum) so I figured with the Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream Direct out this morning I might as well circle back to it for a moment. With some good news, this time!

Below is a screenshot shown in the direct, from the Mii islander creation process.

So first of all, side note: congrats to the nonbinary folk! The screen before this lets you set your Mii’s gender to nonbinary, too. This is really cool to see!

But also, we’re able to set a Mii’s dating preferences now, and between male, female, and nonbinary we can choose “one, more than one, or none”. And we can probably safely assume that “none” means that the Mii in question won’t go out and develop crushes on people, which means that a Mii can be functionally aromantic! The all-aro island is achievable! Don’t I look silly for being a doubter, haha. But hurray!!! 🎉

The next question for me is: when the game takes a different Mii and looks to make them have a crush on someone, is the preference set of the target Mii a factor at all? Does it exclude them from being selected, or turn any confession scenes with them into a guaranteed failure, or does it just reduce the chance of success for an attempt? I’m kind of thinking of this in a general sense, e.g. if you have one gay guy on your island and also a whole bunch of non-men who have men as their preference is that guy going to be incessantly asked out by people he isn't interested in, lol. That’s probably something to test when the game comes out, though; I’m sure people will be happy to dig into that.

The other super interesting thing in this trailer to me is that there’s an added feature where Miis can ask each other to move in together platonically. You can have up to 8 Miis in an apartment complex-type space, with separate bedrooms and a common room on the ground floor. So now you don't have to make Miis get married to have them live together at all!

Between the dating preferences and the moving in mechanic, the new Tomodachi Life game has more or less decentered and thus deemphasized the marriage track that was so central to the first game, which I think was the most important thing they could have done with the framework they had to make the game more aro-friendly. So I’m quite satisfied, to be honest 😄 I might even buy the game myself, now~!

I still have questions, though. Like, we know there’s still marriage and having kids in this game; does a married couple still move out together after their honeymoon? With how customizable the island is now there isn't really a sense in having a pre-established “post-marriage single family home” district like the previous game. But would they still leave vacancies in their existing homes, or in the apartments? Also I’m not really sure how money is earned in this game yet, unless I missed it in the trailer, and the Happness points meter is still here. If the mechanics of both are similar to the previous game, would getting married and moving in platonically be just about equal boosts to those values? Does that still leave Miis who do romance with extra boosts from having crushes and kids, and are there alternatives for the other Miis? And there's still the Most Important Question of all — do the credits still only roll once a child is born on the island???

…I suppose we’ll all find out together in April, lmao.